Pentecost 12

Pentecost 12 (Matthew 22:34-46) “You shall love…”

God is love.  The One God eternal manifests himself as an active, dynamic and creative community of love. That love is universal and unconditional. That love always seeks the best for each and for all.

If there were a theme song to summarize the human experience it might be “Looking for Love in all the wrong places.” God the Father designed our species and each of us individually by the creative power of the Holy Spirit according to the dynamic pattern of the Son. God created by love, though love and for love.

The choice our species made to separate from God resulted in a terrible distortion of the pattern of love in our souls. Most of us most of the time have a vague awareness  that love is the answer. Unfortunately, we also cultivate the triad of sin from the place of separation. That triad of sin is Pride, Self-will and fear. That triad subverts and distorts the reality of love. That Triad of sin corrupts the mind so that we cannot properly understand love. And it corrupts the heart so that we confuse immediate pleasure with love.

Jesus taught nothing new when he answered the question the Pharisees asked. God had revealed this teaching to Moses millennia before. Love is the underlying principle that gives form and substance to the Law. Without love the Law kills. With love the law releases the soul from the chains of slavery to sin. It is clear from Scripture that the Pharisees we so very close to the reality of God, which is the reality of Love. It is also clear that they would not accept the Real Presence of love. One fundamental reason they would not and indeed could not accept the Real Presence of Love in Jesus Christ lies in how they chose to understand God.

The Pharisees and other religious sects of the day were theological “impersonalists”  They believed in one divine principle who was so transcendent, so pure, so holy so perfect that they rejected any personal descriptions of this principle. They were fine talking about the Deity in the abstract. They had largely abandoned the vivid and at times the scandalous images of God as Father, Husband, Lover and Friend revealed by Moses, the Prophets, King David and King Solomon. They accepted the Law as a detailed rigid inflexible standard of behavior that guaranteed rewards and punishments.

They never imagined that God would come to them in person. And, they refused to acknowledge the personal presence of God in Jesus Christ. What was their motive? Control. A God who is upfront and personal, who identifies himself in very specific ways through the images of personal relationships, is not a God you can control or use for your individual goals.

As we see in other passages of scripture the Pharisees wanted to justify themselves. They didn’t really need God. They believed they were righteous by their own efforts in the categories of right action and right belief. They believed God must reward them with power, position, prestige and pride automatically. They believed and they prayed: My will be done.

Their belief subverted their faith. Their pride rejected the personal life transforming relationship God offered in Jesus Christ. They were theological impersonalists only a breath away from agnosticism. They were ethical legalists who used the law to reward themselves and to punish everyone else including Jesus. They were willfully and spitefully lost in separation from God through pride.

And Jesus loved them. Jesus loved them because Jesus is love. Jesus loves everyone. He accepts us fully and completely as we are where we are. And, in the personal relationship he offers us he knows we will experience change. He knows that as we spend time with him we will acquire his perspective, his values and his way of living.

The Pharisees and the other religious leaders of the time did not want the relationship because they did not want to change. They wanted to rule.  Love is all about change. Love is all about the choices we make.  Jesus invites us to consider those places in our own minds and hearts where we hold back from love. He wants us to consider how we withhold love from others. Jesus is the abundance of infinite and eternal love. Most people in his time as well as in our time reject that abundance. WE reject abundance in order to remain unchanged and to maintain control.

Jesus asks us to enter into the active dynamic creative and transforming life of the Trinity. Jesus reminds us that the Father created us from abundance for abundance. Jesus demonstrates for us a new life and a new way of living.  It is the way of love. In this world that way opens the path to divine blessing through worship, kindness and compassion, and personal transformation.

Do you value this? Are you willing to be willing to live in this way and to follow this path? Do not answer too quickly. If you choose to follow this way then the Holy Spirit will help you to surrender the demands of self-will to the invitation of divine will to receive the blessing of God and become the blessing of God to others.

Pride kills the blessing. Pride keeps us rigid, inflexible and demanding. Pride produces least common denominator religion, self-indulgent spirituality and material scarcity.Love gives life. Love produces a blessing in the soul that keeps us flexible, adaptable, reasonable and compassionate. Love enters into the divine presence through worship with the motto: My utmost for His highest. Love is generous. Love delights in surrendering old fear based beliefs to be transformed by Jesus himself into the bright majestic and magnificent virtue of abundance.

The preeminent image of worship is the image of a banquet. The divine pattern of the world is abundance. The vision of human life is an exciting journey of discovery and transformation.The Pharisees’ vision was too small. It was a limited vision based in scarcity and expressed through rewards and punishments.

The vision Jesus offers is infinite and eternal. The vision for humanity and for each of us as individuals unfolds as we hear the word of God, believe the word of God and embrace the word of God. That word is expressed in an imperative: you shall love.