I am pondering the Scriptures for this weeks Gospel reading again, Jesus is faced with a question from one of the Scribes on which is the greatest commandment. He replies as any good Jew might be expected to; " Listen Israel, The Lord your God the Lord is One, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." He goes on to add that the Second most important commandment is to love our neighbour as ourselves....
I ponder all of this after a mixed week, a week that has included conversations and meetings with a variety of people, some of whom would easily declare the others to be wrong, and they could point to Scriptures to back up their arguments. Some of the questions that would be raised would be about sexuality and gender, some about ethnicity, and some about ethical finances. We live in a complex multifaceted society, and we do have questions about right living, we want to get it right, and for many in the church that means getting it right before God.
I suppose that getting "it" right, whatever it might be is a noble aspiration, but I also think that it can become a rod with which we beat ourselves, and worse, a barrier by which we exclude others. Let me explain, as a teenager I desperately wanted to become good enough for God, I wanted to become that way but knew I was failing miserably, because I believed that the only way I could become acceptable was to get it right I felt like an abject failure, it is something I have struggled with all of my life! Many of us have been brought up through a process of education both formal and informal that blames and scolds us so much that we grow up thinking that we are basically bad. Worse still our behaviour and ability to please those around us is somehow inextricably linked in our minds with being accepted and loved, and so very often people will declare themselves unloveable (I was certainly one of those). In a sense we are doomed before we start, doomed that is unless we can begin to see ourselves and subsequently others in a different way.
In the Gospel reading the amazing revelation comes as the Scribe declares that the commandments to love God, and then others as ourselves are ".. more important than all the sacrifices and offerings that we could possibly make.” The sacrifices and offerings were "the right thing to do", but love outweighs and outstrips them somehow fulfilling the law not by declaring it irrelevant or unimportant but by showing us a "more excellent way" to quote Paul again;
What if I could speak all languages of humans and of angels? If I did not love others, I would be nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 What if I could prophesy and understand all secrets and all knowledge? And what if I had faith that moved mountains? I would be nothing, unless I loved others.
3 What if I gave away all that I owned and let myself be burned alive? I would gain nothing, unless I loved others. (1 Corinthians 13)
What if I got "it all right"? What if I managed to keep every bit of the law, what if I managed to live perfectly for a day? What if??? Of course these questions are irrelevant because I can't do it, I know I can't and striving and berating myself for failing only fill me with shame and might well make me feel angry, despairing and even bitter. I know, because I have been around that loop many times.
The picture I have used to illustrate this post is by Tim who commenting on his drawing says: "The enduring image I had was of two people wrestling and when I drew it I noticed how similar the image looked to two people embracing. I wonder if we sometimes get confused and in our wrestling with God are unaware that he is actually embracing us and perhaps there are times when it is the other way around."
Freedom comes with the growing realisation that we can't do it, I can't love God except that s/he first loved me, and that that love continues without end. It is in and through a love that is not my own that I can begin to extend myself into true loving that enables me to grow. With the acceptance that I do not need to be the source of love comes the awakening to the possibility that I am not inherently bad because I am made in the image of the one who alone is good. The one who shows us the ultimate expression of self-giving love through the cross but does not leave us there at the point of death but goes on to overcome all of the broken, unlovely and unlovingness in the world by overcoming death itself that love might be set free in resurrection power!
Sometimes I find that I shrink the impossible vastness and wonder of this by trying to contain it with words. God gave himself in Christ, and continues to give us his Spirit that we might live in him, beyond our narrow confines...
The miracle comes when although I am commanded to love, and I know that I cannot I love, that I dare to begin to believe that I am loved, and through that belief comes acceptance and growth into something more, and I find myself embraced by the God who is love, and names me worthy of love...
....and I am lost for words...
