Rev.
Debbie Cato
Exodus
20:17 and Matthew 22:34-40
Bethany
Presbyterian Church, Spokane, WA
September
6, 2026
It’s Woke!
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. AND, love your neighbor as yourself. This is how Jesus answered the Pharisees when they tried to test Him. We are told that an expert in the law asked the question. “Jesus, what is the greatest commandment in all the law?” They were testing Jesus.) Now I don’t know what answer they were expecting, but I am pretty sure they were not expecting the answer Jesus gave them. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. AND, love your neighbor as yourself. I can picture the pharisees walking away, just shaking their heads.
I think we tend to nod our heads in agreement with Jesus. Of course that’s the most important commandment, we say.. Love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. In fact, I bet most of us know that verse by heart. I think we tend to focus on this first part of what Jesus says is the greatest commandment in the law because it’s logical.
Of course, we love God with all that we are. I don’t think any of us who consider ourselves Christians would disagree with that. And, I would venture to say that we all believe that we, in fact, love God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul. But I’m a preacher and I have to ask, do we really?
When Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, we tend to forget that Jesus doesn’t stop at just one. Jesus puts another commandment right alongside the first. It’s as if Jesus is saying; you are not following the first, if you do not follow the second. You really can’t love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind if you do not love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God is certainly less risky than loving our neighbor as our self. It’s much easier to just follow the first commandment. But, we do not love God, if we do not love God’s people. And – we can’t pick and choose who the neighbor is, either.
Paul Carden, a Christian apologist and missionary said, “You will never look into the eyes of someone God doesn't love” I’m going to repeat this. Carden said, “You will never look into the eyes of someone God’s doesn’t love.” He says, “It’s a truth so simple, yet so profound, it could change the way we see the world: you will never…. ever look into the eyes of someone God doesn’t love. Not once. Not ever.”
Carden goes on, “Every
person you encounter: the stranger, the friend, the rival, the one you struggle
to understand — all of them are seen and cherished by God. His love is not
rationed, not conditional, not selective. It is relentless.” Sounds like what some today would call
“woke.” Love your stranger, friend,
rival, the one you struggle to understand.
Definitely a woke idea.
No wonder Jesus’ ties the first
and greatest commandment to the second.
If you don’t love those God created – your neighbors (who. by the way,
are not just those who live next door to you), then you really aren’t loving
God with all your heart, your mind, your soul.
The two are dependent on each other.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love this last month. About this passage, actually. August was a month of devastating fires that took so many people’s homes and all their possessions. The fires smoldered the hope of future plans for hundreds of families. The devastation is hard to describe, much less to wrap our minds around.
But what followed the devastation is nothing short of love.
1. I saw pictures of cases and cases and cases of water donated both during and after the fires.
2. I saw
people offer their campers/trailers to those who lost their homes – total
strangers.
3. I saw people offer their cabins/summer homes
– again, to strangers.
4. I saw
restaurants feed first responders at no cost.
5. Restaurants prepare meals for families that
have no place to cook.
6. I saw coffee shops and pubs donate all their
proceeds for recovery efforts – often in the tens of thousands of dollars.
7. I saw apartment complexes offer apartments to
families.
8. I saw piles of school supplies and backpacks
donated for the children who lost their homes during the fire.
9. I saw dozens and dozens of volunteers at a
donation site. There were piles and
piles of pillows and blankets and food.
One of the volunteers told me they had never seen anything like that.
I could go on and on. I’m sure you also saw demonstrations of “loving your neighbor” over the last month. The month of devastation.
It was not just Christians loving their neighbors and being generous. It wasn’t just Christians that were following what Jesus calls the greatest commandments. I know that several Muslim-owned restaurants were and I think, still are, cooking and feeding people for free. I know the refugee community – struggling financially themselves, made significant donations of food, clothing, and household goods. I know a Buddhist group that collected school supplies. TV stations, banks, and many businesses stepped up and made significant donations for those affected by the wildfires. And it keeps coming.
I’m sure many of the generous people helping are Christians. After all, this commandment is for us. This call to love our neighbor as ourselves. But not everyone helping, not everyone being generous considers themselves Christians. People from all cultures, all backgrounds, all religious affiliations – or honestly, no religious affiliations have stepped up.
When the Pharisee’s tried to test Jesus by asking Him what the greatest commandment in the law was, there were a lot of laws to choose from. Laws like the ten commandments, the laws about cleanliness, sacrifices, worship. But Jesus knew what was in the law that was the most important. The most God-like. The greatest. Jesus knew the Pharisee’s would not like the answer. The answer didn’t fit their mentality; their idea of what was important. But, Jesus answered the Pharisees anyway and he shook them to their core. Well, there isn’t just one, Jesus said. The greatest of all the laws is to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. But the second greatest commandment, the commandment that goes right along with the first is to love your neighbor as yourself.
As I’ve been thinking about all the acts of love; all the acts of kindness that have followed the devastating fires, I’ve realized that this is the way it’s supposed to be. All the time. We are supposed to love our neighbor. We are supposed to help those in need; those without; those struggling.
Even when
there isn’t a disaster. Or maybe,
especially when there’s no disaster. These
are our neighbors – not just the ones that live next door; not just the ones
that look and act like us; but all people are our neighbors. God expects us to love everyone that He
loves. All the time.
I’ve realized that we are supposed to give out of our abundance all the time. The fires were a wake-up call for me. I realized how much abundance I actually have. This is a small example but a couple mornings into the fire, I was making my bed. Now, I love a lot of pillows on my bed. I was putting all the pillows back on my bed and I just sat down. I realized that I did not need 6 bed pillows on my bed. Yes. I loved how they looked. I loved how full and fluffy they made my bed look. But there were people who did not have a single pillow to sleep on and I had six. There were children without a pillow to lay their head on at night.
I put four of those bed pillows in a bag and immediately started to look for all my extra blankets. Then I realized that I also had extra dishes. I started packing and couldn’t stop all day.
I’m not telling you this to get an ovation. I didn’t need all that extra stuff. Period. And honestly, it should not have taken devastating fires for me to figure that out. Someone needed the things that I wasn’t even using. I took those 4 pillows off my bed every night to go to sleep. I had never needed them.
All this has caused me to do a lot of thinking. About myself, about us Christians, about this “love your neighbor stuff.” How might the world be better, if we, as a community of faith truly lived out those commandments? What would it look like to regularly show love for our neighbor? Maybe not only people just like us who desperately need our help during a disaster, but maybe those that are not like us; that don’t live close by; that may believe or act differently than we do. What would it look like to share out of our abundance all the time? To not keep more than we need. To care when people are hurting. When people are struggling. When people are just trying to get by the best they can? What would happen if we were always as generous as we have seen people be over the last few weeks? What would it look like if it didn’t take a disaster to really care about one another? To really love one another?
Thomas Merton, who was a well-respected American Trappist monk, theologian, mystic, poet, and social activist said: “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business, and in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy.” Another woke idea!
This church, Bethany Presbyterian Church in Spokane, WA is going to have so many opportunities to love those that God loves. So many opportunities to embrace what Jesus taught.
You will be housing people from different cultures, with different lifestyles, and ideas that are different than your own. Think of all you’ll be able to learn! Think of the opportunities to expand your understanding of God’s humanity! You’ll have the opportunity to share your space with people that may have different worship styles than you do; different ideas about worship. Think of the opportunities you’ll have to expand your understanding of what worshiping God looks like! Your space may be used in ways you haven’t imagined yet. You will have the opportunity to be accepting of differences and enrich your own appreciation of what God makes possible. You are breaking ground and beginning to construct new possibilities and new ways of “loving your neighbor” in exciting ways. The whole Presbytery is so excited for what this church is doing. For what you say you are about. You will be able to stop just saying you are inclusive, to really being inclusive – even if it stretches you out of your comfort zone. God is presenting you with unknown possibilities. It will be up to you to live into it. To love without judgement, to put your own preconceived ideas aside and be open to the richness that the lives of those you house will bring into your own lives; into this congregation. You have the opportunity to be completely woke!
This commandment – this loving your neighbor thing, is more about loving humanity than it is a discussion about who is my neighbor. It’s about loving those that God loves.
When all is said and done, the only thing that will truly have mattered is this: Did we love? Did. We. Love? (Jamie Barone)
I’m going to close with a poem I saw on Monday. It fits so well with what Jesus is asking of us when he said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. AND, Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s called “Loving Instead of Judging” by Ullie Kaye. It goes like this:
Loving
instead of judging
looks like bringing food
instead of wondering why they can’t afford it.
looks like assuming the
alcoholic is drowning sadness out
instead of assuming they
are enjoying the swim.
looks like bandaging up
someone else’s wounds
instead of asking why they
let themselves get hurt again.
instead of gunfire.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment