choosing love

November 13, 2022 • Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Mark 12:28-34
Rev. Alexis Lillie

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

This Difficult People clip may be particularly resonant if you live in New York or another big city. I venture to say, we’ve all encountered difficult people like this. Perhaps, we’ve even been those people from time to time – I know I have! So, most of us can identify with these behaviors in some way. But what does that have to do with our passage today, or anything church-y?

In our story today, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, and he responds that it’s a bunch of stuff having to do with love: love God, love neighbor, love yourself. But wait ... love is a command? How does that work?? Can you command someone to love someone else?

The kind of love we’re talking about here, and that is most common in the Christian scriptures, is not what we’re perhaps most used to. Many of us may associate love with feeling, with passion, and emotion. But the type of love we’re talking about here is known as “agape” love. A type of loving-kindness, a choice to show someone goodness: compassion, mercy, generosity. It’s less driven by those emotional highs and lows.

That’s why I started with Difficult People. We all have difficult people in our lives, people that we love! People where it is sometimes a choice to love them. Now I don’t want to imply that agape love is only in-action when we are choosing to love difficult people! I chose this as an entry point because it feels helpful for getting our mind around the idea of “agape” - of choosing to love.

While we may feel our relationships to the divine is at times difficult, or our “neighbors” are in fact difficult people, hopefully we’re not always having to make a hard choice to love! It’s not the only way agape shows up! There’s one more direction Jesus encourages us to choose to love. Not just God or neighbor, but ourselves. We have to look inward.

And here we may find the most “difficult people” of all. Not that we are actually difficult, but the command or practice of loving ourselves with this agape is difficult.

The way I understand what Jesus is saying here is, before we can fully make the choice to love someone else, or even an entity like God, we have to do that for ourselves. And to do that, we have to get comfortable with who we are. This is also a choice. Our love for other is a reflection of how well we love ourselves, because we can only extend to others as much agape - mercy, compassion, loving-kindness - as we extend to ourselves.

And I would say the converse is true as well - when we don’t care for others well, it is a manifestation of not caring for one’s self. Even when that may be buried deeply below the surface.

I think this is why experts and activists often suggest that problematic behavior -- like racism, or many forms of discrimination, even just judgementalism toward others -- are a reflection of unresolved business we have with our own being. We turn what we are internally uncomfortable with, outward, thinking -- subconsciously of course -- that we can avoid the need to genuinely look within. That we can deflect the need to confront what is internal to us -- some of which we may not like -- by putting that out on others.

Jesus is saying, “not so fast!” The most important command - to love God and love neighbor - hinges on loving ourselves. With an agape-type of love. In other words: choosing to love ourselves. Which implies that we may have to look at some difficult things about ourselves. And still, choose love.

Jesus knows this is work. And yet, he’s saying it’s the foundation of loving others and loving the divine presence in your life? WHY?! I can say from my own journey inward toward honest self-reflection, that it doesn’t automatically make you good at loving others, or even loving the divine. When I’ve confronted things like hostility or judgmentalism or hatred within myself, I don’t feel particularly loving -- toward myself or anyone else! At least, not at first.

But ... I do think an honest journey inward makes you good at the practice of choosing agape: choosing to practice loving-kindness, compassion, generosity. It’s imperative in fact, to choose these things. Otherwise, the uncomfortable realities within ourselves -- once we’ve looked at them -- will continue to fester and grow. We will continue to turn them outward and deflect onto others.

When we can look at internal realities, process them how they need to be processed, and choose love, we are ready for the most important commandment. I would argue at that point, we’re already practicing the most important commandment: to love the divine and love others. We connect to the divine through the connection with ourselves, and that divine connection binds us to others in love.

As we practice this -- because it is a practice -- Jesus says we are “not far from the kin-dom, the community, of God.” Doing the difficult work of loving ourselves, fosters an ability to extend agape love to all our relationships, human and divine. And this is a glimpse of life “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Amen.

Copyright (c) 2022 - Alexis Lillie
All rights reserved.

            201 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011               
212.243.5470