Let's talk about love

Well, I’ve got another passage that preachers LOVE to get. So many different strands to go down, but as I was preparing this sermon I had to keep reminding myself of the challenge God laid down to me last week - “don’t overcomplicate my promises with your ‘educated’ mind. But this week, you’ll be delighted to now, we do have a bit of both Hebrew AND Greek. You can’t say I don’t spoil you.

So, like I always do, I read the passage slowly. Then I shortened the Gospel reading from what is in the lectionary. Because the word that I just couldn’t shake is ‘love’. It’s a word we say a lot here at St Michael’s - it weaves its way through scripture, our prayers, and even our vision statement - “We are a community of Jesus’ disciples, known by the way we love each other and the people of Newlands-Papararangi”. In my sermon last week the Spirit lead me through a journey as I explored what “Give to God what is God’s” might mean - and everything the Spirit gave me pointed back to love. Yet somehow we use this word love all the time, but don’t often talk about what love actually is.

So, in the words of Celine Dion, “let’s talk about love”.

But maybe not in the way Celine means - this isn’t a Song of Songs sermon.... instead, let’s talk about Ahavah. (that’s a tricky word to say with a stutter, and wouldn’t make as catch a song…)

When Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he replies by quoting two OT scriptures - Deut 6:5 (part of the Shema, that most famous of Jewish prayers - we’ll come back to the Shema in a bit.) and Lev 19:18.

In both of these OT passages, the word translated as love is ‘Ahavah’. In the Gospel it’s the greek word ‘Agape’. Both are reasonably similar in meaning - but I’m not going to go down that particular linguistic wormhole.

Instead, let’s look at the Hebrew word ‘Ahavah’. Now Ahavah means love, but it’s no soppy or well wishing kind of love. The word appears 212 times in the OT.

It expresses familial love:

Abraham AHAVAH Isaac

Isaac AHAVAH Esau because he had taste for wild game

And it shows love between friends:

Jonathan AHAVAH David

Towards rulers:

Israelites AHAVAH King David

Between political allies:

Hiram (King of Tyre) AHAVAH King David

From God:

God AHAVAH the Israelites (in Deut 7:7-8 we read that God favoured and chose the Israelites because of his AHAVAH for them. God doesn’t love because the Israelites deserved it - it originates from God’s character

The prophet Hosea compares God’s love for His people to a husband’s AHAVAH for his wife, or a parent’s AHAVAH to their child

But it’s more than just a feeling - AHAVAH provokes action.

In Deut 4:37

Deuteronomy 4:37 NET 2nd ed.

Moreover, because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants who followed them and personally brought you out of Egypt with his great power

Because God AHAVAH your ancestors, he brought you out of Egypt with great power.

Or to jump to the new testament, and confuse things by using Greek briefly:

God so AGAPE (loved) the world that he gave his only son that we should not perish but have eternal life

God’s AHAVAH makes him respond in action, and his AHAVAH towards us calls us to respond in action too.

Shema

Let’s jump back to the Shema - which is part of the scripture Jesus quoted when he said

Deuteronomy 6:5 NET 2nd ed.

You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.

The Shema is one of the most famous prayers in the bible. It was a daily prayer for ancient Israelites, and is still recited by Jewish people today. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 NET 2nd ed.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.

Moses is addressing the new generation of Israel as they prepare to enter the promised land - and is urging them not to repeat the mistakes of their parents’ generation - but to do this they must learn to listen to and love God above all else.

It gets its name from the first Hebrew word of the prayer - “hear” or “listen”. Now shema doesn’t mean to just listen - it’s not just having your eyes open to pick up the vibrations. Here, the word shema means to allow the words to sink in, to let yourself understand them, and to respond. In Hebrew, hearing and doing are the same thing - so we’re to listen AND respond.

And as the prayer goes on we hear we’re love God with our HEART and SOUL and STRENGTH. In other words, with our whole being.

Immediately after this we read these words must be kept in our minds, taught to our children, spoken about in our houses, as we walk, as we lie down, as we get up. They should be tied as reminders on our bodies and written on our doors and gates. These words from God, via Moses, are so important they should be at the very centre of our being and all we do.

IFTTT

Jesus pairs these verses from the Shema with a verse from Leveticus which he says is like it, or just as important as it: Love your neighbour as yourself.

The more we read Scripture and come to know the nature of God, the more we realise that God is love, and that our love stems from that great love. As John wrote in what we now call 1 John 4:19

1 John 4:19 NET 2nd ed.

We love because he loved us first.

Does anyone know what IFTTT is? It’s a neat little application that lets you put a condition in that triggers a response. It stands for If This Then That. You can do it to create commands like “If a new sermon is uploaded then post it to Facebook.” or “If the front door is unlocked and it’s cold then turn on the heaters.”

It strikes me that this whole of life way of being God is calling us to is a bit like that.

If God loves us AND we love God, then we love our neighbours as ourselves.

I’m reading a book that is challenging me deeply at the moment. There are two questions in the book that align with this life changing call to know we are loved and love in response:

Do many of our lives just look like a slightly vanilla version of those who don’t know the world-changing hope we claim to have living within us?

AND

Would you say you’re living in such a way that if God didn’t exist (and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were untrue), your life would make no sense?

Does our love for God, and therefore for everyone around us, cause us to live in a way that is so markedly different to the world around us? Because the love we are so freely given, and called to share, is not just a soppy or well wishing love - it’s a love that calls us to action. A love that calls us to stop, to not ignore, to make a difference in the lives of others, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others. Because God loves us like that first.

Amen.