Love, God, Self , Neighbor

Introduction: God makes us in his image and likeness. God gave us Hearts to Love, Souls that live forever, and minds to think and reason and freely choose to come to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to love and serve God. From creation to when God gave the Ten Commandments and the Law to Moses, to our Gospel reading today Judaism had derived 613 commandments. In the Gospel, the Pharisees come to Jesus with the intention of discrediting him by asking a hard question he couldn’t answer. They asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law.

Body: Jesus gives the perfect answer; the first commandment is, you shall Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The second is similar: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (He put two passages of OT, the Shamma in Duet 6:4 and Lev 19:18, and set the foundational principles of the Judeo-Christian ethic.)

By virtue of God creating us in his own image and likeness and by virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity from our baptism, we are able to Love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and in doing so, loving ourselves, with God as well. There is no better way to take care of our well-being, “loving myself,” than to Love God first because that’s when we are ready and able to love our neighbor as ourselves made in the image and likeness of God.

Conclusion: In our first reading, God declares his compassion for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the marginalized, and has a stern warning for their abusers. Many countries in the Western world, especially our country, are experiencing a great influx of people from everywhere at their borders and cities. Many are truly poor and desperate people who are rightfully hoping to find a better future—they deserve our love and support. I doubt there is anyone here today who would not be compassionate enough to help a person in need today. That’s the charity aspect of loving our neighbor. The justice aspect of loving our neighbor is not feeling false guilt or fear in talking about ending the criminal elements that are mixed in with the innocent people that enslave and traffic women and children, traffic drugs, and harm the people of the host countries and their nation-state sovereignty, and addressing the unjust systems and structures that globally exploit and mobilize vulnerable people in masses with utopian promises in the first place.

The love of God, self, and neighbor is inseparable otherwise, how could it be real love? Oh, that the world would keep the words of Jesus, the Jew, Christian, and Muslim would keep the words of Jesus in the land he lived, suffered, died, and rose again from the dead, to redeem the world, to love God and neighbors and stop the hate and the killing.

Maranatha!

Come, Lord Jesus.