Love, part 2

 

Near the beginning of almost every service I preside at, I remind the congregation of this:

Our Lord Jesus Christ said:
The first commandment is this:
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’
The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

To which the congregation responds:
Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Christianity is not primarily about what we believe (important though that is). It is not primarily about what we do (important though that is, too). Christianity is primarily an invitation to go deeper into a mystery—the mystery of Love.

A mystery is something that is greater, in every dimension, than we can hold or grasp or contain. We are called to love with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength in the knowledge that our heart and soul and mind and strength can never fathom Love’s depths.

We will never exhaust Love, though Love will exhaust us, will bring us to the ends of ourselves again and again, and carry us beyond, into the vast unknown.

Yet the world is a scary place. And so our heart may be troubled, our soul confused, our mind restless, our strength spent—not on account of Love but on account of seeking control. And so we harden our heart, sell (seek to exchange, for something else) our soul, close our mind, conserve our strength. These actions lead to death, to one or another dimension of ourselves dying.

The mystery of Love is that death does not have the last word. The mystery of Love is resurrection. That we are given a new heart, a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone—for, in the human Jesus, God has taken for himself a heart of flesh. That our spiritually dead body is breathed-alive again with the breath of God. That our mind is surrounded, guarded, not by some defensive scaffolding but by Love itself. That our strength is renewed, like an eagle carried on the thermals.

We do not do this for ourselves. We are not even empowered to do these things. They are done for us by the very one who calls us to Hear, who calls us to life, to the life of Love.

We must gaze upon him. Contemplate him deeply. For a lifetime—and then eternity beyond.

As we do, we shall be changed.