Sermon for Aug. 15, 2021, Pentecot 12 B
Audio podcast is here.
Video is here (available at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR, after the Sunday Service)
Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the Law of Moses, asked him a question to test him.“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
These are the words of scripture. Thanks be to God.
We, humans, are constantly telling ourselves stories. There is a voice inside our heads that narrates our lives to us as we live them. The voice is our own voice, so we naturally think that we are in control of it.
We walk outside on a day like today and the voice says, “It’s hot; it’s too hot; I don’t like it. I need to get to come air-conditioning as soon as possible.”
That voice notices what we are experiencing, and then interprets it, and makes judgments about it. It tells us that what we are experiencing is either good, we like it, or it is bad, we don’t like it. It tells us that what we are experiencing, including what people around us do or say, is a help to us or a hindrance. We are either being assisted, or threatened.
The voice sounds like our own voice, but that is not the whole story. The judgments and assessments that voice makes about our experience comes from many sources, most importantly, from the people who raised us.
If they kept telling us we were bad, incapable, or dumb, then we will hear our own voice in our heads repeating that narrative to ourselves, as if it were true.
If they told us we were lovable and capable, then that is what our voice will tell us. The people who raised us had a huge effect on how we see everything. If we were told that that the world is a dangerous, hostile, dog-eat-dog world of competition for scarce resources, including emotional resources, that’s probably how we will interpret the world.
The opposite perspective is also true. If we were told that hard work and discipline would eventually be rewarded with success, we would end up believing that (especially if we are white and middle class).
It takes a great deal of effort to re-train that inner voice. It can be done, but it is not quick or easy. Ask anyone who is in recovery from addiction how hard it is to re-train the brain, and they will tell you: it takes time, effort, and lots of support from your community. It is possible, but difficult.
Meditation is a great help here. In meditation we learn to recognize our thoughts as simply thoughts — not necessarily true representations of the world. They are the story we are telling ourselves.
So, the question before us today is, what kind of story are we living in? What is the controlling paradigm through which we interpret our experiences of the world, moment by moment?
As a Christian, I believe that it must be a love story. Any other kind of story will not be a true story. The voices in our heads that tell us about the world better be telling us a love story, or the consequences will be tragic, both for ourselves and for the world.
This has great implications for us in many ways; personally, in our relationships, and how we see ourselves in relation to the rest of the world. Today, we will be looking at that last set of implications: how do our internal stories influence how we see our lives on this earth?
Creation as a Love Story
We have to be telling a love story, if we are faithful Christians, because our story must be a God-story. God is love, as our scriptural wisdom tradition tells us. We got here, on this planet, in this solar system, because a good and loving God created this beautiful planet and gave us life to live on it.
Whether God did it in an instant or over millennia of evolving time, either way, God is the creative Source of the universe. Our Creation myth celebrates this amazing physical world, as time after time, we hear that the Creator saw what was made and said it was good.
We also read, in that story, that God made human beings in God’s own image and likeness, and gave them stewardship over this good physical world. We are in charge, for better or for worse. What we do with this planet matters to God. This has to be part of the love story we tell. God made and loves this world, and put us in charge to love it and tend it.
Jesus and the Love Story
The story we tell ourselves about this planet and our role in it has to be a love story for another reason: Jesus. We read the story from Matthew. People in opposition to Jesus were giving him a hard time. They were trying to trap him into making a mistake that would turn people away from him.
It was not working, but they kept trying. They had a scholar in the Law of Moses come to ask him,
“which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Actually, that was a softball question.
Every good Jewish person, every day, several times a day, recited the Jewish Creed that said
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
That creed comes from Deuteronomy. Everyone knew that loving God was the greatest commandment. Then, surprisingly, Jesus adds another command to it, from the book of Leviticus, saying,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
He says this second command is “like” the first, meaning in importance. That is an amazing claim: that loving our neighbors is right up there, in importance, with loving God.
Picking up on the duality of these two love commands, the author of 1 John will go on to ask,
“how can we say that we love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters whom we have seen?”
(1 John 4:20)
Getting back to Jesus; he makes a further startling assertion about these double love commands saying,
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Everything specified in the the 613 laws and all the admonitions of the prophets hang on the dual commands to love God and neighbor. It is that simple.
So the story we tell ourselves about the world we experience has to be a love story. It has to be a story about being loved, at every moment by a good God who made us and is with us, and for us, every moment of our lives.
Our self-talk has to be a love story about how God is present with us in our pain, in our grief, in our suffering and anxiety, literally feeling our pain. Our love story has to be about a God who can make good things come out of bad things, offering us a future with hope.
And our love story has to include our neighbors — near and far; those alive today, and those yet to be born. Our love story has to be about putting ourselves in their shoes, feeling their pain, and loving them enough to want to do all we can to help.
So we must love our neighbors enough to ensure that they will have a planet to live on that can support their flourishing.
Not a horror story (yet)
So often, instead of a love story, we hear a horror story. We see on the news the wildfires raging, burning whole towns, and it’s horrible.
We hear about record-setting heat waves and droughts that result in suffering and death.
We see, in other places, devastating floods, landslides and destruction.
We hear that hurricanes are more intense as they gather energy over warmer oceans.
We are aware that the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing the scientific consensus is alarming; even hair-raising.
It is easy to succumb to the voice in our heads saying it’s hopeless; we tell ourselves that all the LED lights in our homes and all the recycling in the world won’t make a dent.
The voice tells us that too many people are in denial; the issue has become politically polarized, and our nation is not alone as a major problem-causer. The voice in our heads can be so negative as to leave us paralyzed.
So, though it is not easy, let us not let that voice go unchallenged. As we see and hear about the climate change horrors, let us remind ourselves to tell a truer story; a love story. A story about how our love for God and the world God has made, and our love for our neighbors both in this and in future generations can motivate us to make a difference.
Being the Church
We have a new banner here at church. The title is “Be the Church”. Each line suggests a way in which we are called to be the church. The first is,
“Protect the environment.”
This is a call to adopt a love story for our environment. We are being the church authentically when, out of love for God and love for our planet, we join forces on behalf of protecting her.
Let us be practical. There are things we can do, today, that can lead to substantial change. I am involved with the Citizens Climate Lobby.
Every month, we make calls and send notes to our congressional delegation, reminding them that we are Arkansas citizens who vote, and who care deeply about climate change.
We work on a non-partisan basis. Our goal is not political, it is practical. We want legislation that will motivate companies and consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.
I wish many of us would join this effort. It is love in action. Sometimes that negative voice in my head says, “It won’t make a difference.” But I pick up the phone and make the calls anyway, encouraged by the supportive team that I know is also making calls in Arkansas, regardless of the chances of success.
But we are having some success with some of our delegation already. We are moving the needle. We are sowing seeds for the future that we believe will bear fruit.
By this, we are being the church, with authenticity. And after we have made the calls, we can tell ourselves a love story. We can tell ourselves that we did what we could on our watch, to fulfill the greatest commandments; to love God, our Creator, and love our neighbors, the creatures who live on God’s good earth.
And we will keep on doing it, lest the only story left to tell is the horror story. Let us tell the love story, before it is too late.
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