Services every Sunday at 7:00 P.M.
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Services every Sunday at 7:00 P.M.
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" A Life Long Journey - Love" Mark 12:28-34 2/15/09 This has been a busy time in the love world this week. We celebrated Valentine's day yesterday as friends, lovers, and families went out to dinner. I have a friend who works in a flower shop and she says this is the busiest holiday of the year. Everyone wants roses, roses, roses. There also was another happening across the country this past week as same sex couples went to city courthouses to apply for marriage licenses they knew they wouldn't get. But they wanted to show that our love as glbt people is just as real and deserves the same rights under the law as heterosexual relationships. Their love demonstration was a matter of seeking justice. So it seemed appropriate to have tonight's sermon focus on the subject of love. But really it is the subject of relationships. Our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with our God. We heard read this evening the scripture from Mark containing the two great commandments: 28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" 29 Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' 31The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." Love not only makes the world go round as one song points out, but it is at center of our spiritual life. Love is the foundation, love is the root, love is the core of what makes for a healthy relationship with ourselves, God, and others. I would suggest that loving ourselves is the beginning of being able to love another person. Until we are able to respect ourselves, until we are able to care for ourselves, until we are able to see the good, beautiful person we are -- it is difficult, at best, to show someone else the respect, care, and value they deserve as one of God's good, beautiful creations. How are you doing in the loving-yourself department tonight? Do you value the person you are and who you are becoming? Can you take care of yourself in healthy ways that show how important you are? Do you experience, know in you heart, body, mind, and spirit how much God loves you? That God has chosen to make a home in you? Unfortunately many of us have received negative messages from our families, society, or even churches we grew up in that we were not of value, that we somehow had to change to become God's child, that we do something or be something that would give us value. I would suggest that developing healthy self-love is a life long journey that begins with knowledge of God's love for us. A love that does not change when we make mistakes, a love that is always reaching out to us to help us become all that God desires us to be. A love that says we don't have to measure up, we already are enough just by being who God created us to be. Let that sink in this evening, let that touch the parts of you that might not feel worthy or of value, let the presence of God's love warm for your heart and soul and mind and body. Each one of us here is precious in God's eyes. God loves us. The second part of the commandment says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled offers this definition of love: “Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another's spiritual growth." Now imagine what are relationships would look like if we saw them as ways to nurture our own or someone else's spiritual growth. Remember Paul’s description of love in I Corinthians 13: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. When we are living love as Paul describes it we are nurturing our own and the other person's spiritual growth. As we continue to learn forgiveness, as we accept grace, as learn to celebrate the truth and what is right and good we walk in love's way. Each day of our journey is the opportunity to practice love. Yes we make mistakes. Yes there will be days that we don't feel much like loving, especially that person who comes to our mind that we don't like. But love is our way of being in the world. It's the way we show others that we are a child of the Creator. Love is the way we put our words into action. Love is the way that we put flesh on our beliefs, our faith. It is not always easy, but it is the way we are called to be as God's people. Next week we'll look at the rest of this commandment and the ways we are to love God with our whole being. But for this week's homework let's work on practicing how we accept God's love each day, how we learn more fully to love ourselves, and how we share the love of God with those whom we meet on our journey. It is a lifelong journey of love. |
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