LOVE IS A CHOICE

(Preached on Sunday, October 23, 2005)

He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”                              -Matthew 22:37

 

Kenneth W. Morgan recounts an amazing story of love in action from his time in Syria some years ago in his book Reaching for the Moon.

“Once in Damascus, years ago, while strolling on a street called Straight — wondering whether it is truly the most ancient street in the world that has served continuously as a marketplace — I watched as a man who was riding slowly through the crowd on a bicycle with a basket of oranges precariously balanced on the handlebars was bumped by a porter so bent with a heavy burden that he had not seen him.  The burden dropped, the oranges were scattered, and a bitter altercation broke out between the two men.  After an angry exchange of shouted insults, as the bicyclist moved toward the porter with a clenched fist, a tattered little man slipped from the crowd, took the raised fist in his hand, and kissed it.  A murmur of approval ran through the watchers, the antagonists relaxed, then people began picking up oranges and the little man drifted away.  I have remembered that as a caring act, an act of devotion by a man who might have been a Syrian Muslim, a Syrian Jew, or a Syrian Christian.  My reaction some time later to the episode on the street called Straight was regret that I wasn’t enough of a Christian to have thought of kissing the fist myself.”

 

Our gospel reading this morning is one of those really difficult passages for any pastor to preach on.  It is so difficult, because we hear it and we all, automatically, without even thinking about it, agree with it.

I guarantee that many of you, as you listened to me read this passage this morning, thought something like: “Oh, yes, that one!  That’s a good thing.  I agree.  We should do that.”

Which means about as much as saying to an acquaintance you happen to meet in the shopping mall, “Let’s have lunch together sometime.”

We’ve all been there and it doesn’t happen.  At least it doesn’t happen unless somebody says, “When?  Let’s make a specific date right now.”

It takes effort.  It takes intentionality to build a family, to build friendships.

 

It takes intentionality to love.

Love doesn’t just happen all by itself.

How many of us would have thought to kiss that fist?

Love is not an emotion we can command, even in ourselves.

So what is Jesus doing, suggesting that the greatest commandment is to love God, and that there is a second commandment just like it, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves?

If you cannot enforce love, if you cannot command love,what is he commanding?

 

First, Jesus is not offering a checklist for our behavior, but rather he is suggesting to us a world view.

How do we see ourselves, others, and God in this wild ride we call life?

Jesus reminds us that the basics are found in love.

By his simple statements in response to this antagonistic questioner he is cutting through all the superficial stuff religion so often throws over life to the very crux of the matter: Love.  Love of God.  Love for those around us.  Love is what counts.

 

Religion has a tendency to deteriorate into legalistic moralism.  Pious people tend to presume that strength of character and moral uprightness are the goals of faith and life.  Certainly they are admirable, and obedience to God is a high value. 

But there is something about love that stands just above them.

Legalistic moralism tends to deal with what people should not do. 

Love deals with what we should do. 

Legalism is on the defensive, hiding behind a shield and barrier. 

Love is on the front foot, challenging the situations that divide and maim and abuse our fellow human beings.

 

Jesus was all about love.

He understood that love was behind Moses; the ten commandments were given so that we might better love God and those around us.

Love was also behind the grief and anger, and the glorious visionary hopes, of the greatest prophets.

If you like, you can call Jesus an arch conservative: He was intent on conserving the very core of Biblical religion.

Or if you prefer, you can call Jesus a radical: He was intent on driving back to the very roots of Biblical faith and practice.

Either way, he was all about love.

Not the sentimental stuff, like being “nice” people.

But the costly, self-giving love which flows from the heart of God.

Love God.  Love your neighbor.

 

Jesus understood that the two commands are really one and the same — they cannot be separated.  You cannot love God without loving what God loves and what God loves is everything around you: all the Creation. 

In truth, I believe that by neighbor, Jesus did not just mean other people, but every living thing around us: all the plants, animals, fish and birds.

And you cannot love all this life, without loving the Creator of it all, which is God.  For as you love the world around you, the people and all the other creatures, you show respect for life, and therefore show respect for God, the source of it all.

 

What Jesus wants us to see is that the “law of love” calls us to that kind of life which makes society not merely bearable, but of superior quality.

He does not want us merely to tolerate one another like factions in a neighborhood who do no harm to each other, but who also ignore each other.  Jesus wants our love to be active — the second mile, the other cheek, the cloak as well as the coat.

In other words, loving others entails sacrifice.

That is another reason why it is one and the same as loving God.  Because the way we love God is to put God first in our lives and therefore the way we love others is to put our own pleasure to one side.

Sometimes we can love other people and at the same time please ourselves, but more often we cannot.

Make no bones about it: love demands a price.

It did for Jesus, and it does for us.

 

In Ernest Gordon’s book To End All Wars there is a story told that breathes with this divine perspective.

It is the true tale of what took place in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp made famous by the movie The Bridge On the River Kwai.  The camp stood at the end of the Bataan death march that brought Allied soldiers deep into the jungles of Asia.  Few would survive, and everyone knew it.  In order to make the best of a terrible situation they teamed up in pairs, each watching out for a buddy.

One prisoner was a strapping six-foot-three fellow built like a tower of iron.  If any could come out of this alive, all felt he would.  That was before his buddy got malaria.  The smaller fellow was much weaker, and very likely to die.  Their captors did not want to deal with sickness, so anyone who was unable to work was confined in a “hot house” until he succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration, and the collapse of his bodily systems.

The sick man was locked into a hothouse and left to die.  Surprisingly, he did not die, because every mealtime his strong buddy went out to him, under curses and threats from the guards, and shared his meager rations.  Every night, his strong buddy sneaked from the prison barracks, braved the watchful eyes above that held guns of death, and brought his own slim blanket to cover the fevered convulsions of the sick man.

At the end of two weeks the sick man astounded the guards by recovering well enough to be able to return to work.