Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”
Pumpkins, pucks, and parades seem to define Windsor, particularly on this post-thanksgiving weekend! How they relate to the matter of love is another question. For here today love constrains us to speak of love. It might not seem all that remarkable a thing to say but 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 so, too, in the midst of all of our current confusions and uncertainties within and without the Church. “And yet the common people heard him gladly.” Can that be said of us?
Two things are extraordinary 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, partly because they are so familiar. 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. 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 the fullness and the completeness of the divine life in itself. As Aquinas remarks, “the perfection of Christian life consists in charity.” That charity begins and ends with God whose grace defines us against “the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil” as the Collect puts it, reminding us of our baptismal identity in Christ, a far, far different thing that pumpkins, pucks, and parades!
God commands us to love him. This is the first extraordinary thing. What does this mean? Does God stand in need of our love?
