23 October

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. With this answer to the lawyer’s question, Jesus sums up the 613 commandments in the Old Testament on how a person should live their life.  Sounds simple enough, right?

I think not.  The main reason I don’t think it’s so simple is because, different than a list of dos and don’ts, these two commandments are all about relationship.  Notice Jesus says that we are to love the Lord your God – not some abstract higher power, but the God who created us, who loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.  Then Jesus says love your neighbor; again, Jesus is not referring to the whole world’s population, but your neighbor – the person living next to you.  Living into these two commandments is really hard.

What about love your God?  How often do you think about your relationship with God?  Do you think of your relationship with God in the same way you think about your relationship with, say, your best friend?  I don’t mean to ask the question that we sometimes hear: “do you have a personal relationship with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”  As an Episcopalian, I always cringe when asked that question.  But the truth of the matter is: yes, I do.  I do have a very personal relationship with God.  And I would suggest we all do.  We come together every week and remind ourselves that we do; in particular, I point to the Lord’s Prayer.  Remember how it starts?  “Our Father…” Jesus didn’t teach his disciples to pray to “Oh higher power, somewhere out in the universe…” but “Our Father”.  And the rest of the prayer is about very real, tangible things that are about relationship; we pray to God to give us bread, to forgive us when we sin, just as we do our best to forgive others when they hurt us; protect us from temptation and please, please keep us from evil.  Yes, the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of praise – but it is praise for the relationship with our Creator, with our Savior and it is a prayer about living in relationship to God and one another.

Relationships are hard.  We want things done a certain way – our way.  But living in relationship means we need to open our hearts – to patience and forgiveness.  After all, don’t we want the same?  I know I do.

M.E.+