THE TRINITY OF LOVE

November 1, 2015

Pentecost 23

Ruth 1:1-18

Mark 12:28-34

(prayer)

It is among the most well known of Jesus' teachings.

The greatest commandment?   'Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and strength.'   And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

Jesus claims that every commandment - every expectation of God - falls under the call to 'love God' and to 'love others as we love ourself'. 

And I think that is true.

I am hard pressed to think of a single piece of biblical advice for how a person is to faithfully live their life that doesn't fall under these two straight-forward parts of the Hebrew Torah (Deutetonomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).

For me, personally, if I am faced with a situation where I might be tempted to ask What Would Jesus Do?, what we heard today from Mark 12 is my guide.

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And, like Jesus, I find it hard to imagine that I could truly adhere to the great commandment unless I also adhered to the second greatest one.  I mean, how can I fully love God without loving those whom God loves?

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Who does God loves?

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The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that God's definition of "neighbours" includes those who are not necessarily like us.  The neighbour includes those who we may be tempted to exclude because they come from a different place, live their lives differently, believe different things.

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God does not just love a select portion of humanity.

Some 50 or 60 years after Jesus' life time, the author of the gospel of John summed up the love of God by writing that God so loved the world that he ... sent his only son into the world, not to condemn it but to save it. (John 3:16-17)

God loves The World!

Too often, we read that passage to think that God's love is reserved only for Christians.  But that is not the Christian story as expressed in the Gospel of John.

God loves the "world".  That's the starting point.

 For the followers of Jesus - within this whole world that God loves - through our experience with the life and teachings of Jesus, we find a safety in the promise of God's everlasting love.  John 3:16 says that to believe this is to experience it - to feel it as true.

To believe in what Jesus was all about is to know the vast love of God.

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I don't think we can follow the great commandment without also following number two.

Loving God must include a love of neighbours.

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Having said that, if we look at what Jesus says, we will see that the commandment to love is actually... threefold.

There is a Trinity of Love.

·         Love God.

·         Love neighbours  (in the good samaritan way).  And...

·         Love one's self.

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We are commanded to love our neighbour as we love ourself.

I read a good analogy for that this week (Seasons of the Spirit, SeasonsFUSION, Pentecost 2 2016, page 128):

If you have ever taken a flight on a commercial airline, you have seen and heard the pre-flight safety demonstration. 

When the flight attendant talks about the possibility of cabin de-pressurization, we are told to expect oxygen masks to be released above our seats. 

The final instruction is... what?

"If you are travelling with someone who needs assistance, put on your own mask first before assisting others."

If I don't take care of myself, I can't care for others.

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Put Leviticus 19:18 into that context:  Love your neighbour as yourself.

If I don't love myself, how can I love others?

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It seems that the practical truth of Mark 12 is that Jesus' greatest commandments must be lived out in reverse order.

It begins with a realization of our own value and important: our uniqueness and our acceptance that we are worthy of deep love and care.

Too many of us (myself included) can be prone to self-criticism.

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God desires us to love ourselves without reserve - to accept that we are created as a divine image and that - if God loves us unconditionally - so should we.

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The Trinity of Love begins with a love of self. 

Then we take that open-hearted attitude to others.

Finally, as we are able to love with a God-given heart, we will realize that we are already loving God.

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The story of Ruth of Moab is wonderful on so many levels.  We are barely scratching that surface this morning as we heard the story's tragic context in chapter one.

[I encourage everyone to take time to read the whole book.  It is only four chapters long.]

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Ruth teaches us that love and commitment are stronger than nationality or custom. 

It goes beyond the bonds of family. 

Love is fostered in compassion borne out in the relationships we have taken the time to build.

All logic and custom told Naomi, Orpah and Ruth that the response to the tragedies of losing their spouses required a return each to their own homes - to seek support with blood relatives - to rely only on the relationships they were born with. 

The message was that their future depended on turning back and starting over - to set aside the fragments of the relationships that brought them together.

But the newer relationships informed a broader option. 

Where you go, I will go.

Ruth just could not set aside her life with Naomi as if it never happened.  Naomi was more to her than the womb that had once held Ruth's husband, Chillion.

By her determination, Ruth teaches us that loving commitment comes from the building of deep relationships.

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Jesus' Trinity of Love invites us to open ourselves up to more than surface connections. 

Deuteronomy calls for love that comes from the whole heart, upheld by all of our strength and reaching into the depths of our soul.

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It is the most basic nature of God to be loving.

We are created in that holy image.

Our scriptures invite us to see that as we seek to live out compassion in our lives - in how we connect to family, friend and stranger alike - we find ourselves naturally drawing closer to God.

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In a few moments, we will express this in a powerful communal action.

We are invited - each of us - to know we are invited to the great feast of our God.  We deserve to have our fill because God declares us worthy.  We are equal diners of the Lord's supper regardless of our age, our ability, our knowledge or our experience.

Individuals coming together in common action, sharing a loving cup and a holy blessing.  In doing so  we are bound in common mission of the one who first loved us.

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We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

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Let us pray:

Gracious God, fill us with your love -that we might love you, others, and ourselves. And, as we live lives of love, may we become ever closer to you.  Amen.

***offering***