Sermon - Trinity XVIII 2021 - Matthew 22:34-46

Thou Shalt Love the Lord Thy God, Maurice Schnell, 1830-1902

Who do you love and how do you choose who to love? Most Americans don’t have arranged marriages, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we choose our spouses more or less. Typically we choose who to be friends with, we choose those we will love. I would guess most of the time we choose those people based upon a level of reciprocity: I scratch your back, you scratch mine. 

Usually we don’t choose to love others who don’t give us something in return for our love. I know you might say we don’t choose our family, those are just given, and so we don’t have much choice in loving them. But it happens all the time in families where parents choose not to love their kids, or kids become estranged from their parents, or siblings have terrible feuds and never interact. Even many families choose not to love each other if they don’t get something out of it.

The Lord, however, is different. “The LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.” What a profoundly humbling thought! God loves His people; He loves us, above all the peoples in the world, He loves us! He chose us to be His people. Everything and everyone belongs to God, He is Lord of lords and King of kings, yet He chose us and loves us. Even knowing all of our faults and failures, knowing we don’t have anything to offer Him in return, He still chose us from among all the peoples in the world!

How does the Lord love us? Think of all the things that God does for us in love. He’s sanctified and made us holy in Christ Jesus. He’s called us, who call upon the name of the Lord, to be saints together. He showers us with the grace given to us in Christ Jesus. He enriches us with all speech and knowledge so that we’re not lacking in any gift. He sustains us to the end, to the goal of our lives, guiltless because He’s faithful and has forgiven all our misdeeds! The Lord loves us by sending us the Son, and so we love the Lord and one another.

So if we were to choose whom to love, it should be painfully obvious that we should choose to love the Lord! “What does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?” Or as Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

Even here when we do what God requires of us, it’s actually more beneficial to us than to God! It benefits us when we keep God’s commandments because God’s commandments are for our good! This is how great and powerful God’s love is for us, that even when we’re doing something it’s still God loving us and taking care of us. 

This is how God’s law works; we don’t perform God’s law in order to earn God’s love and favor, but we keep God’s law because He first loved us, and we in turn love Him, and when we keep His law we benefit. When we fear, love, and trust in God above all things, we are filled with peace and calmness of heart in spite of many troubles. Though the devil and death may rage against us, God fills our hearts with joy and gladness.

Since it’s a good and blessed thing for us to love God and keep His commandments, let’s take some time to ponder what it means to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul. This isn’t just a way of saying that we should love God with everything we have, if that’s what God meant He would’ve said that instead, rather these are different aspects of what it means to love God.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart. The heart is the seat of our affections and emotions. I know Germans and  Lutherans have a reputation of being stoic, not showing emotions, especially in regards to our faith. But that’s a bad reputation. God desires us to love Him with our hearts! When you read the meaning to the second article of the creed, that Jesus loves you so immensely to have died for you, you should smile and maybe even have tears in your eyes! When you’re absolved, you should feel lighter as if a burden has been lifted from your soul; having your guilt taken away should make you feel free! We should get excited about God’s Word and learn to feel zeal enough about it that we talk about it with others. We get excited and talk about the sports’ scores, the grandkids, the garden, and restaurants, but our heart belongs to God and should find its greatest enthusiasm in Him.

Love the Lord your God with all our soul. Your soul is who you are, your identity, at the deepest level. Your soul is your life lived, your very existence. That’s all very ethereal, I know, so let’s bring it down to earth. We love the Lord our God by making and embracing our identity as Christian. We like to think of ourselves as Americans. We think of ourselves as our ethnicity: Irish or German or Norwegian; our skin color: pink, brown, or any color in-between. We’re old or young, man or woman, married or single, Iowa or Iowa State. Those are all fine and parts of who we are, but more than anything we are Christians, children of God, people loved by God, baptized believers. This identity as a Christian means that our whole lives and being is centered in who we are as God’s people.

Love the Lord your God with all your mind. The mind is the seat of knowledge and the part of a person which is always active, even when we’re sleeping. We love God by learning about Him, by reading and listening to His Word. We ponder God and His Word in our minds, ruminating upon the Lord’s handiwork in our lives every day. Even when working on seemingly non-religious things, our mind should be shaped by God’s Word such that when we’re changing diapers, driving the car, cooking supper, taking out the trash, doing math homework, whatever it may be, our mind is examining everything through the lens of God’s Word. Even in our daydreams let God rule over our minds.

When we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, it is good for us. It means that God is ruling those aspects of our lives, and when Satan enters in God is already there to protect and preserve us. Should our heart be afflicted with despair or pride, God is there to give us hope and humility. Should our soul be tormented, God is there to assure us that we are His children. Should our mind be confused with foolish and perverse thoughts, God is there to clarify us with the truth of the Gospel.

When we love God with our heart, soul, and mind, we become formed after God’s image and so love others like God loves us. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Instead of choosing to love others only if they have something to give us in return, God’s love gives us the strength to love others even when the only thing they have to offer us is scorn and contempt. Even when we disagree, especially about things we believe very passionately, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.” Whether democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, contemporary or traditional, pro-mask or anti-mask, pro-vaxx or anti-vaxx, covid-crazy or a conspiracy theorist, it doesn’t matter the label, Jesus tells us to love one another as if we are loving ourselves. Name calling, gossiping, slandering, talking behind backs, scowling, avoiding one another, being unnecessarily harsh, these are all common behaviors today which aren’t conducive to love.

Have the arguments, get it out in the open, talk about it, but do it with love and compassion. Don’t end the argument by stomping away in a huff, but end the argument before it gets too heated. You can argue about it another day if it’s that important. But remember that God chose us, in spite of our flaws, and still went to the cross for us. If God loves us so greatly, then let us learn to love God and to love our neighbor. Remember, God’s love means that you will spend eternity in paradise with Him, and with each other, so let’s be filled with His love today.