Our core calling as Christians is the same today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. Regardless of our circumstances in life – and faithful followers of Jesus have lived their calling through every kind of circumstance – regardless of the political situation of one’s society, regardless of who is in power and who is out of power, regardless if one is living in a democracy or a monarchy or a tyranny or theocracy or anarchy – and faithful followers of Jesus have lived their calling through every kind of society – regardless of whether one is among the majority or the minority, whether one’s religion is being persecuted or is doing the persecuting, has been corrupted by power or is among the powerless, regardless of our circumstances of wealth or poverty, of freedom or captivity, of war or peace, of safety or peril, comfort or precarity, regardless of being among friends or among strangers or among enemies –

Followers of Jesus of every time and every age have one prime directive:

To love God with our whole selves & to love others as ourselves. (Mark 12:28-33, Matthew 22:34-40, Luke 10:25-28)

As followers of Jesus, we must let our lives be defined by this directive, and let our choices be derived from this directive. This is our core calling, which can serve as a touchstone, especially in times of great uncertainty, of upheaval, of conflict, of fear, of anger, of mistrust, where forces and personalities other than Jesus may try to define for us who we are and how we should be and how we should treat each other. This charge reminds us of who we are and helps us to know how to be and what to do.

To love God with our whole selves & love others as ourselves.

This prime directive is counter-cultural. It cuts against a lot of what the culture around us wants to tell us about who we are and how we should treat other people; it cuts against a lot of our internal culture too, our inner sense of self.

Following Jesus is counter-cultural because sin is real. (We don’t often use “the ‘s’ word” in a church such as ours because of how it has been misused to shame and belittle. But it is urgently important to take sin seriously.) There is a strong tendency within societies and individuals towards selfishness, abusiveness, scapegoating, negligence, pettiness, bitterness, vindictiveness, violence, and so on. These are symptoms of a deeper disease we call “sin.” As followers of Jesus our job always is to diagnosis this with clarity and maturity and grace, and seek healing from sin through God’s grace as manifest through Jesus.

What Jesus does is remind us that sin does not define us – we’re all very susceptible to it, we have our shadows and blindspots, and it can be distressing to see it clearly and to feel the suffering it causes – but sin does not define us. Our true selves are free of sin, in God’s love. Being true to our true selves means living like it.

So this is our prime directive, which we have to keep returning to, over and again:

Love God with our whole selves – because, through Christ, we know our whole selves belong to God, in love.

Love others as ourselves – because, through Christ, we know that they also belong to God, as we do, and that we belong to others and they belong to us, all in love.

This is no mere platitude. It is the defining challenge of our faith. It’s easy to worship Jesus. It’s something else to actually follow him.

In this world, as it is, with people as we are – broken, beautiful, blessed, brutal, sick with sin, desperate for grace – to belong like we truly do – to God, to each other – to love like we’re called to do – love God and love each other – is to open oneself to tragedy, as well as to liberating love.

To grow in love for God means to grow in our capacity to recognize, even just a little, the tragedy of humanity’s fall from God’s good purpose, our capacity for what is evil and false alongside our capacity for what is good and true. We witness our own tragedy due to sin, suffering due to sin, alongside our dignity and blessedness. We witness our own humanity in God’s eyes, and feel it with a Christ-like heart that breaks for us and embraces us.

To love another person means to risk the pain of caring about them when they are suffering, and to risk the pain of caring about them when they are cruel or foolish or negligent or destructive, when they catch others in their blind spots, when they are suffering and causing suffering due to sin-sickness. To love another person means to witness them as there are, in their full humanity, though it may be tragic – their flaws and viciousness and woundedness alongside their beauty and dignity and deepest truest need. To love another person means to have a Christ-like heart that breaks for them and embraces them.

It’s all very humbling. It is also ennobling.

Now, Jesus gives us specific guidance about where our focus should most be in our love for others. I recommend we take this guidance very seriously.

When Jesus gave his teaching about the greatest commandment, he was re-emphasizing the commandments of his ancestor Moses as told in two books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Deuteronomy – “Love God with your whole self” – and Leviticus – “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That commandment in Leviticus to love your neighbor comes as the climax of a whole series of instructions in which Moses warns against exploiting and oppressing poor folks and foreigners, and against harboring hatred toward others. (Leviticus 19:9-17)

When the Gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus teaching that the core commandment is to love God with our whole selves and to love our neighbor as ourselves, a lawyer challenges Jesus to define “neighbor,” with the hope of justifying himself. It is, after all, easy to love the people we already care about and feel comfortable with. Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan.

The lesson of the Good Samaritan is:

Your “neighbor” is whomever needs you to be their neighbor. In their time of need, who needs us to treat them like a good neighbor.

As Jesus makes clear time and again in his life, our attentions should be especially those who are being forgotten, left behind, trampled underfoot, expelled or facing expulsion from society.

Jesus meant it when he said, “That which you do to the least of these you do to me.” He modeled total identification with those who are afraid, threatened, neglected, in need, to the point of Jesus becoming himself the scapegoat for his society. That’s how he loved God with his whole self and loved others as himself

How do we live into this charge, this challenge, this opportunity in our day and age? I urge us to take a fresh look at who needs us to be good neighbors to them right now. How can we find ways of connecting, with humility and grace, and learn how we can be of service?  

Our core calling as Christians is the same today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

Remember our baptism vows, which we take when we allow God through Christ to free us from the powers of sin and set us on the path of grace:

Do you promise, by the grace of God, to be Christ’s disciple, to follow in the way of our savior, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ, as best you are able?

We can say “Yes” to this once. And our lives will be changed. But it is the practice of our faith to say “Yes” and to keep saying “Yes,” through all the changes of our lives and the changing circumstances of our times. Take courage, you’re not alone. The saints before us have shown us the way.

Thanks be to God.

You can view video of this sermon here.

Delivered Sunday, November 10, 2024 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.