30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Sunday, October 26, 2008

St. Clement's Church; Saratoga Springs, NY

Exodus 20: 20 – 66
Psalm 18: 2 – 3, 3 – 4, 47, 51
1 Thessalonians 1: 5c – 10
Matthew 22: 34 – 40

In order for me to give the correct homily today I need to ask the congregation three questions. I have three homilies written and based on your responses will determine which homily I’ll give. (Don’t worry, all three homilies are of equal length!)

The first commandment that Jesus gives today is to love the Lord our God. If you really believe that this is something we should all do, I ask that you raise your hand. Now, the second commandment that Jesus offers us is that we love our neighbors. Again, if you really believe that this is something we should all do, I ask that you raise your hand. Now, the there is a third commandment hidden in today’s Gospel. The third says that we should love ourselves. If you really believe that this is something we should all do, I ask that you raise your hand.

The third is the one that sometimes we don’t all readily agree with, the first two are almost no brainers but the third we have some trouble with. I am not asking that we return to the “ME” generation, or that we act as selfish people concerned only about ourselves or that we turn in on ourselves and let our egos run the roost. The command to love ourselves is to accept ourselves as beloved children of God. The message that Jesus offers is that we are indeed good and worthwhile people. Listen again to the second commandment that Jesus offers: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) If you do not love yourself than how can you love your neighbor? Love of neighbor comes after we are able to accept and love ourselves.

There is a story of a little eight-year-old girl in a Pennsylvania orphanage who was shy, unattractive, and regarded as a problem. Two other asylums had her transferred, and now this director was seeking some pretext for getting rid of her. One day someone noticed the little girl was writing a letter. An ironclad rule of the institution was that any communication from a child had to be approved before it was mailed. The next day, the director and her assistant watched the child steal out of the dormitory and slip down to the main gate. Just inside the gate was an old tree with roots showing above the ground. They followed and watched as the child hid the letter in one of the crevices of the root. Carefully looking around, the little girl scurried back to the dormitory.The director pounced on the note and tore it open. Then, without speaking, she passed the note to her assistant. It read, "To anybody who finds this: I love you."

This shy, unattractive girl was full of flaws. However, I feel that her ability to freely offer love to another was rooted in the fact that she loved herself. Yes, she had our own problems and flaws but I would like to feel that deep down she saw herself as a daughter of God and she was happy with whom she was. This is what it means to love our self. To recognize that even in the midst of our own flaws we are a wonderful creation of God and that should always be celebrated!

Often in my years of ministry as I’ve talked to people they often struggle with this fact. As people come to receive God’s forgiveness they can readily accept that forgiveness. But when I ask them if they can forgive themselves, often I hear a similar tune . . . “But Father, you don’t know the full story. You don’t know all the things I’ve done. I could never forgive myself.” Then again I ask them if they believe that God’s forgives them. “Oh yes, I believe in the forgiveness of God. “ Well if God who knows everything, can accept us back and forgive us we should be able to do the same.

That is the part of the second commandment that Jesus gives us today . . . the call to love ourself. The commands of love that we hear in today’s Gospel really need to be lived in the reverse order that we hear them. We first need to love ourselves. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) Once you accept that you are a son and daughter of God and you rejoice in that, then you can move to the next point – love of neighbor. We begin to see that if we are a son and daughter of God then so is the person that is sitting next to us now and the persons we rub elbows with the rest of the week.

One of my favorite Broadway Musicals is “Fiddler on the Roof.” It’s the story of Tevye, a Jewish milkman and his relationship with God and his family. The tradition of his life had been that all marriages are arranged, just as his was. However, his three oldest daughters begin to break with that tradition by choosing their own husbands. This shatters Teyve to the core and it rattles not only his relationship with his daughters but with his God and even with his wife. In the second act he approaches his wife, Goldie, and in song asks her if she loves him. Goldie looks at him as if he is an old fool and replies that for twenty five years she has cooked for him, cleaned his house, sewed his clothes – of course she does. But Tevye wants to hear the words. Three simple words that often are underused. Not that we should toss them around loosely but that we share them freely with those we love. We can often fail into the routine, the rut where we do things for one another and we might forget why we are doing them. We say the other person should know we love them. The command to love one our neighbor means to do so by action but that those closest in our lives should hear the words “I love you” more than we probably already offer them.

So logically the love that Jesus is talking about flows first from love of self, then to love of our neighbor. If these two things happen the greatest commandment of all will naturally follow. How can we love a God we cannot see if we fail to love the brother or sister that we do see. How can we love our brother or sister is we cannot love our very self.

"You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart,with all your soul,and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment.The second is like it:You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 37 –39)

AMEN!