Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”
Love constrains us to speak of love. It seems such a commonplace thought. Yet, I wonder if we do not altogether miss the absolutely extraordinary thing about this commonplace concept. I wonder if we do not altogether fail to see how special, how precious, how extraordinary Christ’s lesson is for us here in this gospel. It goes to the heart of the matter, to the heart that was willing to be pierced and broken for you and for me, indeed, for the whole world. That heart is the heart of Christ. That love is spoken and shown in the face of controversy and debate; in short, in the midst of the hostilities and animosities of our human hearts. “And yet the common people heard him gladly.” I hope that can be said of us.
Two things are extraordinary and noteworthy here. First, God commands us to love him. Secondly, Christ unites the love of God and the love of neighbour in himself. At first glance, such things may not seem so amazing. After all, they are words which we frequently hear: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;” in short, with the whole of our being. “Hear O Israel,” says the One who is the Word of God himself.
To hear that Word is to be Israel, a people who are open to the Word of God, who are defined by that Word as a people of the Law. They come to be that people by that Word spoken in the Burning Bush, by that Word passing over them to free them from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke, by that Word delivering them from the Red Sea waters, by that Word sustaining them in the wilderness wanderings, by that Word establishing God’s will and covenant towards them in the Law. That self-same Word now proclaims that “the Lord our God is one Lord.” That unity is no mere oneness, no empty aloneness. It is fullness and the completeness of the divine life in itself. As Thomas Aquinas remarks, “the perfection of Christian life consists in charity.” That charity begins and ends with God.