"Love the Lord your God"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy
Proper 25 year A
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Matthew 22:36-44

In Matthew 22:36 one of the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”

There are 316 laws in the Old Testament. Out of those 316, Jesus picks two: Deuteronomy 6:5“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'” and Leviticus 19:18 ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'

To the first he gives the highest priority. Loving God with all your heart, soul and mind is “The first and Greatest commandment.” And, he says, the second is like it but second all the same, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

These two laws hold together all that is contained in the other 314. All of the other commands in the Tanack, the Old Testament, the bible of Jesus day, and by extension, since it's Jesus saying this, all the commands in the New Testament, are directions or instructions for living out these two primary commands. They all hang on, they are all summed up in, they are all aimed at fulfilling these two. We're only going to have time to discuss the first this morning. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” I'll talk about the golden rule next time I preach.

What do you think love means in this passage? If you get warm fuzzies every time you think about God are you loving God? The Greek word translated as love here, and there are five Greek words for love, is agape. Who can tell me what Agape love is? Right, self-giving love. To love someone with agape love is not to love them because of what they do for you or how they make you feel or the qualities they posses, you love them simply because they're creatures of God and persons for whom God gave his Son, just like you. The focus in Agape love is on the other person. And as we've said before agape love is not a feeling it's a doing, it‘s active not passive. You give agape love you don't necessarily feel agape love.

So Jesus says the first and greatest task in your life is to agape God. And he goes to name three parts of the self that together sum up the entirety of your being, and he says each of them should be wholly and completely directed toward God in Agape love.

First Jesus says love God with all your heart. The word heart in Jesus day, didn't refer to the organ that pumps blood. Nor did it refer to feelings. When we say, “follow your heart,” we usually mean, “follow your feelings.” But when a person in Jesus' day spoke of his heart he was speaking of that part of the self that wills, that makes decisions. Your heart determines how you live and what you do. If you have two choices in front of you, let's say to do your homework for bible study or watch television, your heart, your will is what determines that choice.

So how would you agape God with all of your heart? You make decisions with your time, your money, your relationships, your career, that put God first. You make faithful and obedient decisions in every aspect of your life. Jesus later, in John 14 told his disciples if you love me, you will obey my commands. You will use your heart, or your will, to follow me. You will use all your will for God. Think about that. Think about the decisions you make on a daily basis. Do you love God with all your heart?

Second, Jesus says love God with all your soul. The word soul here is the same word that the Greek Old Testament uses for the breath of life that God breathed into Adam and Eve and that he breathes into each and every one of us. It is that bodily life-force, that power of physical life, that separates the living from the dead. The word can be deceiving because today we think of the soul as our spirit. But, in Jesus day the word was associated with what the ancients called your passions. Does anyone know what your passions are? Your passions are your instinctual drives; the basic bodily desires for food, for sex, for rest, physical pleasure. These are some of the strongest desires we experience. They're like a mighty river inside of us that can sometimes spill over the banks. These Jesus says must be turned in agape love toward God? When we talk about basic desires we're often talking about them in the context of sin. But this command implies that the desires themselves are not only good, but can used and turned in agape love toward God. God wants you to have pleasure, he wants you to enjoy your food and even enjoy sex. That's why he gave us these bodies that are able to give and receive pleasure. But he wants you to enjoy these things in the right way, in a way that glorifies God. That means that enjoyment of pleasure must be channeled or directed. Some people live by the dictates of these desires. They seek pleasure above all else without any boundaries or limitations to their indulgence. The problem is, as any drug addict or alcoholic can tell you, that when your passions rule you, pleasure becomes harder and harder to find. Only when your desires are channeled in the right way, in a godly way, do they become real enjoyable pleasures. Do you love God with all your desires? Are your passions channeled toward him? Are your passions channeled at all, or do they channel you?

Finally, Jesus says love God with all your mind. The word mind in Jesus day, as it does in ours, referred to the power of understanding. God gave you a mind so that you could know him. That's what it's there for. God wants you to think; to use your mind to explore, examine and understand his Word and his created order. Sometimes you'll hear Christians say, “I don‘t know why we have to learn about the bible and theology and doctrine and all that hard stuff, all you need to do is have faith.” Faith in what? Faith in who? The mind is that part of you that God has given you to explore the depths and the riches of the things he's made and the words he's inspired in the bible so that you can know who he is. Otherwise you may think you know him, you may assume you know him, but chances are the god you think you know is not the real God, but a product of your own mind. You might as well worship a mirror.

Have you ever heard someone who finds something in the bible they disagree with or makes them uncomfortable say, “My god would never say that. Or my god would never do that!”? Well, more than likely their god would not say or do anything they disagree with because guess who they‘ve made god?

What if you were to meet someone and as you're getting to know each other you listen to this person tell you about their past and their job and their family and life. And afterwards you begin to tell about yourself and they say. “Don't bother me with all the boring details. We're friends. I don't have to know anything about your life to be your friend, let's talk about me.” Isn't that what we do to God when we refuse to use our minds to get to know him? He's given us the bible, he's given us this beautiful world. He's given us the church, and he's given us his son. All we need to know him is right here in front of us. Use your mind. Love God with your understanding. Seek him out. The more you know about him, the more you see how beautiful and glorious and wonderful he is and the more you'll want to know. The knowledge of God a hunger and a thirst to know more and more about him.

Notice how heart, soul and mind work together. If you know God with your mind, you'll know what pleases him, you'll know his commands and you'll see the direction your will, your heart, needs to go to obey them and make decisions about how to channel desires in a direction that pleases God. If you love God with your understanding, your mind, you‘ll be more able to love God with your will, your heart, and then more able to love God with your desires, your soul.

So this is the Great Commandment. Every aspect of your being is to be directed toward God in Agape love. If you're looking for the purpose of your life this is it. Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. That's what you were created to do and doing will bring you joy and doing anything else will end up in misery. There's only been one person in all history who's been able to follow this command and that person is Jesus Christ. He's the perfect lover of God.

That means everyone here is at best an imperfect lover of God. If you've given your whole self to Jesus Christ and invited him into your life, then Jesus' perfect fulfillment of this law counts on your behalf. Jesus' has fulfilled this law for you. And now the Great Commandment is not an impossible standard but a challenging and glorious task and mission that will require your best efforts and end in the greatest joy. IN fact, if you're in Christ, loving God in this way is not a burden and a chore, it becomes one of your passions, it becomes a burning desire like one of your basic instincts. You want to know him more and you want to please him more because God has changed your heart. And because God himself is living in your heart you don't have to try to do this all by yourself. His love, his power and his strength is at your disposal. You have access to it. You can love God because God himself loves you and offers you the power to do it.

If you're not in Christ, if you've not invited him into your life, you're responsible to live up to this Great Commandment on your own power without God's Spirit in you and guess what? If you haven't already discovered, it's impossible. I know, I tried. The problem is that unlike believers Jesus' fulfillment of the great commandment doesn't count on your behalf. You'll stand before God and he'll judge you on the basis your obedience to this command and you'll be found guilty. And until then you'll be wandering about in this life trying to figure out why nothing you do or try brings you lasting joy and satisfaction; not your job, not your relationships, not golf, nothing satisfies nothing gives meaning and purpose. It doesn't have to be that way, God loves you. He created you to have a purpose and he has prepared a place for you and he longs for you to give yourself wholly to him so that he can come and live in your heart and change it so that loving God will become one of your passions and you can begin living an exciting challenging purpose filled life that will require your best while at the same time making you better and that will never end.

Amen