Sermon 10-27-02
A Love that Won't Come Naturally - Matthew 22:34-46 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Last school year, for my supervised ministry position, I interned at the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. The General Commission, based in Manhattan, is one of the United Methodist Agencies, established to address a special ministry focus of the church. This particular agency deals with two major areas - ecumenical relations between Christian denominations, and interfaith relations, between Christians and people of other religious traditions. The Book of Discipline sets out two primary areas of responsibility for the Commission: 1) To advocate and work toward the full reception of the gift of Christian unity in every aspect of the Church's life and to foster approaches to ministry and mission that more fully reflect the oneness of Christ's church in the human community, and 2) To advocate and work for the establishment and strengthening of relationships with other living faith communities, and to further dialogue with persons of other faiths, cultures, and ideologies.
I was intrigued by the idea of working on interfaith relationships: how do we, as Christians, live out our calling to share the gospel and at the same time live respectfully and thoughtfully in a world where there are so many other religious and faith traditions? However, when I made the decision last year to work at the Commission as an intern, I had no idea how pertinent my work would become in my everyday context, or in the everyday life of the church. But it was just a week after I began my new position at the ecumenical and interfaith agency that the events of September 11th took place and refocused everything in all of our lives, and especially refocused the life and work of the Commission. Suddenly people were asking questions about Islam, wanting to know more about the religion, about the people who practiced it, about how to relate to something so unknown. People were concerned to hear that Muslims were being discriminated against, insulted or attacked by some who blamed all members of the Islam faith for the September 11th attacks. People were confused about what jihad or holy war meant to Muslims, and whether or not all Muslims supported these approaches. Suddenly, people were very aware of the different religions present in the United States, and wanted to know what to do with this knowledge. Part of my work at the General Commission, then, ended up focusing on how Christians should relate to Muslims in their communities, in the country, and around the world. What is a Christian response to religious pluralism? How do we live side by side with people of other faiths?
Today's gospel lesson helps us focus in on how we relate to other faiths and other traditions. In the passage from Matthew, we find the religious leaders once again trying trap Jesus with their questions. "When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees," we read, "they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, 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." The Pharisees were disappointed: Jesus had given the right answer. Everyone knew that loving God was the greatest commandment, the greatest law, learned and recited from childhood. And loving the neighbor was core to the law as well: care for the widow and orphan, special regard for the stranger. But Jesus equates these two commandments as virtually equal in significance, saying that the second command, to love neighbor as self, is like, or as important as, the first. This would have surprised the crowd a bit more: loving the neighbor is like loving God? The combination of these two commands is Jesus' twist on the expected response - we love God through loving our neighbor, in the act of loving our neighbor.
However, what Jesus doesn't say here, but we know only too well, is that loving the neighbor as we love ourselves or as we love God isn't always so easy. One pastor shares how very difficult, unnatural even, she finds the command to love the neighbor: "I've sometimes wondered how anyone could command a person to love another person. Isn't that like commanding a person to love lima beans? Loving our neighbor is not something that comes naturally for us," she writes. It certainly didn't come naturally to D.H. Lawrence, English author and poet. He once wrote a poem called "Love my Neighbour" that is amusing but poignant. It goes like this....
I love my neighbour but are these things my neighbours these two-legged things that walk and talk and eat and laugh, and even seem to smile seem to smile, ye gods! Am I told that these things are my neighbours? All I can say then is Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay!
There is a sense of resistance to this commandment from Mr. Lawrence. Love is not our natural inclination. In fact, it's something like a foreign language. It's something we learn, something we have to work at, something to be intentional about. Shortly after 9/11, Christian Science Monitor reported on one community's efforts to engage in dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Their dialogues proved challenging at first, as people had to stretch outside of comfort zones to hear each other in new and different ways. Mary Wiltenburg reports on their attempt. She writes:
What they hear is that men and women were created from a single pear - P-E-A-R. They are 60 visitors - awkward but well-meaning - worrying the unfamiliar carpet of the mosque's basement room with their socks. Most arrived this evening with their arms and legs covered, some have scarves or sweaters draped on their heads. They're grinning politely; they're trying to be open-minded; they know they have everything to learn, and plenty to unlearn, about Islam.
But they're strangers, expecting strangeness. So when Justin Hvitfeldt stands up to explain the creation story, more than a few of them hear: "In Islam we believe, as in Christianity, that man was created from a pear, p-e-a-r. Men and women from a single pear p-e-a-r, so that we share the same soul." Visitors look around uneasily. Finally, a woman in the third row ventures, "How are you spelling pear?" "P-A-I-R?" Mr. Hvitfeldt says, puzzled. "Oh!" somebody says, and little "oh's" echo from around the crowded room. After a beat, the visitors start to giggle nervously. After another, so do their teachers, Hvitfeldt and his wife, Andrea Useem. "No," Hvitfeldt says, "we don't believe we were created from a fruit...."
This playful story amuses, but it also touches on the very real divide that separates us from people of other faiths - we do not always understand our neighbor - we feel separate and different, we don't know how to communicate, how to share what we believe, or how to hear what is important to our neighbor. Like a second language, the language of love for the neighbor is something that must be learned and practiced constantly in order to have meaning for us, in order for it to become "second-nature" to us, instead of something unnatural and strange. It requires our care, our attention, and our intention to be successful. It is this love for the neighbor that Jesus puts as the second of the greatest commandments, likened to our love for God. For God created all that we know, and declared that it was good - This good creation includes you and me and all of the people of the world. We love the neighbor because they too are beloved children of God, God's own good creation.
Following the events of 9/11, the General Commission re-released a document titled "Called to be Neighbors and Witnesses." This document further articulates what it means for us to be neighbors in light of our commitment to Christ. "What does it mean to be a neighbor?" It begins, "It means to meet other persons, to know them, to relate to them, to respect them, and to learn about their ways which may be quite different from our own. It means to create a sense of community in our neighborhoods, towns and cities and to make them places in which the unique customs of each group can be expressed and their values protected. It means to create social structures in which there is justice for all and that everyone can participate in shaping their life together "in community." Each race or group of people is not only allowed to be who they are, but their way of life is also valued and given full expression." This vision of community, of neighborhood, is a vision of God's reign on earth that Christ sought to bring to us - love of God, love of neighbor - these are the greatest commandments, the greatest goals of our Christian journey, inseparable one from the other. Let us stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones, and experiment with this new language, this love language. Let us reach outside our own human nature, and imitate the nature of Christ - against our human nature that tends toward what we know and what feels safe, to Christ's nature, that stretches out open arms, making neighbors of those who were strangers. And in doing so, let us show God our love, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind. Amen.