Thou Shall Love

“ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ”

The greatest detriment to Christianity is that it allows people to join. People really are the problem. Give me a church without any people, and I will give you a perfect church. But let anyone join that church, and you might as well give up on it: in time it will become hopelessly divided, confused, watered down and dead.

There was a man on a desert island who was discovered after a number of years. In a clearing the man had built three small huts. When asked what the huts were, he explained that the one on the left was his home, and the one on the right was his church. “What about the one in the middle?” they asked. He lowered his voice and said, “That's where I used to go to church.”

And is it a question of doctrine— to have the best and most correct doctrines regarding the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Bodily Resurrection, the end times and how we shall be judged, the nature of the Eucharist, and all things ecclesiological —that makes a church perfect? Surely doctrinal laxness is a signal of a failing church body. Apostasy, departure from the true faith, abandons the power of God in a church's message and ministry and invites other powers to take roost. But a church with all truth and without love is like a meat locker. Nothing goes bad in there; nothing rots, molds or ferments. But no one can live in there either. A freezer is not the place you would build a church for people.

Love is the key, and love is the command. Every confession I ever make begins : “I have failed to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul and all my mind. I have not loved my neighbor as myself.” I go on to name my more specific sins, but this fairly covers whatever I might inadvertently leave out. My wife Giti has written an article for our Herald, soon to be published, where she admits that the hearing of the 1 st and 2 nd great commandments at every Mass gives her a feeling of having failed right from the start.

Surely, as our Liturgy progresses, this citing of the summary of the law has the object of setting a standard, a standard that none of us seems able to achieve. We open the Liturgy with a Collect for Purity, asking that God, who knows us inside out, would cleanse our thoughts and hearts so we might perfectly worship and glorify Him in a way that He deserves. Of what are we to be cleansed? The Law states, in either the Ten Commandments or the Summary of the Law, what God expects of His people. Whether ten or two, the commandments convict us of what we have failed to be. We follow that by crying out, “Lord have mercy on us!” A person may imagine that he hasn't broken the Ten Commandments as literally stated. The Pharisees believed that of themselves, so Jesus drew out a few of the Commandments to include the unrighteous anger of the heart, or the lust of the mind as also evidence of sin.

The Ten Commandments state God's will in mostly negative terms. “Thou shalt not…” was a way to build a wall, a barrier against the most egregious behaviors. Idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, perjury and greed are thus stigmatized. But when asked what the greatest of the Laws was, Jesus answered in the positive: “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Love is the great commandment, and its corollary is also love. Jesus was quoting Moses in citing these two: He wasn't coining a new commandment here. Moses, in his farewell speech to the children of Israel, had said: “… these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might .” Deut. 6:1-15

Jesus, citing this familiar phrase, brought approval from the crowd. Truly this was the great commandment. It must always be the first commandment because loving God first will put God's will first, and whatever your God commands, from monotheism to monogamy, you will do from your heart.

He then shows the connection between the commandments regarding God and those regarding your fellow man, “ Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:18 At another time, Jesus would define who our neighbor is, but here we see that love is our standard toward others, a love that equals how we favor ourselves. This gets to the heart of our problem, doesn't it? Because the basic human flaw that can be seen from the youngest infant on is selfishness. We are selfish. We prefer ourselves before anyone else. Just break in on that little world with the love of another, and you begin to create a new man, a man in the likeness of God.

I was asked this week by a police officer about the fear of God , and how it is supposed to be the beginning of wisdom. I told him that this sentence is repeated many times in the Old Testament. The sin of Israel's neighbors was the worship of many gods, idols they made with their hands. Every people group had its own favorite gods, and the sphere of any god's power or influence seemed bounded by tribal or territorial borders. These were convenient gods, pocket-sized deities who did what we commanded them, and who need not be feared. When God revealed Himself on Mount Sinai in thunder and black clouds, declaring the Commandments to the children of Israel, they shrank back in fear. Suddenly here was a God who had made everything and whose judgment is ultimate. You didn't negotiate with such a God about His will for you. You just came under it, or else.

But in time, we are to move from this fear to a healthy respect, an awe and wonder at the majesty of God, and finally to a complete devotion and love. Our motivation for obedience are not as important as obedience, but God does not mean to leave us in abject terror of Him. While remaining infinitely above us, He also makes Himself available by the Incarnation of His Son, by the sacraments, by prayer, by the Bible, and by the church. Our God is both transcendent and immanent. We fear, or greatly respect His power, while we love and cherish His goodness and forgiveness of our sins.

Jesus said more about love. He instructed us to love our enemies. This was novel, for the Jews had a saying not from the scriptures, to “love their neighbor but hate their enemy.” Jesus turned this around. He also gave His apostles a new commandment, to love one another even as He had loved them. This was a higher love, a self-sacrificing love, totally committed, completely giving all to one another.

We see a great picture of this love in the familiar epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, and we hear it echoed in the 1 st epistle of St. John. But these commands and entreaties leave us out in the cold. How are we to become people who love? We can stand and spout all day long, endless sermons and doctrines and liturgies. We can kneel, stand, genuflect, cross ourselves, take Communion, scrape and bow appropriately, and in the end, know we've been to church only because we're sore. If Episcopalians are really God's frozen people, am I asking the wrong group these questions? How can we love as God demands?

Here my wife had an Epiphany. Christ's summary appears to state a demand : “Thou shalt love…” And so it is. But—and here's some more doctrine for you to note down somewhere— whatever God commands, He also gives the grace to obey. Jesus may as well have said, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God.” It is a prophecy, a glimpse into the future of mankind, and a return to the origin of our species, created in the image and likeness of God. We were made for love. We will again be made to love, even though we were born selfish and egocentric and willingly ignorant of love. In heaven we know that sin will be finished and we will have not only new bodies but newness of mind and heart. We will know Him as He knows us. We will feast at His table. We will sit in His throne. And we will love Him, love Him with all that we are. Every motivation, every thought, every emotion, everything will be moved by and empowered by that love. We will also love everyone there. We will see everyone for who they are, totally forgiving their former fallen nature, as we have been forgiven, and embrace every soul with selfless love.

Furthermore, this heavenly blessing of love can be ours, in ample measure, while we are here. We are already being reformed for eternity, and as far as we can go along that transformation here will bring us higher in our heavenly state when we arrive there. We are commanded to love God and each other, while we are here, and imperfect as that love must be from imperfect creatures, God will supply that love if we ask for it. Ask for it now. Go on.

O God , give us hearts to love as thou dost love, minds to love, souls to love, and strength to love Thee as Thou hast commanded us. We have no power to love, nor ability to find such love in ourselves. But such love is of Thy very nature, and we plead with Thee to bestow this love for Thee and for one other into us, increase it daily, that we may pour it out in generosity and abundance every day of our life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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