Comments for Jim
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Sunday "HEART AND SOUL" DEUTERONOMY 34:1-12 MATTHEW 22:34-36 |
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First, central to our Christian faith is what we call "The Law of Love." In the scripture from Matthew’s Gospel Jesus sums up his traditional religion this way:
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 great commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two depend all the law and the prophets.
Jesus is saying that love of God is primary. And that love of neighbor and love of self are connected, and both cannot be separated from love of God. It is a set of dynamic interactions, balancing like a mobile. I would say that, in one form or another, this Law of Love is integral to all the great world religions. When an Hindu proclaims tat tvam asi, ("That thou art"), he or she is saying that the deepest core of one’s being is divine and that recognizing this allows us to understand that we are all united in this divine nature. And for Christians especially, this divine nature is love.
Second, I believe that we find the fullest expression of this spiritual reality in community, that is, in some organized form of religion. We live in an era in which many people separate spirituality from religion. People who feel this way have sometimes been disillusioned by religion, personally or through knowledge of its historical failures. Or some may simply be narcissistic. When Monica Lewinsky was asked by Barbara Walters if she felt she had "sinned" in her relationship with President Clinton, she said not really. She regarded herself as spiritual, not religious. But yet, I don’t see how it is ever truly possible to experience love of God, neighbor, and self, unless one finds a place in some kind of community; let alone be accountable to some sense of right and wrong. Communities keep us from becoming too self-absorbed or too ignorant of self. Communities of faith are needed for us to keep the mobile of love of God, self and neighbor in balance. The wise and humane scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, recently said this:
Our society extols a sort of independent spirituality while criticizing organized religion. But I find this spiritually lacking. Organized religion doesn’t get a fair shake…I’m not for hiding the sins and inequities of religion, which are certainly there, but I am for balancing the playing field by recognizing its virtues as well…Religion has preserved history’s greatest wisdom teachings.
Communities of faith, with history and continuity, help us to live out the Law of Love.
Third, such organized religion requires continual reformation, i.e. re-formation. It is in the very nature of human institutions for them to become ends in themselves. And eventually the issue becomes not how the organization can enhance love of God, neighbor, and self, but instead, how to secure its own survival. And we all know that religious institutions can become the worst kind of oppressors. At one level the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century was about protesting abuses in the Roman Church, understanding of scripture, sacraments, and so forth. But the Reformation was also an expression of a deeper prophetic truth that any institution that comes to stand between us and God and neighbor must be reformed; and if it cannot be reformed, it must be set aside. Our Protestant understanding is that, in the final analysis, the Reformation is always ongoing, continual. Paul Tillich taught that Protestantism is not so much a type of church as it is a principle – the Protestant Principle.
What does this mean for us on this Reformation Sunday? It means each of us is called to be a Reformer. Each of us is encouraged to come forward, like Luther himself, and nail our theses, however many you have, to our church door. To be a reformer means that we continually return to this Law of Love. How does the Law of Love judge all that we do and all that we are? How can we stop bottling up love in our lives and in our church, and set love free? What can we create that will give new expression to love of God, neighbor and self in our own time and place?
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Voice 4: I
believe that a man who was meant to die came back to life. That a body that was still anti broken, danced That a voice that was silenced, laughed. Voices 1-4: We believe in love. Voice 5: I believe in a vision that has noisy cafeterias in sanctuaries, children with jam smeared faces running through boardrooms inviting the powerful to stop and play. I believe in an artist that paints the world in its true colours I believe in a mother that cannot help but respond to her child's cry I believe in the Spirit. Voices 1-5: We believe in love. |
Voice 1: I believe in a miracle Voice 2: I believe that all destruction
ends Voice 3: I believe
in a promise that, with a baby's |
Voice 6:
I believe that walls that are permanent fall That racist systems die That terrorists will lay down weapons and talk. Voices 1-6: We believe in love. Benediction Love is not the destination: love is the way. Love is not the answer: love is the question. Love is not tile reward: love is the task. Go to live out that task in the world, where God is already waiting for us. And the God who is love, remain with us, and all whom we love, now and forever more. Amen.
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