Love God With All You Are, And Your Neighbor Too

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Today's scripture is a reading from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 12, verses 28 to 44.

Mark 12:28–44

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.

Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him,

Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

The most important one, answered Jesus, is this,

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

Well said, teacher, the man replied.

You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.

To love him with all your heart and with all your understanding and all your strength.

And to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him,

You are not far from the kingdom of God.

And from then no one dared ask him any more questions.

While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked,

Why do the teachers of the law say the Messiah is the son of David?

David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared,

The Lord said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

David himself calls him Lord.

How then can he be his son?

The large crowd listened to him with delight.

As he taught, Jesus said,

Watch out for the teachers of the law.

They like to walk around in flowing robes

and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces

and have the most important seats in the synagogues

and places of honor at banquets.

They devour widows' houses

and for a show make lengthy prayers.

These men will be punished most severely.

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put

and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.

Many rich people threw in large amounts,

but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins

worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said,

Truly, I tell you,

this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.

They gave out of their wealth,

but she, out of her poverty, put in everything,

all she had to live on.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Lord, praise to you, Lord Christ.

Well, thanks for that scripture reading, Brian.

Good morning, everyone.

My name's Andrew, one of the pastors here,

and I'm happy to share God's word with you.

Why don't we go to the Lord in prayer as we begin?

Lord God, I pray that in the preaching of your word,

that you would convince us how worthy you are of a heart, soul, mind, and strength kind of a love.

A love that gives everything to you, for you have given everything to us.

Be honored in the preaching of your word, I pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, so we're continuing our series in Mark's Gospel, chapter 12 today,

and our focus, as many of you have probably noticed,

is on this concept of discipleship, right?

And more specifically, Jesus' words,

deny yourself and follow me.

Deny yourself and follow me.

You've been hearing that a lot over these past months,

and I'm really curious to know how many of us here hear these words,

deny yourself and follow me,

as a warm and honoring invitation into a great privilege.

Or how many others of us might hear these words as a harsh and repressive challenge

from like an authoritarian leader.

You know, during the early part of my life,

even growing up in the church, calling myself a Christian,

I would have identified with the second group, the latter group.

I would have said that being a Christian is so inconvenient,

so restrictive, so limiting, so prohibitive of my many desires,

I felt like my faith was antithetical to delight,

antithetical to the desires of my heart.

And while that thought still enters into my mind from time to time today,

one thing that's really helped me

was a moment that I had as a high schooler at a summer youth retreat.

My counselor, he sat down with me in the grass,

and he opened up his Bible with me

to a passage that I'd heard, I'd read, you know, hundreds of times before.

It was Psalm chapter 37, verse 4.

Psalms 37:4

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

You know, all my life, I had read that verse as meaning,

delight the Lord, make him happy, make him delighted,

and then he will give you your heart's desires.

But this counselor helped me realize that actually,

the passage was not telling me to delight God with my obedience

in order to get something from him,

but rather it was telling me to find my delight in the Lord.

And that I could trust that he would then give me the desire of my heart,

because if I was delighting in the Lord,

he would be the desire of my heart.

And he would not withhold himself from me ever.

And this was mind-blowing.

This was revolutionary for me.

One pastor, John Piper, he's built a whole ministry

based on this idea called Desiring God.

This idea affected me, so many people like me,

because so many of us had grown up in the church

knowing that the right answer to the chief purpose

of why we existed was to glorify God,

to honor God, to worship God and obey him.

But the thing was,

we all thought our life's purpose

was to glorify God

at the expense of our enjoyment,

at the expense of our deepest desires.

But what John Piper so clearly and concisely preached

was that the chief end of humanity

was not to glorify God by restricting our enjoyment.

No, he preached that the chief end of man

was to glorify God by enjoying him forever.

Like God didn't make us to be his sad servants

living lives desiring things

we were never supposed to want or have.

No.

God made us to be his cheerful children,

made to desire and enjoy him forever,

made to love him as he loves us.

And see, this is the heart of discipleship.

This is the goal of deny yourself and follow me.

It's not just another rule to add to the list.

Discipleship is about rightly ordering our hearts,

our desires, what we love,

denying our misdirected loves

and redirecting them

toward what our hearts were made to truly love.

To quote the theologian Jamie K. Smith

in the book You Are What You Love,

he writes this,

Discipleship, we might say,

is a way to curate your heart,

to be attentive to and intentional

about what you love.

See, again, the aim of discipleship

is not merely knowing the right things with our heads

or doing the right things with our hands.

It's about loving the right person with our hearts.

So to quote Smith again,

Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting

than of knowing and believing.

And he asks,

like, what if instead of starting from the assumption

that human beings are thinking things,

we started from the conviction

that human beings are first and foremost lovers?

How would that change our approach to discipleship

and Christian formation, he asks.

The question I want us to consider today

is not merely what should we know

and what should we believe,

but what are we hungering for?

What are we thirsting for?

What are our hearts inclined towards?

Or more simply,

what do we love?

What do we love?

And maybe your initial thought is,

well, I love a lot of things.

I love sushi.

I love movies, dogs, volleyball.

I love to travel.

And these things may all be good and true and fine.

Sure, we all have lots of lesser loves,

relative loves,

but my question is,

what do we love first?

What do we love most?

And this may seem like a pointless exercise,

like does it really matter?

Or who cares?

But while this might seem like

an unnecessarily abstract question to consider,

deep down,

aren't we all looking for something

or someone ultimate to love?

To devote our hearts to something

or someone ultimate to orient

our whole lives around.

An ultimate love that can rightly order

all our other loves.

That's what we need.

Think about it.

You might love dogs,

but isn't it important to love your neighbor

more than a dog?

Right?

Like, what would it say about you

and what kind of world would this be

if it was okay to love a dog

as much as a person?

Right?

Or even amongst people,

isn't it more important to love your mother

more than your next door neighbor?

And we could go on and on and on,

but my question is,

all the way down this chain of loves,

who or what should we love the most?

What ultimate love should condition

all our other affections?

Because if we haven't identified

this most foundational,

all-consuming love

that assumes first place in our hearts,

then our lives are basically

just being lived on a whim,

on unexamined, subjective intuitions

about what is right and good

and true and worthy.

And maybe some of us are okay

with this kind of relativistic way

of living in this world,

and we're not convinced

it really matters what we love

as long as we enjoy it

and nobody gets hurt.

But according to Jesus,

it absolutely matters.

It absolutely matters

what your highest and greatest love is.

And in fact,

the whole of the Christian scriptures

bear witness to the fact

that it is precisely

because humanity has loved

the wrong things

that this world

is as messed up

as it is.

See, it's not just

that we haven't loved enough.

It's not just like,

you know,

we just needed to put more love,

more positive energy

into the world.

No, the problem

is that we failed

to love rightly.

The problem with the world

is our misordered,

misdirected love.

It's that all of us

have been looking

for something

to devote

all of our heart,

soul, mind, and strength

to something most worthy

to live for,

something most worthy

to die for.

And yet we've set

our affections upon

all kinds of created things,

sure,

even some really good things,

but things

that were never designed

to bear the weight

of that kind of love

and worship

and adoration.

And this is what

the Bible calls sin.

And this has only ever led

to competition

and conflict

and chaos.

You have one tribe saying,

I love this

with all my heart,

soul, mind, and strength.

Another tribe says,

I love this

with all my heart,

soul, mind, and strength.

And what happens?

What happens?

They go to war

because of their

conflicting ultimate loves,

which they are willing

to fight for,

kill for,

and die for

because they've made

these conflicting loves

ultimate.

And so some,

particularly modern,

secular Westerners,

have suggested that

maybe the solution

is we should just

not love anything

with all our heart,

all our soul,

all our mind,

and all our strength.

Maybe we should just

love with moderation.

And in one sense,

they're right.

Nothing in this world

is worthy

of our ultimate,

untempered love.

But the solution

can't be just to dial down

how much we love

because not only will that

never actually solve

the problem of toxic

polarization and tribalism,

but my question is,

is a moderate love

the only kind of love

that was ever meant

to exist?

Is the world

truly better

without an all-your-heart,

soul, mind,

and strength

kind of a love?

Is there really

nothing in all of reality

that we can conceive of

that might be worthy

of that kind

of all-consuming love?

In our scripture passage today,

God's word reveals to us

something,

someone most worthy

of this exact kind of love.

Someone who is not

of this world

and yet came

into this broken world.

And this is the big idea today.

The life-giving Lord

demands and deserves

our love.

The life-giving Lord

demands and deserves

our love.

Now, where we are

in Mark's gospel,

here in chapter 12,

in the passages,

you know,

right before the text

that was read today,

Jesus has just been

questioned by

the religious leaders

regarding various questions

of the Jewish law,

questions about politics.

Should we pay taxes

to a foreign emperor

like Caesar?

Questions about marriage

and the afterlife.

If a woman loses her husband

and remarries,

who will she be married to

in the age to come?

Tough questions,

tough questions

that raised a lot of debate

and required tons of knowledge

about the Hebrew scriptures.

But of course,

none of these questions

could stump or trap Jesus.

They only became opportunities

for him to demonstrate

his knowledge

and his wisdom

and his high regard

for the Hebrew scriptures.

And so in our text,

verse 28 says

that one of the teachers

of the law

came and heard them debating

and noticing

that Jesus had given them

good answer

after good answer

after good answer.

He had one big final

and foundational thing

he wanted to hear

from Jesus.

No more traps,

no more trying to stump him,

just trying to get

to the bottom

of who Jesus is

and what he's about.

And it says he asked him,

of all the commandments,

which is the most important?

Like of all the 613 commandments

in the Torah,

which was the most important?

And so Jesus being

a faithful,

orthodox Jewish teacher,

he rightly cites

and paraphrases

the very words of Moses

from Deuteronomy chapter 6,

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

the central affirmation

of the Jewish faith.

We call this

the great Shema,

which means to hear

or to listen.

Verse 29,

Jesus says,

the most important one,

answered Jesus,

is this.

Hear, O Israel,

the Lord our God,

the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God

with all your heart

and with all your soul

and with all your mind

and with all your strength.

And Jesus even cites

Leviticus chapter 19

Leviticus 19 · chapter mention

to throw in a bonus,

second place commandment,

verse 31.

The second is this,

love your neighbor

as yourself.

There is no commandment

greater than these.

And then upon hearing

Jesus' answer,

this teacher agrees.

In verse 32,

he agrees,

well said, teacher,

the man replied.

You are right in saying

that God is one

and there is no other

but him.

To love him

with all your heart,

with all your understanding

and with all your strength

and to love your neighbor

as yourself

is more important

than all the burnt offerings

and sacrifices.

Now if you are a Christian,

even if you are not

a Christian today

here in this room,

most of us probably

won't find this exchange

between Jesus

and the teacher of the law

to be very surprising.

And in fact,

this is probably what

so many of us,

Christian or not,

love and admire

about the person of Jesus.

He keeps the main thing

the main thing, right?

He keeps it simple,

love God most

and then love your neighbor

as yourself.

And we're like,

yes, of course,

love is the way,

more important than all

the burnt offerings

and sacrifices.

And I think this,

I think the tendency

for many of us,

modern Western readers

of scripture

is to kind of read this

in a liberating,

sentimental way.

Maybe even as if

Jesus is saying,

there is only one command

we really need to obey

and all the burnt offerings

and sacrifices

and other commandments

don't really matter

as long as we love God

in our hearts.

Like, oh, how nice of Jesus

to just simplify it

and bring it back to love.

We love that, right?

But if this is how

we're reading the passage

and Jesus' answer

about the most important commandment,

then I don't think

it's hit us

like it's supposed to.

Look with me

at verse 34,

how verse 34 concludes.

It says,

after Jesus gives this answer

and they have this exchange,

it says,

and from then on,

no one dared

ask him any more questions.

Like when the crowds

and the teachers of the law

heard Jesus' answer,

they were like,

oh, how sweet,

bravo,

great answer, Jesus.

Thank you for simplifying

and condensing

the 613 commands

of the Torah for us.

No,

they seemed to be hit

by the weight

of what Jesus was saying.

See,

when Jesus gave his answer,

he wasn't actually lowering

the bar of Moses' law.

No,

he was actually demonstrating

how shockingly high

the bar truly was.

Love the Lord your God

with all your heart,

soul,

mind,

and strength

isn't some lower standard.

It's actually the highest

of standards,

the most difficult

of all the laws

and commands

in the Torah.

You know,

like to the relativist liberals

who maybe want to advise

and suggest

a moderate,

tempered,

or generalized,

ambiguous kind of love

and sentimentalism

that doesn't pay attention

to the specifics

of God's will.

Jesus was saying,

no,

love the Lord

with all your heart,

soul,

mind,

and strength,

like in every detail

of your lives

through obedience

to every jot

and tittle of the law.

Out of the whole

of your soul,

met with every breath

and the whole of your life,

with all your energy,

vitality,

and spirit.

Out of the whole

of your mind,

with all your intellect

and all your rational capacities,

and even out of the whole

of your strength,

meaning all of your embodied

might and ability,

and even with all

your material resources,

this was an all-demanding love.

And this was equally disturbing

to the religious conservatives

who prided themselves

on following all the rules

and devoting all the details

of their lives

to following the law

because Jesus was saying,

external obedience

is not enough.

You actually have to love me.

Like out of your whole heart,

meaning the very command center

of all your affections

and desires

and commitments,

Jesus was saying to them

and he is saying to us

that the most important command

upon us

is a demand for the whole,

the whole of who we are,

inside and out,

in our actions

and in our affections,

in our dealings

and in our feelings.

Do you understand

what he's saying?

Do you understand

what a show-stopping answer

this was

for Jesus' Jewish listeners?

Can you begin to feel

the weight

of this command

that we have perhaps

become overly familiar with?

He's demanding

everything of us.

Not some generalized,

unthinking,

sentimental,

yeah, sure,

I love God

kind of a love.

And not even the most

meticulous,

mere obedience.

This was the greatest

and most important law

to love the life-giving Lord,

Yahweh,

the maker of heaven and earth.

To love this giver of life

with the whole of the lives

he's generously given to us.

And my question is,

do any of us

love God this much?

Has anyone here

loved their maker

out of the whole

of their heart,

out of the whole

of their soul,

out of the whole

of their mind,

and out of the whole

of their strength

with every second

of their existence?

What God demands of us

is a terribly,

terribly high standard.

And rightly so

because he is God.

He is the Lord.

It is he who has made us

and not we ourselves.

As the Shema says,

the Lord Yahweh,

the I am,

our God Yahweh is one.

That means he is indivisible,

absolute,

the one and only,

without rival,

the maker and sustainer

of all of life,

eternally pre-existing

all things in glory

and honor and power,

worthy of all the love

that ever existed.

And not because he's

an egomaniac,

but because he's God.

He's the only one

that can bear the weight

of an all your heart,

soul, mind,

and strength

kind of a love.

Anything else

we try to set

that kind of love upon

will ultimately crumble

under the weight

of such love

and eventually disappoint us

and then discourage us

from loving again.

Like, think about it.

Maybe your ultimate love

is your spouse

or your romantic partner

or maybe your love

is set upon

that future longed-for partner

that you hope to have

if you're single.

But even as great

as that person may be,

will they ever be

the most supremely worthy

of your undying affection?

Is it not possible

that they will let you down,

hurt you,

forsake you,

break your heart?

That is the danger

and the inevitable demise

of placing our wholehearted love

upon anything other than God,

the God who has promised

to never leave us

nor forsake us.

So you see,

this isn't some arbitrary command

issued by a megalomaniac God.

It's the only kind of

divine command and demand

that actually makes sense.

And it's absolutely imperative

for us to understand

if we desire to be citizens

in this God's kingdom.

But what's interesting here

is that even while the scribe

agrees with Jesus,

Jesus doesn't say,

nice, you got the answer right,

you're in.

No, he says in verse 34,

you are not far

from the kingdom of God.

Like you're close,

but you're not far,

but you're not in.

You're close,

but you're not in.

You're not far.

You're close,

but you're not in.

And this means that

it's not enough

to just agree

about the greatest commandment

to love the Lord our God

with all our heart,

soul, mind, and strength.

No, we also need to know

who exactly this Lord is.

And this brings us

to verses 35 to 37.

Here,

Jesus subtly indicates to them

who the Lord is

that demands and deserves

their love.

And it's him.

Yahweh come to them

in the flesh.

And notice how he goes about

making his case.

He doesn't give them

some irrefutable philosophical argument

or give them some grand,

massive, undeniable miracle.

No, he gives them

a Bible study.

Because for Jesus,

the scriptures bore

perfect, undeniable,

authoritative witness

to who he was

as both the messianic

royal son of David

and the Lord Yahweh

at the same time.

Look what he does here.

First,

in verse 35,

he recognizes that

everyone agrees

that the coming Messiah

would be a son

of the great King David.

A great figure

from Yahweh

would one day,

a great figure

whom Yahweh

would one day

enthrone

at his own right hand,

establish his kingdom forever,

put all his enemies

under his feet.

And yet,

there's one extra detail

that David himself mentions

in Psalm 110

that Jesus cites here

about this messianic

son of David.

David writes,

the Lord,

that is Yahweh,

Yahweh said to my Lord,

sit at my right hand

until I put your enemies

under your feet.

So what Jesus is asking

is how can David's Lord

also be his son?

Like no father,

especially no king

in a traditional Jewish society

would ever call their son

their Lord.

And yet,

that's what David

seems to do

in Psalm 110.

And Jesus is asking,

what's up with that?

What's up with that?

Now,

Jesus doesn't give

an answer here,

but he's giving

a huge hint.

A huge hint

as to who the Lord is.

A huge hint

as to what kind

of Lord he is.

He's both

the messianic

son of David

and David's Lord.

See,

all the Jewish people

in the temple

were definitely

expecting a Messiah.

And maybe

they were even

willing to believe

that Jesus of Nazareth

might be that

messianic

son of David.

But for the most part,

their conception

of this expected

son of David

was that he would be

some kind of

political revolutionary

who would reestablish

the kingdom of Israel

under the reign

of David's ancestors.

But what they didn't

understand was that

they needed so much more

than a son of David.

They needed

a son of God.

They needed

Yahweh himself.

And this is why

Jesus told the scribe

who had the right answer

about the greatest

commandment

that he was not

far from the kingdom

but he wasn't

exactly in it

either.

Because no one

realized the true

identity of the Lord.

They didn't realize

the life-giving Lord

who demanded

and deserved

their love

was standing

right in front of them

and that he was

at the very same time

the messianic

son of David.

And this is so key

to understanding

who Jesus is.

This is so key

to understanding

what it means

to be a disciple

and to deny ourselves

and follow him.

So key to loving

the Lord our God

rightly with all

our heart, soul,

mind, and strength

we have to understand

that Jesus

the human son of David

is at the same time

the Lord.

This is the only way

we will ever enter

the kingdom of God.

This is the only way

we will ever love

the Lord rightly.

We have to understand

the two natures

of Jesus Christ

that he is human

the son of David

and divine

the son of God.

And if we don't hold both

we will never understand

the nature

of this Messiah's kingdom

and we will never

love the Lord

nor our neighbors

as we ought.

Now Jesus gives

an example of this

in verse 38 to 40

about how

if you don't understand this

you're not going to love

your neighbors rightly.

Calling out the teachers

of the law

who care more

about respect

and status

in the marketplace

and the synagogue

than the widows

they were supposed

to care for.

The Pharisees

failed to love

the widows

all because

they didn't understand

the true nature

and identity

of the Lord

who demanded

and who deserved

their love.

See this phrase

they devour widows

houses

what was going on here

what this means

is they were greedily

cheating widows

out of their property.

So in ancient times

widows had

little or no power

in the courts

and it was not uncommon

for a husband

to appoint in his will

a Jewish legal expert

a scribe

or a Pharisee

to be the executor

of his widow's estate.

So essentially

this gave the executor

authority to oversee

the widow's finances

and assets

so it would not be hard

for a corrupt

teacher of the law

scribe, Pharisee

to find legal ways

to trick a widow

out of her house

and other property.

And this is precisely

what the religious

leaders were doing.

And this would make sense

for them to do

if they didn't realize

who the Lord truly was.

If your conception

of the Lord

this Lord

that you're supposed

to love

if your conception

of this Lord

is that he's just

some kind of high

and holy God

in the sky

who put you

in charge

of the temple

and over the affairs

of poor widows

it wouldn't make sense

for you then

to care more

about your status

than people.

It would make sense

for you to even

deceive yourself

into thinking

that your status

and your religiosity

were proof

of your piety

and of your love

to the Lord.

When you don't know

the true identity

and nature

of the Lord

you will always care

more about status

than God

and people.

You may even

deceive yourself

into thinking

that status

and religiosity

are confirmation

that you love

the one true Lord.

The teachers

of the law

genuinely thought

that they loved

the Lord

with all their heart

soul, mind

and strength

but they were

genuinely mistaken

and they loved

really their status

and their money

and public opinion

far more

than they loved

the one true Lord.

But while these

religious leaders

they failed

to love the Lord

rightly

Jesus was able

to identify

someone in that

temple that day

who did illustrate

how to love the Lord

with all her heart

soul, mind

and strength.

Verse 41

Verse 41 says

Jesus is sitting there

in the temple

watching the crowd

give their free will

offerings to God

in the temple

many rich people

are throwing down

big money

and Jesus doesn't

critique these folks

it's good that they're

giving but most

notable to him

most notable

in the eyes of God

is this poor widow

who also comes in

dares to go in

amongst these big

ballers and shot

callers right

and put her own

meager contribution

next to theirs

two very small

copper coins

worth only a few

cents in the Greek

these coins were

the smallest currency

that existed

two lepta

less than a few cents

even according to

some commentators

and Jesus does this

verse 43

calling his disciples

to him

Jesus said

truly I tell you

this poor widow

has put more

into the treasury

than all the others

they all gave

out of their wealth

but she out of her

poverty

put in everything

all she had

to live on

Jesus sees

this woman

that no one else

sees

he values her

offering

when the rest

of the world

sees her as

having nothing

valuable to offer

the world offered

the world valued

her at

two cents

but God values

her as a whole

life offered

up to him

and these are the

economics of the

kingdom of God

no gift is ever

too small in his

eyes

it might just be

that the time

and money you

spend to take a

kid out

from our youth

group to Boba

the moment you

spend to stoop down

and give a little

preschooler a high

five

or the moment you

spend packing those

little mustards

into those brown

bags for our loaves

and fishes ministry

to serve our

houseless neighbors

it might just be

that such free

will offerings as

those are more

valuable in the

eyes of God

than the million

dollar deal

commissions your

tithing to our

church

or consider this

what if Jesus

cares less about

what you give

and more about

what you hold

back

what if the

application for

some of us is

not hey give

more

but hey what

areas in my life

am I treating

like they don't

belong to

Jesus

like doesn't all

we have belong

to the Lord

the widow

understood this

she gave in

greater proportion

because she had

a greater faith

she gave in

greater faith

everything she

had to live on

trusting that her

father in heaven

would give her

that day

her daily bread

she committed

to first of all

saying hallowed

be your name

your kingdom come

your will be done

because in many

ways she had a

clearer

view

and understanding

of who the

Lord was

of who Yahweh

was

a clearer view

than the teachers

of the law

who loved money

and status

more than the

Lord

you know I can

end this sermon

holding up this

poor generous

widow as the

model for our

capital campaign

as we're trying

to finish paying

off this building

and I could end

with an application

like you know

try harder

to be generous

and trust God

like this widow

give it

give your all

just give it all

but you know

there's this little

detail in the

Greek that

indicated to me

that actually

this widow

is not primarily

meant to be

a mirror

for us to see

ourselves

for us to compare

ourselves to

but she's more

like a window

for us to see

Jesus

in the Greek

Jesus says

she out of her

poverty gave

all she had

the whole

of her

bios

that is the

whole of her

life

does that remind

you of anyone

in the person

of Jesus

God has revealed

himself as the

life-giving Lord

in more than

one life-giving

way

not simply by

giving us life

but by giving up

his own life

his bios

for us

not simply by

breathing his

spirit into our

lungs but by

breathing his own

spirit out

upon a cross

this life-giving

Lord loved

his father in

heaven with all

his heart

soul

mind and strength

and he at the

same time

endured his

wrath against

our sins

he endured the

judgment upon

all our

misdirected loves

upon that cross

and in doing so

he has shown us

how to love

our neighbors

even more

than ourselves

he gave it all

you might even

say he loved us

with all his

heart soul

mind and strength

a love without

limits from that

cross

and it's only

when we've

encountered him

as both

life-giving

Yahweh on

high

and life-giving

son of David

on a cross

that we will

ever love him

as he demands

and as he

deserves

we'll ever love

him as he's

loved us

first

will you pray

with me

Lord help us

to see ourselves

first and foremost

not as thinkers

or doers

but as lovers

Lord would you

redirect our

loves toward you

would you convince

us that there is

no one more

worthy

of our love

our heart

soul

mind and strength

love

than the

life-giving

Lord

Jesus Christ

who didn't

just give us

life

but gave up

his life

so that we

might be brought

back to you

Lord what do we

have that we

have not received

what do we have

that does not

belong to you

Lord let us

give lives

let us live lives

of sacrifice

of acknowledgement

that everything

we have

is yours

and would you

in doing that

receive glory

and would you

bless the world

in our generosity

I pray

in Jesus' name

amen