Fairhaven UMC

Have you ever noticed how sometimes we tend to make things a little more complicated than they need to be? Yeah. We you know we want the perfect answers. We want to know exactly what we’re supposed to do, and we want a list of rules that will tell us whether we’re getting things right or not. You know, I remember when I first came into Christianity and getting to know Jesus. I wanted to be so perfect. I want I I made so many mistakes that I just didn’t want to make another one, and I kept making mistakes. But that’s okay. We’re learning. We’re learning. Sometimes we even ask questions, hoping that the answers will just make our lives a little bit easier. That’s what we see happening in today’s gospel lesson.

A lawyer comes to Jesus with a question. Now, this isn’t. This lawyer isn’t looking to help with a court case or anything like that. This is someone who he knows the Jewish law very well, and he wants to actually test Jesus. So we all know how that goes, right? So the lawyer comes to Jesus with this question, and he says, “Now.” He says, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Well, it’s a pretty straightforward question and deserves just a pretty straightforward answer. So, out of all the commandments, all the rules, all the instructions of God that He’s given us, which one matters the most? He wants to know.

And Jesus gives them an answer that is just simple enough for a child to understand, yet powerful enough to challenge every one of us daily. He says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And then Jesus adds something else, and he says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

In other words, if you want to understand what it means to live a faithful life, start here. Love God, love your neighbor. But here’s the thing: these two commandments sound simple enough until we actually try to live them out. Right? Yeah. Like loving God with all your all that we are. Well, Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart, our soul, in our mind, and that means that loving God isn’t just something that we do on Sunday mornings. That means that those are the things that, although those you know, we sing hymns and we say prayers and we listen to a sermon. Those are all good, really good things. But loving God means reaching out into every part of our lives. It affects how we treat people. It affects how we how we make decisions. You know, we go back to God. God, I’m thinking about doing this. Can you tell me if this is right thing to do? It affects how we respond when life gets difficult. It affects how what we do when nobody’s watching. You know, and it means trusting God when we don’t have all the answers. Or it means turning to God when we’re worried about what the future holds. And it means being thankful even when things aren’t going really well.

Now, none of us does this perfectly. I’m just as guilty. There are days when we get distracted. There- there are days when we forget to pray. You know, this morning, this morning for all things, right? I’m trying to hurry up and get the dogs out, take them for a walk, and the one of them lets go, urinates on the floor. I’m like, oh come on, I just can’t. You know, I’m in a hurry, and it’s just you get distracted. There’s things that distract you. You know, I didn’t yell at him. I didn’t do anything. We just went for a walk. I came back and I cleaned it up, and it was done. There are days when we become that our worries feel bigger than our faith. Lord, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. Right? God, give me the strength. But loving God isn’t about pretending that we have everything together. That’s not what loving God is about. It’s about continually turning our hearts towards the One who loves us.

And when we love God, that love begins to change how we see the people around us. So now we come to loving our neighbors. Well, Jesus doesn’t stop with loving God; he wants to continue on that, so that we understand more clearly. He says, “Love your neighbors as yourself.” Now that’s where things get interesting. Yeah, because loving God can sometimes feel comfortable. Often, like a nice warm blanket out of the dryer, you wrap around you. It’s just nice and comfortable. We can worship God, we can we can pray to God, and we can talk about God. But loving our neighbor means dealing with real people, sometimes difficult people. People who have different opinions in us, people who sometimes get on our nerves, yeah. People who need our patience, people who need our prayers—real people. Those are our neighbors. It’s easy to love our neighbors when our neighbor is someone like us, right? You know, they agree with us, they like our viewpoints, they do all the same things that we do. We even have the same favorite colors, right? Those are the easy neighbors to love. It’s easy to be kind to somebody when somebody else is kind to us. You know, say somebody says thank you, you say you’re welcome. Go on. It’s but Jesus doesn’t say loving our neighbor, love the neighbors who agree with you. Right? He says love your neighbors as yourself.

Now, and that means that we have to begin seeing people differently. The person sitting beside us in church. Yep, that’s your neighbor. The person who lives down the street. That’s your neighbor. The person who’s having a difficult day. That’s your neighbor too. The person who feels forgotten. That’s your neighbor too. How about the person who doesn’t seem to have much to offer us? You know, down on their luck. You know, not many gifts or talents, and don’t know how they fit in. That’s your neighbor too. You see, they all matter to God, and if they matter to God, then they ought to matter to us too. Sometimes that we think that we think that loving our neighbor means doing something big. We, you know, we got to save the world. We got to change the world. We got to, you know, do something really big. And we imagine that we need to solve every problem, right? Or, or make some extraordinary sacrifice and, you know, showing that we love our neighbor. But often, love begins with just a very, very ordinary thing. It’s like checking in on somebody that hasn’t been to church for a while, or maybe taking time to listen to somebody who needs to talk. It’s got a lot going on. Or offering a helping hand without expecting anything in return, or noticing a person who maybe feels left out. It’s saying a kind word when somebody needs that encouragement. You know, we may never know how much that simple act of kindness means to someone else. A phone call. A visit, a prayer, a few minutes of your time—some of those very, some of those, sometimes those are the very things that God uses to let other people know that they are not alone. You are being the hands and feet of Jesus when you do these things.

And here’s something else to remember: we don’t have to wait until we have everything figured out before we start loving people. We don’t. We don’t have to wait until we’re perfect Christians, the 2.0 versions of ourselves. We don’t have to do that. We just simply begin where we are. And oftentimes, that’s right where somebody else is too. We love the people that God has placed in our lives today. There is a difference between saying that we love somebody and actually showing that love. We know what that’s like, right? Yeah. We can say that we love God, but if we’re constantly treating people with disrespect, then maybe something isn’t right. We can talk about loving our neighbors, but if we never make the time for anyone who needs us, then something might be missing. Jesus brings these two commandments together because they belong together. Our love for God should shape how we love others.

Christ, people should see Christ in us. Think about it this way: when you show kindness to someone who is lonely. We are putting God’s love into action. Yeah, when we help someone who is struggling, we are living out our faith. And and when we choose patience instead of anger, we are reflecting the grace of God. Same grace that God has shown us to others. We may not always get it right, right? But every day is another chance to prove ourselves, to another opportunity to practice until we do get it right. And the people who have been questioning Jesus suddenly find themselves without an answer, right? Why does Jesus end this conversation this way? Because he is inviting them and us to see that he is more than someone who can answer religious questions. He is the Lord who calls us into a new way of living. He he’s the one who teaches us to love God, the one who teaches us to love our neighbor, the one who demonstrates the love through his own life, his death. And his resurrection. Jesus doesn’t simply tell us what love looks like. He shows us. He welcomes people that others reject it. He reaches out to people that others have overlooked. He shows compassion to those who are hurting. And ultimately, he gives his life for the world that God loves. That’s the love that we are called to follow.

So let me ask you something this morning: What would it look like for you to love God more fully this week? It’s a challenging question, isn’t it? Yeah. Maybe it means taking a few minutes. Each morning to pray. That’s it. Maybe it means trusting God with a worry that you’ve been carrying. And God, I give this to you. It’s better in your hands than in mine. Maybe it means being more thankful for the blessings that we sometimes take for granted. And when it looks like, and what it would look like for you? Excuse me. For you to love your neighbor more, maybe there’s someone who needs a call. Maybe there’s someone that needs forgiveness. Maybe there’s someone who could use a little encouragement. You know, so you’re strong. You can get through this. Maybe there’s someone that you’ve been avoiding because the relationship is difficult. There’s complications there. You don’t have to solve every problem today. It’s okay, and you don’t have to make every relationship perfect. It’s okay, but you can take one step towards love. One step. You can choose kindness. You can choose patience. You can choose to listen to somebody. You can choose to see someone as a person who matters to God. And perhaps that is where Jesus wants us to begin today.

Not with a complicated list of rules, and not with trying to prove how religious we are. You know, I can I can see the whole book of Matthew. No, he’s not worried about that. He just wants us to start with the simple commandments that can change our lives: love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. So here’s my conclusion. Sometimes we spend so much time trying to figure out what God wants from us that we actually overlooks the answers that Jesus has already given us. That’s what I mean by making things more complicated than they really are. Right? Love God, love your neighbor. Two simple commandments. Right? They are just simple enough that we can remember when we leave this church today. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. But they are big enough to guide us through every day of our lives. When we don’t know what to say, love. When we don’t know what to do, love. And when we are tempted to judge, what do we do? Love. Right. When someone needs our help, love. And when we wonder whether our faith is making a difference, let us look at how we are treating the people around us. Because when Jesus reminds us that loving God and loving our neighbor belong together. And may this, and may we leave this place with hearts turned towards God and hands ready to serve others. And may the love of Christ be seen in us, not only in what we say, but in how we live. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.