The Greatest Commandments

Matthew 22:34-40

In Matthew 22, Jesus teaches what the Greatest Commandment is. We all have heard it before: "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all your mind." And then Jesus follows that by adding an additional command: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

This is the passage that I think often gets misquoted and styled as the Golden Rule: "DO unto others as you would have done unto yourself." But that isn't what Jesus said! Jesus said "LOVE your neighbor as yourself." And that might mean the opposite of doing unto others what you would have done to yourself.

I want a cup of black coffee, direct, up front and even blunt communication, and not a lot of small talk generally. But this does NOT mean that people whom I love want the same! So to love them, I try to meet them where they are. So instead of the Golden Rule, we might consider this a Platinum Rule: "Do unto others what they would prefer done to themselves!" "Speak to others in a way they would prefer to be spoken to!"

This is all well and good, and it makes a lot of sense.

I have for a long time been most comfortable with Jesus's second greatest commandment. Because of course we are supposed to love God, right? That's a no brainer. In my life, I have found myself wanting to explore something more tangible: how to love my neighbor. There is so much there in how we are generous. How we advocate for those who are struggling. How we can care for those who need care. How we can love rather than hate the "foreigner in our midst."

But this week I find myself wondering: how, exactly, do I "love God with all of my heart and with all of my soul and with all my mind?"

This is a more complicated question than we give it credit for. There are some pretty obvious answers from my United Methodist faith tradition. We love God by attending upon God's ordinances (things we believe God has asked of us): praying, fasting, keeping the Sabbath, reading scriptures, worshipping God and participating in the sacramental life of the church and others.

I think this commandment of Jesus' isn't just an instruction--it is a lens. "On these two commandments hang all of the Law and the Prophets." We love God by living our life with a lens of love that shapes how we live in community. How we interpret our sacred texts. How we make ethical choices. How we raise our children. How we care for our elders.

Loving God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds is a way of saying that we love God by living our life through this lens of love. This lens makes it very difficult to have enemies. It doesn't cover up or make it easy to ignore suffering. It notices injustice. It directs us to contemplation. It leads us not only to love one another but to love ALL that God has created. So loving God boils down to loving life itself.

Loving God includes truly enjoying all that God has made. Loving God means setting aside your life to glorify God. And that isn't always easy. It leads to real-life choices. Loving God isn't just a performance where we can be seen folding our hands and closing our eyes in prayer. It isn't just a gesture we make on Easter and Christmas. Loving God is a life long practice--which means we get better at it the more we do it!