I made a decision to move our observance of the Feast of All Saints to next week mostly because so many of us could not be here today, and it seems funny to celebrate a feast that is all about all our relations, when many of our relatives could not be here. We will read the All Saints lessons next week, and because of that, we read this set of lessons today. And what a wonderfully synchronous turn of events. We rarely hear these particular readings because we supplant this day with All Saints. So we are doubly gifted I do believe.
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. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. And we spend our entire lives trying to work this out.
What cannot always be assumed about what you know and therefore what needs to be said is that God loves you, and me, and all of us, completely, abundantly, and absolutely. God has shown and continues to show us this truth as God accompanies us in this life. We know that God accompanies us in this life because the truth of life, in all its suffering and joy, in its pain and pleasure, in its death and resurrection, show us that Love wins. It is that amazing and abundant love that calls us to Love God back. And we love God back by loving our neighbors. In fact, we love our neighbors, especially the ones we don't like, because we believe God is present with them as well. It seems so simple, and yet we spend our entire lives working that out. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out who indeed is our neighbor. Many people spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out who is excluded from that command. People spend a lot of time and energy speculating as to which people Jesus really intended for us to not love.
Today, we have the example of Ruth. "Turn back, my daughters, go your own way." And Ruth answers, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." Ruth is an alien in this story, she is in a land and with a people who are not her own. The call to love your neighbor is a call to love the one who is completely different than you, the ultimate other, the epitome of foreign, absolutely alien.
Ruth is a stranger in a strange land. And yet Ruth is willing to stay in this alien land and love the woman who is the mother of her deceased husband. Sometimes I don't understand the logic of those who are the lectionary choosers, but in this case the pairing of these stories is quite evident. The story of Ruth shows clearly what it means to love your neighbor. In this story, neighbor is not the friendly face over the fence. Neighbor is not folks I like down the street. Neighbor is not the like minded people I gather with for mutual whining about how the system is broken. In the story of Ruth, the one to be loved, the neighbor, looks different, sounds different, and even more earth shattering, believes in a different God altogether.
We have been hearing from Mark for weeks now these stories of discipleship. Discipleship is about being healed from blindness, it's about seeing with new eyes. Discipleship is about being baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Discipleship is to walk with the poor. Discipleship is to be in relationship with all of God's creation, and to protect the most vulnerable of God's creation. Discipleship is to cast off the idol, to lay down that which is killing you. Discipleship is to live one's life as if God matters. Discipleship is to show forth the truth that Love wins.
It isn't complicated, but it is mighty difficult. We see the difficulty everywhere we look, we hear the difficulty over and over again. But we know that love unites, love reconciles, love heals. To love one another is to approach every encounter with mercy and compassion. To love one another is to approach every encounter expecting to meet Jesus. To love one another is to expect your own transformation in the encounter. To love one another brings us closer to the kingdom of God. To love one another is to make a truly daring and authentic decision, in the face of uncertainty, in the face of division, in the face of fragmentation, to love one another is to say yes to God's possibility.
We are mistaken about God's love and God's kingdom when we approach the other with the intent to convince them of our rightness. We are mistaken when an agenda of judgement supersedes a posture of grace. We are mistaken when we let ideological difference get in the way of reconciliation and healing. We are mistaken when we believe the kingdom is about a seating chart. We are mistaken when we believe the kingdom is about power. We are mistaken when we embrace exclusion and hate as a way God acts in this world. We are mistaken when we believe perfection has something to do with God's expectation of us.
To love one another is to want the other's well being as much as or more than your own. To love one another is to be God's agent of healing and wholeness, to be God's agent of resurrection in all places in which we find ourselves. To love one another is to let the brokenness in our hearts reach across all boundaries and meet the brokenness in the other's heart to find some sort of common ground. To love one another is to feed your neighbor, literally. To love one another is look into the eyes of the one across the aisle and to actually see another who is also God's beloved. To love one another is to show the world that division and death are not the final word, indeed, the final word is Love wins.
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