Sermon Surmises

I've been trying to work out my sermon for Sunday and, like everything else, I get overwhelmed by the many possibilities. But it's a good overwhelmed. There is so much good stuff in the scripture that I can't decide where God's leading me through it. One of the things I learned in my storytelling workshop is that I must decide on the M.I.T. -- the most important thing -- to guide my storytelling. But it's also true that sometimes, as you tell stories, the stories proclaim their own M.I.T. My job is to listen for both -- both my MIT and my story's MIT -- sensing how to focus in on only one MIT.

Sunday's scripture is from Matthew 22:34-46 (though I'm stopping at 40). 34When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

My church's stewardship emphasis this year is on BELONGING and so this week I'm hoping to focus on the M.I.T. that we belong to one another. My research has led me to the understanding that in 1st century Mediterranean culture, to Love was an action rather than an emotion. Further, the concept that one must love one's neighbor as one's self was not the psychological appeal that we must love ourselves (thanks, Sarah Dylan, for that one) but rather the reminder that we must love others as we love our own family members. I serve a retirement congregation where most of the members were raised in the Depression. They know what it means to hoard just in case. And always in the back of their mind, there is the hope that when they die they will have something left over to leave for their families. (and because of their frugality, they will most likely have more than anyone would dare believe!) This hope that there will be something leftover, however, doesn't seem to be what Jesus was talking about. Rather, I think more about the way that we try desperately to care for our family members, that they may have more than us and better than us.

A few weeks ago I was talking with my mother about generosity. She's a very generous person and has willingly given anything she has to help someone else. But she mentioned that it can be quite frustrating when no one pays back what she has lended them. Immediately I remembered all of the many dollars I could possibly owe her for all of the generosity she has offered -- from dinners out when we come to visit to a place for my husband to stay while he's been in school. I made mention of this and she immediately said -- oh no, not you! I wanted to give these things to you! Besides, when I am old, I expect you to care for me! Her attitude toward me, however, is exactly the attitude we are to have toward our neighbor. Jesus wants us to bend over backward for our neighbor -- giving them exactly what we would give our beloved son or daughter. And why? because we belong to each other.

To love God, we must love our neighbor, tangibly. We are not just to have that Christian emotional love in our hearts that says, "I love you but I don't like what you do." Rather, we are to love them with our actions. And who is our neighbor? it's everybody. It's the person living next door that I've never had over for coffee. It's the cashier at Publix that has had a horrible day. It's the teenager that plans to drop out of school this year because they just don't care. It's the family that abandoned their child because they couldn't feed her. It's the village living in poverty and oppression in a far off country. It's the soldier fighting because he was taught to hate from the time he was a boy. We could spend our whole lives trying to love our neighbor as ourselves, working to make sure that their needs were taken care of as much as ours were. It's intense, tough love.

When you're on the recipient end of being the neighbor, you understand the correlation to God. When your needs are met by someone unexpectedly, you can't help but believe that God loves you so incredibly much. So give so that someone else may know love.

This is my direction for Sunday. I'll tell stories to communicate all of this. And it sounds as if my M.I.T. is a bit more than just "we belong to each other," but rather something more along the lines of how acting on our neighbor's behalf with the actions we reserve for our own family is, indeed, loving God with all of our hearts. I wonder how that will translate?