Sermon - October 29th, 2023 - The Rev. Jack Alvey

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight

O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.

Amen.

Can y'all hear me?

Okay.

Does this sound on?

Okay.

I just unclipped it from my belt, so give me a minute.

This is going to be very embarrassing.

We're going to have to cut it out of the podcast.

Shannon, okay, we can hear you okay?

All right.

This is the first and great commandment.

I love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

At some point in the third century, Jewish scholars decided that there were 613 laws

contained in the Torah.

Not surprisingly, you can't go, the Torah is the first five books.

You can't go to the first five books of the Bible and find any list, one through 613.

That would be too easy.

I suppose Google might be able to point you in the right direction.

But of these 613 laws, there are 365 negative laws, thou shalt nots, and 248 positive laws,

thou shalts.

Now, Jewish teachers have turned this into somewhat of a teaching device.

365 obviously represents the number of times it takes for the earth to go around, excuse

me, how, yeah, 365 days.

That's how many days it takes for the earth to go around the sun in a complete orbit.

And 248, not so obviously, equals the number of bones in your body plus the number of major

bones in your body.

And finally, 613 apparently represents the average number of seeds found in a pomegranate

fruit.

I dare you to count.

So based on this information, it is thought that the forbidden fruit in the garden was

actually a pomegranate and not an apple, as popular belief.

Therefore, one might conclude that the pomegranate fruit with its 613 seeds representing the 613

laws is what Adam and Eve would give them the knowledge of good and evil.

But as we all know, just because Adam and Eve know right from wrong doesn't mean they

do right.

Such is the human condition, knowledge doesn't always lead to right action.

A smarter people doesn't necessarily mean a better people.

At best, a smarter people might mean a people who are better at hiding their flaws.

It doesn't take a sociologist to know that there's a gap between knowing what is right

and wrong, in doing what is right and refraining from what is wrong.

When Paul says it like this, I do the very evil I don't want to do and do not do the

good that I want to do.

So it's not enough to know what is right and what is wrong.

As our collect for this morning, that opening prayer for this morning suggests, we need

to be able to love what is right in order to do what is right.

In other words, our behavior, our actions, our words are a product of who and what we

love.

The problem of course is that we humans love imperfectly.

I read recently that humans are natural pagans.

We are not monotheists.

We worship a lot of different gods.

Our hearts are divided.

We can't love just one god.

We seek out those lesser imperfect gods, those mortal gods, material possessions or success

or entertainment or popularity.

These are our lesser gods.

Well, they might not be bad in and of themselves.

They can misguide us if they become the most important thing in our life, above the God

of love.

And when we misplace our love, when we put our love in the wrong things, these lesser

gods tend to promote love of self over love of others.

While the love of God tends to promote the love of neighbor as I self.

Over the last few weeks in Matthew's Gospel, we've had one of those seats to the ongoing

feud between Jesus and the religious leaders in the days leading up to the Passover, staged

in the Jerusalem Temple.

A diverse group of religious leaders, leaders that are used to debating each other, have

now teamed up as allies.

And this time, they are debating Jesus in a not so friendly game of stump the rabbi.

Today, we see the Pharisees try to take one last stab at Jesus.

They want to know what Jesus thinks the greatest commandment of all is.

Apparently, that's a favorite pastime to sit around the water cooler and talk about which

of the 613 is the greatest, which of them sums up the rest.

Jesus gets this answer, what seems like a softball answer correctly.

Of course, love your God with all your heart, mind, and soul.

And then he tosses a fastball right back at him.

For starters, he implies that if you say you love God, but you do not love your neighbor,

then you're really just giving lip service to God.

He then goes on to say in a roundabout way, and oh yeah, by the way, I am God and y'all

are not loving me right now.

Another in God's, in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus will say, if you want to love me, then love

the least, the last, and the lost.

And if you reject the least, the last, and the lost, then you are neglecting to love

me.

First, John has a little bit more in your face about it.

He says, if you say you love God, but hate your neighbor, then you are a liar.

If you're being honest with yourself, then this teaching on the love of God, equaling

the love of neighbor, should call you up short.

I know it calls me up short.

Too often have I said something with my lips to do another thing in my life.

Too often have I professed my love for Jesus only to pass him by on the way home.

Dorothy Day says it like this, I only love God as much as I love the person I love the

least.

I only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.

I'm just going to sit with that for a second.

A little over a week ago, it's in lost a man whose love of God was evident in how he loved

his neighbor.

John Wilson was our community outreach chair.

He was the leader of our ministry to feed the hungry in Avondale.

He was active member of the choir.

The beautiful hymns and prayers John said here on Sundays only made sense because they

called him to love and serve the Lord outside these doors for John love of God and worship

of God didn't stop at 1130 on Sunday.

It continued on.

It was just getting started.

Like clockwork, you could count on John showing up on Tuesdays to stock the pantry for the

Abbey.

And those who distributed lunches on Thursday mornings could always trust that John would

be there with a hot batch of cheese grits.

And now during this annual campaign, there have been other ways for us to reflect on how

we as a parish community are loving God by loving our neighbor.

Obviously, a part of that evidence is with the Abbey or with the first light shelter

or at the weekend backpack program.

We love God by coming up alongside fellow parishioners who've received scary news about

their health or when a loved one has died.

We love God by showing up to celebrate and encourage a family when they've had a new

child.

We love God by visiting and spending time with those who are lonely and afraid.

We love God by hosting a birthday party every year at Episcopal Place for those who might

not otherwise have a birthday party.

Now, using our annual giving tagline, you can start to find evidence of your love of

God by examining how you spend your own time and your own talent and your own treasure.

And looking at all this, looking at your time, talent, and treasure, how you use it is going

to tell you a little bit about what you love and who you love.

It will also tell you how much you love, who you love, and what you love.

There's no doubt you will find all kinds of evidence that you're loving God by loving

your neighbor and maybe in ways you didn't even think about.

And despite your best efforts, I imagine you'll also find a little bit of evidence of how

you don't love God as much as you would like to.

You'll find evidence that your heart is divided, that you love several lesser gods, sometimes

more than the one true God.

And again, even on our best days, there's going to be a gap between what we want to

do and what we actually do, but this isn't a reason to despair.

In fact, the realization of this gap will actually help you live more fully into the

good news of Jesus and his kingdom.

Our natural instincts will tell us to try harder to fill the gap, but that's really

just another form of idolatry because it's still about us trying harder.

We're still putting ourselves at the center.

You've become the lesser God in that case, but Jesus is actually saying, return to me,

rest in me.

And when you find your rest in me, my love for you will give you all that you need and

all that you have to get from here to there.

On the cross where Jesus died, the love of God, that vertical love, and the love of neighbor,

that horizontal love intersect and fills the gap between the two.

On the cross where the gap between love of God and love of neighbor is filled hangs all

the love in the world.

All the world, all the world, all the sad and lonely world needs is found right there

on the cross.

That's all we need to thrive in this world.

So when you find yourself worshiping those lesser gods, when you find yourself, your

heart divided between the lesser gods and the one true God, I encourage you to return

to the cross.

Return to the place where God's great love for you and the world may give you the grace

to love God and love your neighbor 365 days of the year with all your might and all your

mind and all of your body.

Amen.

Thank you.