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23 Pentecost
October 23, 2005
Sermon by Guest Preacher - The Rev. James B. Cook, Rector, St. David
Episcopal Church, Minnetonka
Readings
I want to thank Peggy for the privilege of preaching at St. Paul's this morning. As the rector at St. David’s in Minnetonka, I am in the middle of a four-month sabbatical, so Peggy - with whom I had the pleasure to minister with for several years at St. David - thought it would be fun to reunite this weekend. Peggy also invited Dr. Chris Wallace, director of music and organist/choirmaster at St. David’s, to join us this morning. Peg, it's great to be serving with you again, and I bring greetings from St. David’s to you and to Jon and to this marvelous congregation of St. Paul’s, a leader in so many ways, not only here in Duluth, but throughout the diocese.
In the Atlantic Monthly several years ago there was an old joke showing God talking to the first Scotsman. God says, "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that I'm going to give you soaring mountains with thick green flanks, perfect for grazing sheep; I'll give you beaches and coves and gorse-grown headlands about a plentiful sea; I'll give you rolling hills and valleys beneath which you'll find rich minerals. Your land will be one of the most beautiful on earth."
"Great!" the first Scotsman replies. "What's the bad news?"
God pauses for a moment and then answers: "Wait until you see your neighbors!"
I don't need to tell you that neighbors can be quite a challenge, especially the neighbors we don't particularly like: you know, those people who live near us but we wish lived somewhere far, far away where they can't bug, bother and badger us so easily. Without them in our lives, "love, sweet love" would be a piece of cake. But, no such luck. We'll always have neighbors, and it will always be challenge to love them.
At least that's the challenge Jesus throws our way this morning when we find him in debate, yet again, with the religious hot shots of the day. This time, a Pharisaic lawyer tries to trap Jesus by asking what commandment in the law is the greatest. You see, the rabbis had counted 613 commands in the law: 248 positive commands to correspond with the number of body parts and 365 negative commands to correspond with the number of days in the year. Although the rabbis occasionally speculated on which of these commandments stood above the rest, there was a common reverence among them that all 613 commands were equally binding. No human - including this upstart, renegade rabbi named Jesus - had the right or the wisdom to prioritize Divine Law. The question is a trick, but that doesn't stop Jesus from answering.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment," he says. "And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Jesus says love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. The love of God command and the love of neighbor command are inseparable; together they constitute the essence of the Law and the prophets. All else is commentary.
Notice, there's no follow-up from the lawyer. He is silenced, and so are we. This is the part about Jesus we secretly don't like so much. "Just as I have loved you," Jesus says, "you also should love one another." How are we supposed to love people we don't even like? How are we supposed to love even our enemies - as God loves us?
By trying harder?
By deciding that we are going to love the same way we decide to go on a diet or get more exercise or watch less TV?
Love by resolution? Love by strength or will? Just do it.
We know that doesn't work. We know we can't manufacture love no matter how hard we try. No. Our capacity to give love is somehow linked to our capacity to receive love. So the question of how to love our neighbors is really a question of how to accept love ourselves.
Do you know love in your life? Do you believe that the Source of all Love, God, is in love with you? I wonder.
Consider the last time you were introduced to someone you're meeting for the first time. Isn't it amazing how quickly we get to asking, "So, what do you do?" Our identity is so defined by what we do. I wouldn't particularly like it if somebody said, "Hey. I'd like you to meet Jim Cook; he doesn't do anything. "
Come on. We're doers, achievers, performers. We're known for what we do, and we expect rewards for our success. And this way of thinking is so dominant and pervasive that it has affected - or should I say, infected - our relationship with God and, thus, our relationship with neighbors.
But the truth that Jesus gives his life for us to know, is that God loves us in spite of what we do. No ifs, ands or buts about it. God loves you and that is the most important fact and truth about you. You can't achieve it. You can't earn it, and you don't deserve it. But you have it; you have God's love for you, no matter what. We can do nothing to make God love us more, and we can do nothing to make God love us less.
"You are mine," says God. "Your name is engraved on the palm of my hands. Your picture is on my refrigerator door. I love you as if you were the only human I ever created." And nothing we do can change God's mind about us.
In a sermon preached many years ago by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Trinity Church, Wall Street, Tutu made the claim that we radically miss the point of the parable of the Good Shepherd. He says that if you look around most churches, the Good Shepherd is shown carrying on his shoulders a fluffy, clean, little lamb.
The problem is fluffy, clean, little lambs don't usually stray from their mommies. The sheep that strays is the unruly old ram, which has probably gone through the fence, so its fleece is torn. He's likely to have fallen into a ditch of dirty water and smells to high heaven. The Good Shepherd, suggests Tutu, leaves 99 perfectly well behaved sheep to go and look - not for a fluffy, clean, little lamb - but for the one who is least deserving, least likeable, most offensive. And, when the Shepherd finds the ram, he doesn't hold it at arm's length. He lifts it, places it on his shoulders and returns. "Let's have a party!" he says to the others. "There's greater joy in heaven over this one who repents than over the 99 who don't need repentance."
Don't you see? We keep missing the point. We make out that the Church is for fluffy, clean, little ones. But, who were the ones Christ hobnobbed with? Not bishops or archbishops. Not Harvard grads or CEOs. No. Jesus went looking for those no one else liked, let alone loved. Those "neighbors" we deplore are God's friends.
We forget: God's standards are very low. God never looks at you when you sin or stray and says, "Good riddance to bad rubbish!" God picks you up, dusts you off, throws you on his shoulders and says, "Let's try this again!" As many times as we fall and fail and fool around, God is right there to lift us up because God is not through with us. God has all eternity to keep working on this masterpiece title with your name. You are worth God's time.
And just as God sees you and me as worth God's time, God sees every human God has ever breathed life into as worth the time. You, me, we, every last one of us in here and out there, every last one of us born in America or born in Iraq, born white or born black, born Jewish or born Christian, everyone of us is created in the image of God. I will never be closer to God than when I am with you, my neighbor in this broken world.
All that is required is that we accept our acceptance. I am accepted. God loves me, and if God loves me, God must also love you.
At the conclusion of Tutu's sermon, he makes a suggestion that I shall pass on to you.
The next time the doorbell rings, interpose a cross between you and the one standing at the door.
When the telephone rings, trace a cross in your mind over the one who is at the other end.
As you sit in a traffic jam, instead of fuming about the person trying to cut you off at the next exit, say, "God, yes, maybe, he has heard that his wife has a terrible disease. God, I lift him to you."
As you pass people on the street or in your office building, bless them, signing them with the sign of the cross in your mind's eye and lift them to God's shoulders and lay them safely down.
And as you love your neighbor, you will transform the world, making it what God has wanted it to be all along . . . . a home for all God's children.
God loves you, each of you. Accept that love, and your neighbor might not be so hard to love after all.