Heart, Soul and Might
24th Sunday after Pentecost & All Saints Sunday
November 3, 2024
In life, we often struggle with what is right and what is wrong. As a child, I knew what was right or wrong by what my parents told me to do or not to do. It was simple enough. If I did something they told me not to do, I was punished, and if I did what they told me to do, life was good and pleasant.
However, as we reach adolescence and begin to depend less on our parents and more on our own understanding of life, things begin to get a little more difficult.
I can remember my early teenage years when I began to think that I was smarter than my parents. Do you all remember those years?
I can remember my parents telling me to do something, and I could not seem to get my head around it as being the most sensible thing to do, but by now, I had learned that it was smart to do what my parents asked me to do whether I necessarily agreed with them or not.
Like I’m sure we all did, I still harkened back to my young childhood when life was less complicated, and doing what I was told resulted in life being good and pleasant, rather than the alternative.
However, as I began my teenage years, I also began trying to figure things out on my own. I began to listen and understand more when I went to church, and I depended on my Bible a lot for instruction because I was searching for answers on how to live a life that was acceptable to God.
I began to underline and highlight things in my bible to be able to refer back to them and to make them easy to find when I needed to read and re-read certain statements I had found.
The Bible became my instruction book, and I suspect that this scribe in our scripture today was looking for more clarity as I had when studying my bible, and clarity that I still search for today.
Being a scribe and being well-versed in the scriptures and the law, he is in awe of the answers Jesus gives those with whom he is teaching through his parables. He is so taken that he doesn’t challenge Jesus, rather he asks a question for clarification and to perhaps find some simplicity to this very complicated life that we live with so many rules to follow. It is sometimes hard to dissect the gray areas into something that makes sense.
So, trying to get to the heart of the matter, the scribe asks Jesus what I believe is the most important question ever asked among the scribes.
“Which commandment is the first of all?”
And Jesus answers, “Hear, O Israel,” because this is who he is talking with at the time. And just like we say each Sunday after reading our scripture, ‘through the scripture, God is still speaking and we are still listening,’ we can insert ourselves into who Jesus is speaking to. We can say, “Hear EVERYONE who is listening, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
However, Jesus doesn’t stop there, he adds one more very important thing for everyone to hear, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Here, in these two commandments, we have our manual for living our lives. Our instruction book on life. And like all manuals and instruction books you purchase, it comes in every language, not just English. This message indeed applies to every language around the world.
When we are able to follow these two commandments, all other commandments fall into place behind them.
For instance, if we love God and our neighbor, we would not steal from them. If we love God and our neighbor, we would not hate them.
We can never outgrow these commandments. We can dedicate our lives obeying these two commandments and life can be good and pleasant…not perfect…but good and pleasant rather than being filled with hatred toward an individual or group of people.
We all know that it is easy to love some people because they are just lovable, while others we may find it more difficult to love because we don’t agree with them. This doesn’t necessarily make them bad. It just makes them different from us. Being different is not a reason to not love someone for who they are. We also want to be loved for who we are.
Let us make a very clear distinction, we CAN love someone with whom we disagree. It is a choice that we make from the heart BECAUSE we love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength (or might).
What Jesus is describing here to the scribe and the people he is teaching, is that God does not settle for anything less than 100% of our heart, our soul, our mind or thoughts, and our strength. God wants all of us, all of our attention, all of the time.
And when we give God 100% of ourselves, we are able to love the way Jesus loved us.
We are living in a world that drives division. Why do you think this is?
Because if evil can work on dividing us, then evil wins. When we begin to focus on the wrong things in this world, our focus drifts from our God. We become slack in giving 100% of our thoughts to God. We begin to lose the connection in our soul that we have with God because we become too focused on who’s right and who’s wrong, and hearts begin to lose the ability to love our neighbors.
I often have to remind myself that we are all God’s children. Our humanness tells us we have to choose one side or the other, when in actuality we can pray for everyone.
So for those who are anxious about things that are in the world, such as wars that won’t end, people who are hungry that go unfed, children that are abused and help does not come, neighbors who are dealing with illness and disease of themselves and family who need comforting and find no comfort? I would say, we are not loving our neighbors enough because our focus is on something else other than our love for God and our neighbors.
- S. Lewis said, “Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”
As we consider our spiritual health today, is it proportional to our love for God? Where are our hearts, our souls, our minds and our strength? Are they resting fully in recognizing and living for the one true God and for our neighbors that need love and food and comfort? And are we loving our neighbors as ourselves, those who are easy to love, and those who are harder to love?
Today is All Saints Sunday where we recognize all the Saints who have reached their heavenly home.
We celebrate and remember the lives they lived in love for God and their neighbors. These people were part of our lives in some way, whether we personally knew them, or whether we know their loved ones and share in their grief.
There may be Saints listed here that we do not recognize their name at all or never met, however, we are all connected through our One God, our Creator, and we are connected through the love of Christ.
As we remember these listed and others that have gone before us that loved us and touched our lives, let us stand and join together and Sing a Song of the Saints of God.
HYMN 730
A TIME FOR REMEMBRANCE (see bulletin)
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH and GLORY TO GOD
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE and THE LORD’S PRAYER
Loving God, as we begin this month of Thanksgiving, let us be reminded each week of the blessings that have been bestowed upon us. We reside in a beautiful land called America that we love, and through which you have provided many blessings to our ancestors, and to us. While we sometimes focus on this great country that we love so much, may we remember that you are God of the world and all things that exist within it. Lord in our lives, things sometimes get confusing, like during times of government elections, who we should stand with or who we should not stand with. As we pray, help us to discern who best represents our values and help us remember, that ultimately we stand with You, our One True God. We lift our prayers for healing of our country that we will once again stand together for an undivided love for one another to appreciate the blessings that surround us. Merciful God, there are so many in our midst that are in need of healing. Many who struggle with cancer that steals the energy to do the things they enjoy in life. We pray for the caretakers that become weary watching the suffering of those they love. We ask for your mercy on all of these and that they be comforted in knowing that you are with them in the midst of the isolation and heartbreak. Help us to realize those whom we can help comfort, those who need the love of a neighbor to prepare a meal, visit with a warm hug, or a neighbor to pray with them so they might get through another day. We pause now to remember all those who turn to you for healing, O God, and pray silently for those who have asked for our prayers.
In your mercy, Lord hear our prayers as we lift them to you in love, and as we join together in saying the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, Our Father, who art in Heaven……….
Amen.