Decide to Love

All Saints; November 5, 2006

Mark 12:28-34

Of all the many wonderful issues in this fascinating story, the one that captures my attention is the assumption that you and I can be commanded to love. I hope it captures my attention because it is the issue the Holy Spirit wants me to focus on with you today. You understand the issue I am raising, I’m sure: these two statements are called “commandments” and they certainly take that form; the one who hears the commandment is ordered to love. “You shall love the Lord your God with your entire being,” which is from Deuteronomy, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is from Leviticus. Jesus assumes and his Jewish background assumes that you and I can be commanded to love.

That certainly does not fit with our typical notion of love, does it? Why do you fall in love with someone? The person you are married to, or dating, or someone you felt that way about in the past: the feelings just happen, don’t they? Love as it is portrayed in our movies and television shows is a matter of chemistry, not commandment. It is amazing that the Bible should have commanded us to love, and that Jesus should repeat the commandment.

“I just don’t feel very religious” is the answer to the commandment to love God; “my neighbor is a jerk” is the answer to the commandment to love neighbor. Here we enter the strange world of the Bible, in which loving someone has very little to do with feelings. Witness the work of Jesus, who claimed that he came to us out of love for us – when he had never even met us yet! And Jesus claimed that his sacrificial death on the Cross was an act of love for human beings, who certainly have not been particularly loveable, from his point of view!

In the strange world of the Bible, you and I have the power to decide to love. Regardless of how religious I feel, regardless of your feelings about that idiot whose dog poops in your yard, we can decide to love. And Jesus says to make that decision: to love God and to love neighbor.

Opportunities to make that decision come along from time to time and in a variety of forms. When you join a church, when you present a child for baptism, when you are ordained as an officer in the church, you state your decision to love God. You decide that your whole strength will be dedicated to serving God, your whole heart will be dedicated to knowing God, your whole soul will be dedicated to obeying God and your whole mind will be dedicated to praising God. That is, unless you have a golf date or something else better to do, right?

You and I are commanded to love God, even if we don’t feel very religious. We are commanded to love neighbor, even though in the mind of Jesus, “neighbor” means anyone we share the planet with, including Iraqis, immigrants, that political candidate you despise, and the person who made your life so miserable the last place you worked. Jesus tells the scribe, “Love God and love your neighbor” and he answers, “Yes, that is more important than anything else.”

Anyway, followers of Jesus, decide to love and, as Jesus puts it, you will be near the kingdom of God. I feel moved to tell you one story about a decision I made; I’ll add some thoughts about what it means, but perhaps as you think about it and apply it to your own life, you will have some ideas too. And I hope that I am telling you this story because the Holy Spirit wants me to.

All my life my feelings about God and my life in the Church have been conflicted. I remember a particular form that conflict took in my early twenties. In one of my college classes we read a novel in which the author is critical of those who do things out of habit, without following their inner, creative desires (Julio Cortázar, Rayuela). On the evening of Homecoming Weekend, while students were gathered around the bonfire in the middle of the Green, I stood apart, staring at the fire. At that point in my life I didn’t think I believed in God anymore, and most Sunday mornings I spent at church feeling upset and angry – upset that I didn’t feel what the others around me appeared to be feeling and angry at what the minister was saying. So that Friday evening I stared into the fire and asked myself if I should just walk away from it. If I stayed in the Church, feeling as I did at the time, would I not be staying simply out of habit?

I decided that I was not sure, but if it was only habit, it was a good habit. Christianity made as much sense to me as atheism did; I could not see any rational reason to become an atheist. And the Christian Church was home, the place where I had always been welcomed, the place where people cared about me. So even if I didn’t feel like being there, I decided to stay.

Did God sneak away, as it were, into another room that autumn of my college years, so I could work this out on my own, quietly? That could be. It also seems to me that I realized that I should not abandon something that had always been wholesome and true simply because of the feelings of a few weeks or months – and now, at fifty, it amazes me that I could have seen that at twenty-one. Compare my story to your own, and think about what it might mean; I hope you find encouragement in it. At least it reminds us that God has given us the power to decide and that Jesus wants us to decide for God and to decide for neighbor.

How many times over the years did Harriet Pullan and Jim Montgomery have to decide for God and for neighbor? They are the saints of our family of faith we remember today. They could have drifted away or made promises and then failed to keep them. They could have joined the church and then not participated, and they could have lived selfish lives, refusing to love their neighbors. Between the grace of the Holy Spirit and their own wills, they decided to love.

Often I remind myself that if I decide to love God and love neighbor, it is because Jesus showed me the way. I look at the Cross and remember the love of God; I come to the Lord’s Table and remember the love of God; I think about the innumerable ways God has blessed me, above all by the fascinating, interesting and caring people of the Church of Jesus Christ, and I remember the love of God.

Thank you, our Creator, for deciding to love us. Give us grace to love you and our neighbors. In Jesus Christ; amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa