Weekly Message  6/18/2010


Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself

I open with a reading from the Gospel of Mark 12:28-31

A scribe asked Jesus, "Which is the first commandment of all?"
Jesus answered him,   "Thou shalt love the Lord the God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.  And the second is like namely this, Thou shat love thy neighbor as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than
these.

I used to have trouble with the phrase 'love thy neighbor as thyself' because I didn't think much of myself and had a hard time loving myself. Should I treat someone else as badly as I treated myself?  In guiding His followers in the ways of love, the Rabbi Jesus opened with the imperative of self love.  Self love was a required text in Jesus' lessons.  He knew that the heart that does not see beauty in itself, lacks the capacity to recognize the inherent beauty in another.  I have learned the importance of
self love.

We are a church in need of healing and reconciliation.  We have been through so much.  The winds of resentment and self-righteousness bluster and sting our shivering hearts.  Instinctively we know that we need the intervention of peace between us all.  Our hearts need to be peaceful.  The peaceful and loving heart is an instrument of transformation.  It is time to "love our neighbors".  Jesus did not say that our neighbor was lovable or that his actions were admirable.  Jesus simply said you should love
your neighbor as yourself.

This puts me in mind of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Matthew 7:12.  We should treat all people with consideration and respect.

"O Love, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others;
open my ears that I may hear their cries;
open my heart so that they need not be without comfort.
Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,
nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.
Show me where love and hope and faith are needed,
and use me to bring them to those places.
And so open my eyes and my ears that I may this coming day
be able to do some work of peace for You.

A prayer by Alan Paton, author of Cry the Beloved Country

Let us build bridges of understanding and healing. Our faiths will help us here.  And so we study the teachings of Jesus, whose first commandment was: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ......."  A teaching on loving God can have great meaning for all of us here, regardless of our personal understanding of the divine.  (Some of us call it God; some see it as the mystery of that beyond our understanding that has something unique and precious to offer each one of us.  If God so loves each one of us, is it so
hard for us to love each other.  

Now it is time for each one of us to see with the tender eyes of the spirit, to love with a heart so filled with compassion that it eclipses the mold of all our prior understandings.  We are called to embrace a vision that believes in all possibilities.

As we have learned to trust the seasons and tides of existence, we may come to believe more deeply that the earth and God move with a greater plan than our own.  Let us see clearly that our need to be right by making another wrong has been spiritually wounding.  Friends, it is time to heal.  It is time for us to relinquish our need to be right by making others wrong. Our work remains the same.  We are one people, full of beauty, filled with light.

In the words of theologian Thomas Merton:

"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire can reach -- the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes.  If only they could see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war or hatred or cruelty or greed. "

Does this sound like loving thy neighbor as thyself?  Yes it does.

Now it is time to stop complaining about the church that we have experienced and become the church we've always dreamed of.

Blessings, Rev. Dr. Sharra