LAW OR PROMISE?

 ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22:37-39

 The last two weeks we have been blessed to have two artists in our midst.  I hope you took some time and reflected upon the artistic creations of both Pastor Linda Henke and Joyce Athey.  I know that I have gained much by the witness of these two very creative artists as revealed in their art. 

 Last Sunday, Marcia and I, independent of one another, miraculously became attached to the same piece of abstract art by Joyce.  It is called “On the Third Day.”  There is something about it that impacted both of us in a similar way.  I love the way the lines come together revealing the three crosses of Skull Hill, and then the burst of bright color in the background signifying the energy of the resurrection - the two events forever bonded together.

 Two weeks ago, Pastor Linda, displayed her textile art and a piece entitled, “Christ Crucified/Resurrected”, captured my eye.  In this piece the cross and resurrection of Jesus are held in a dynamic tension signifying that these two events can never be separated from one another, but must always be seen and understood in relationship to one another.  It’s incredible that two separate artists, using in two different mediums, proclaim a same core truth about the cross and resurrection of our Lord.

 What amazes me is how the artist takes the disparate parts: materials, colors, lines, shapes, textures, and puts them together in such a way that a whole new reality emerges that is larger than the sum of its parts. In a similar sense, we see that Jesus is a bit like the artist in today’s gospel.  When asked which commandment in the law is the greatest, Jesus sketched three separate lines and brought them together in such a way as to create a single expression, forever putting them in relationship to one another; placing them in a dynamic tension: Love of God – love of neighbor as self.   Jesus took these three separate lines of love and merged them in a single expression.

 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  “Love God… love neighbor as self.”  Jesus forever bundled the three.  You can’t have one without the other.  You cannot take them separately.  You cannot do one that doesn’t require including the other.   They are dependent on each other.

 But I must ask a serious question right here and now.  “Love God… love neighbor as self.”  Is this nothing more than a new law that I must obey?  If it is, I don’t think that I can do it!   I don’t have the power, strength, fortitude and resolve to do it very well for very long. I will fall short.  If this is nothing more than a new rule to obey, then all is despair. I am doomed to fail. 

 What I want to proclaim to you today more than anything else, is that “love God… love neighbor as self,” is not so much a law as a promise.  In my own life I used to hear Jesus’ words here as a requirement I must dutifully follow.  But as I have grown older and hopefully matured, I have experienced His words much more as a promise.

 Allow me to explore and explain by using an analogy.  Couples come and stand before this altar and say to each other the most astounding and remarkable words.  And if you think about it, they sound a lot like words of law:  “I will love and be faithful to you in sickness and health; poverty and good fortune; difference and agreement; in times of comfort and times of struggle, as long as we both shall live.”   Those are awesome words.  With those words a covenant is established; an agreement is forged; a contract is made; a partnership is born that is meant to be guided, evaluated and supported by the remarkable words spoken at the altar.  The words sound a lot like rules and stipulations.  But we don’t talk or think about these special words as requirements.  We describe them as words of promise.  So what’s the difference?  The difference is that each of the parties has lost self in the other.   The two person’s speaking the words to each other are in love, which is to say they have each lost self in the other.   And because they are in love and have lost themselves in each other, the words are not experienced as laws to follow but promises to keep.  It’s a whole different thing.

 Some months ago I saw something on the History Channel about a soldier who fought in the Pacific in WWII.  He was the sole survivor in his platoon of a fierce battle with the Japanese on some God-forsaken island in the Pacific.  He had been wounded, and he described how his comrades saved his life at the sacrifice of their own.  His comrades fought the enemy relentlessly until not one soldier was left standing on either side; all were dead; except him!   Only he was spared. 

 When interviewed some 60 years later, he described his humility and sense of undeserved grace that he experienced at heroic hands of comrades.  “Why should I have been saved?” he said.   “I didn’t deserve it. They gave their lives for me.”   

 And then he went on to share a most remarkable thing.  He said that not a single day has gone by in the last 60 years (that’s 22,000 consecutive days) that he has not, in his heart, mind and soul, returned to that battlefield, and remembered the sacrifice his comrades made so he could live.  With tears streaming face some 60 years later, crying like a baby, standing at his comrades’ graves with his wife, children, grand-children and great grand-children flanked behind him he said, “How I love these guys.  How indebted I am to them.  They gave me my life and the lives of my family.  My life has not been my own.  I have had to live everyday, not only for myself but I have lived for them as well.  I have had to live my life in as good and noble a way as they might have lived theirs.”

 “Amen” to that is all I can say!  Now, I suppose that one could look at that responsibility to live his life in as noble a way as the others might have lived theirs as a terrible responsibility; as a terrible burden; a terrible weight to bear.  But I do not believe this man, who was given his life back by the sacrifice of his comrades, saw it as a terrible weight to bear or a law to keep, but a promise to live. 

 There is only one place to bring our hearts, minds and souls to discover these words of Jesus are not words of law, but words of promise.  Like the sole surviving soldier describes his daily return to the battlefield to remember the sacrifice of his comrades, we too must make a daily return to the battlefield – the battlefield, in the center of which stands the cross of Lord profiled against the sky; the battlefield where good and evil, heaven and hell clashed in a mighty battle; the battlefield where the powers of hatred and powers of love engage in unspeakable conflict.   For it is on that battlefield that we see a solitary man dying, suffering and forgiving, winning a victory that saves your life, and gives your life back to you – as a gift.  It is on that battlefield that His words cease to be His command, and transform into our promise.

 If you go there, often, and lose yourself in the one who dies there, the one who hangs on His cross for you, you may begin to see that your life is no longer your own; that you have become lost in the unfathomable love that is there for you.  But in losing yourself in His love, you find yourself, and your purpose for being alive – to live your life in as good and loving a way as He lived His.

 Join me in prayer: Oh God, I have returned to the battlefield.  To see Him suffer and die for me is almost more than I can take.  His life was so completely selfless; so totally loving; so comprehensively beautiful; so indescribably dignified.  The more time I spend on the battlefield, at His cross, the more I lose myself there in Him.  I cannot help but be changed.  The life I now live is no longer my own, but His, lived in and through me.  I promise to love you with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my mind; and to love my neighbor as myself; through Jesus Christ my Lord and my Savior.  Amen.