At Clericus this week we took a moment to discuss today’s Gospel and the leader of the study asked one question: “What word from the Gospel jumps out at you?” We then read 3 different translations - The New Revised Standard Version (the one we read this morning), The First Nations New Testament, and the Message (a paraphrased version of scripture). For me, regardless of the translation, the word was the same: yourself.
There are some things Jesus says that are so familiar to us that we can recite them off of the top of our head. In fact, they are so familiar they lose their meaning and we stop paying attention to the depth of what Jesus is saying: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."
Then: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
We've heard those words so many times that they can almost sound like a nice little summary of Christianity. Love God. Love your neighbour.
Simple enough. Its meaning even gets further watered down by translating it as the golden rule “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” Except, of course, it isn't simple at all. Its meaning is much, much more powerful than the Golden Rule because Jesus isn't talking about a little bit of love. He says, love God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind. In other words, with the fullness of your being and not just on Sunday morning. Not just when it’s convenient and things are going well, not just when you’re feeling ‘religious’, but with your whole self. All of the time. With all of your parts: Your mind. Your heart. Your soul. Your body. With everything you are - the fullness of your being.
Then Jesus says something that’s equally important: Love your neighbour as yourself. For me, those words are the loaded part of this passage; "as yourself."
Jesus assumes something that we sometimes overlook. He assumes that we love ourselves, and I'm not sure this is really the case.
I think that, for many of us, loving ourselves can be one of the hardest things we ever learn to do. We can be remarkably good at identifying our own shortcomings. We know the things about ourselves that we don't like. The things we wish were different. The things we wish we had done differently. We know all of our faults and foibles. The things we said that we wish we could take back. The ways we have failed. The ways we've disappointed ourselves.
Then, of course, there is the money-making culture we live in which seems to have discovered that our insecurity is incredibly profitable. Think about how much of our economy depends upon convincing us that we are somehow not quite good enough and if you only bought this you could be better: You're too heavy. You're not pretty enough. You're getting old - you can look younger! Your skin isn't right. Your hair isn't right. Your teeth aren't right. You need to look fitter - you need a six pack or you can get rid of that dangling skin under your arm. You need to look different than how you look now. If you don't like the way you look, well good news! Fortunately, there is an entire industry waiting to help you fix it. Exercise apps, fitness machines, makeup, clothing, medicines (like Ozempic), Botox and plastic surgery, and the list goes on, and on, and on. You get my point.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with taking care of ourselves. There is nothing wrong with medicine taken when needed, or exercise, or wanting to feel good about ourselves. But there is a difference between caring for ourselves and being persuaded that we need to become somebody else before we are worthy of love. I think we need to be particularly careful about that trap because there are billions of dollars to be made by convincing us that there is something wrong with us.
I know something about that myself. I find myself falling into those traps of insecurity and self-judgement all of the time. I am not exactly a great fan of my body. I have spent most of my life wanting it to be something it isn't. I love playing sports that I'm really much too small to play (like football)—which has occasionally resulted in broken bones and a whole lot of frustration when I’m simply dominated by bigger athletes. I would also really appreciate the ability to sweat normally. It turns out that when your body doesn't sweat very much, it’s hard to compete at a high level on hot days. Quite frankly, I wouldn't mind having hair. Not that it would make me a better athlete but well, just because.
There are lots of things about myself that I could make into a list of complaints. Maybe you could make your own list, but here's the thing: Jesus doesn't say; “love your neighbour once you've finally learned to love yourself”. He simply says; “love your neighbour as yourself”. Perhaps that means we need to take seriously the idea that learning to love ourselves is part of learning how to follow Jesus.
Now, I'm not talking about ego. In fact, I think ego and genuine self-love are almost opposites. Ego says: Look at me. Ego needs to be admired. Ego needs to be right. Ego needs to win. Ego needs other people to tell us that we are important. Ironically, I believe there’s a whole lot of insecurity underneath a lot of that bravado.
Real self-love is quieter. Humbler. Real self-love says; “I am enough”.
Not because I am perfect and not because I have accomplished everything. Not because I look a certain way. Not because everybody approves of me. But because I am a beloved child of God, and that is a very different thing. It is the difference between thinking; "I am wonderful," and being able to say; "I am a wonderfully imperfect human being —and God loves me anyway."
This is where the first part of Jesus' commandment becomes so important. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." If I am going to love God with the fullness of who I am, then I first have to be willing to receive and accept the truth about who I am. The truth is that I am not perfect and neither are you. None of us are. But our imperfections do not cancel out our belovedness.
In fact, one of the great themes running throughout the Christian gospel is that God doesn't wait for us to become perfect before loving us. God loves us now. God loves the person we are, not the person we think we should have become. Not the person we imagine everyone else thinks we should be. Not the person we hope to become someday. God loves Us. Right now. Right here.
This is why Jesus' second commandment is so important and in fact, is necessary to fulfill the first.
"Love your neighbour as yourself."
We often hear this line as “be nice to other people. It’s nice to be nice. Be kind. It’s good to be kind.”
That is superficial politeness. Jesus is calling us to be something much deeper. He is asking us to recognize the dignity and worth of another human being in the same way that we recognize and perhaps even demand it for ourselves. Let me put it this way - even though we may find it hard to love ourselves, I expect that we all do our utmost to hold ourselves up with dignity and respect. That is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about when he is saying ‘love your neighbours’ and in fact, even when he says in Matthew 5:43 ‘love your enemies’ he is saying “give everyone the dignity and respect you’d expect to be given to you.”
I know that is not always easy, because sometimes it is even hard to feel like we deserve dignity and respect - the love Jesus talks about. So let me offer you another perspective. It comes to me from St. Paul’s letter actually, as he says; “But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” We will share with you our own selves. Powerful stuff.
Think about the people you love most deeply. A child. A spouse. A partner. A close friend. Someone you would do almost anything for. When they are struggling, you don't say; "Well, you made your bed. Now lie in it." You don't say; "You aren't good enough." You don't look at their failures and decide that they are no longer worthy of love.
You see the whole person. You see their strengths and their weaknesses. You know their faults. You know their history. You love them anyway. You share in their pain and suffering. You share with them “your whole selves.” I’m reminded of that saying, I’m not sure where it originally came from, that states: “You are only as happy as your saddest child.” That’s the kind of love Jesus is talking about. The kind of love Paul refers to, and I think that gives us a better contemporary way of hearing the command. Love your neighbour with the same unconditional, forgiving, self-giving love with which you love the people closest to you. Honour everyone with dignity and worth.
Our Gospel doesn’t end there though so I’d like to speak briefly to that rather strange little exchange at the end of today's passage about David because at first, it seems like Jesus has suddenly changed the subject. He's been talking about love, and suddenly we're talking about King David and the Messiah but Jesus is actually still dealing with the same fundamental issue. The religious leaders think they understand exactly who the Messiah is - the Messiah is "David's son." In other words, they have put God into a category they understand.
They know, or expect that the Messiah will be a powerful king, the descendant of David. Someone who will restore Israel's greatness. Someone who will fit their expectations of what power and importance look like. Then Jesus quotes Psalm 110: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand.'" Essentially he asks them: If the Messiah is merely David's son, why does David call him "Lord"?
Jesus is challenging their assumptions about identity, status and power. I think that connects rather beautifully with everything that comes before it because Jesus is constantly challenging us to stop measuring human worth according to the world's categories. Who is powerful? Who is successful? Who is beautiful? Who is important? Who belongs? Who is worthy? The gospel keeps turning those categories upside down.
My point is that God's measure of a person isn't our measure. God doesn't love the beautiful more than the ordinary (beauty is totally subjective anyway). God doesn't love the successful more than the struggling (what we call success is our profane perspective). God doesn't love the confident more than the insecure. God doesn't love the righteous more than the broken. God loves. Period. Full Stop.
I wonder if that is the most difficult thing for us to believe. We can understand the idea that we are supposed to love God. We can understand that we are supposed to love other people but believing that God actually loves us—completely, unconditionally, without our having to earn it—seems to be much harder.
We spend an awful lot of time in our church services and prayers talking about our sins. And rightly so. We do need to be honest about the ways we hurt one another and the ways we fall short, but sometimes (and I see this far too often) we can become so focused on our brokenness that we forget the other half of the gospel.
We are broken, yes, but we are also beloved. We sin, yes, but we are also forgiven. We fail, yes, but we are also already held in the grace of God. God has not been waiting for us to get our act together before deciding whether we are worthy of love. In Jesus Christ, God has already shown us the answer. You are loved.
Perhaps that is where our own healing and self-acceptance begins. Morrie Schwartz, in the wonderfully powerful book by Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie, says something very simple and very profound: "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." To let it come in.
I think that may be one of the hardest things for us to do. We are often much better at giving love than receiving it. We will forgive somebody else more easily than we forgive ourselves. We will tell someone else that they are beautiful and worthy and loved, while looking in the mirror and seeing everything that is wrong with ourselves. We will tell someone else that God loves them, and then somehow imagine that the same grace doesn't quite apply to us. But it does. It applies to you. It applies to ‘little’ me.
So today I invite us to hear Jesus’ commandment just a bit differently. Love God with all that you are, love your neighbour, and don't forget those last two words: as yourself, because loving ourselves isn't selfish when what we mean by self-love is accepting the person God has created us to be.
Remember: It isn't narcissism. It isn't ego. It isn't pretending that we don't have faults. It is simply being able to look at ourselves honestly—with all our scars, our mistakes, our insecurities, our oddities, our failures and our gifts—and say: This is me. Then open your listening heart to hear God say: and I love you.
When we can begin to believe that— to really believe it—something changes because we no longer have to prove our worth. We don't have to make ourselves more beautiful, more successful, more important, or more impressive. We are not constrained by self-consciousness. We don't have to buy into the lie that we are somehow not enough. We don't have to succumb to the manipulation of a marketplace that profits from our insecurities. We can simply receive the love that has already been given to us.
When we know that we are loved—truly loved, completely loved, just as we are—we are finally free to love others without needing anything in return. Without needing their approval. Without needing to be important. Without needing to be right. Without needing them to fill some emptiness in us. We can simply love because we have received something that cannot be earned, cannot be bought, and cannot be taken away: the love of God.
So this my friends, this is what Jesus is asking of us today: To love God with all that we are. To learn to love ourselves—not because we are perfect, but because we are God’s loveable children. And then to go out into the world and love our neighbours with that same dignity-offering, grace-filled, self-giving love that has been bestowed upon us.
I pray you always know that you are loved. You always have been and you always will be.
Amen.