Thou & I: A Visceral Connection

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Text: Luke 10:23-28

At the beginning of the service: Today, we begin the first in a series of six worship series in which we will be concentrating on: “A Great Commitment to the Great Commandments and the Great Commission.” We will be relating the two Great Commandments and the Great Commission—not only to our mission as a congregation and Church—but also to our individual calls to be Christian disciples. The first Great Commandment is found in the tenth chapter of Luke. It says, “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind. Loving God: what does it mean?

Love God with your whole self. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love is a word that can be used as both a noun and a verb. I can say this as a command: We are to do everything out of…? [Love.] Right—that’s the noun. It suggests that love is some thing that you can have and give, or a place or state from which to act.

Or, I can summarize all the commandments into a single word: We are to…? [Love.] And that is the verb. It suggests that love is an action that we can do.

Sing this song with me, if you know it:

Love, Love, Love, that’s what it’s all about.

‘Cause God loves us, we love each other,

Mother, father, sister, brother.

Everybody sing and shout, ‘cause that’s what it’s all about.

It’s about love, love, love. It’s about love, love, love.

Maybe the tone and simple sweetness of that Sunday school song is a bit misleading—but there’s certainly nothing false about the words and the central, greatest commandments: it’s about love!

Last week, someone handed me this Sunday comic strip, “Wildwood.” In this strip, the characters are all woodland animals. The bear happens to be the pastor of the group. All the animals are gathered around him, and it looks like he’s just finishing up his sermon. He says, “And remember, let’s try to do everything we do out of love.”

Immediately, the rabbit’s hand shoots up as he exclaims, “Then, hurry up with church and let’s all go get ice cream!”

All the creatures are silent, staring at the rabbit. Finally, the rabbit explains, “Oh, like you people wouldn’t love that.”

A while ago, Pauline and I were watching the television satire, Married with Children. In this episode, Peg was trying to get her husband, Al, to admit that he really does love her.

Finally, he says, “No. I love football. I love beer. I don’t want to cheapen the meaning of the word!”

That’s an extreme, but we say inappropriate things like that ourselves. There might be something we treasure, even from unlimited supplies, and still we want to portion it out, ration it in order to enjoy it, or hoard it to ourselves. Otherwise, we fear, it may make it less special or meaningful.

When something is so central, so important, it needs repeating at every opportunity. Never wrinkle your nose at it, never grudgingly, never like it’s old-hat or monotonous. Christians are called to jump at every opportunity with zest, excitement, curiosity, enthusiasm, drive and mission. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind!

Let’s get an idea of what obeying this commandment to love God, this Law of Love, means. There are some similarities between the laws of the land and God’s Law. But there are also major differences!

First, the easiest laws to obey are the laws of nature. If I were to jump from a cliff-side, what law would I necessarily obey? [Gravity.] Having jumped, do I get a choice about it? [No.] Does it matter how I feel about it? [No.]

Next are national or state laws; you could even include parental laws or commands. If I see a stop sign, what am I supposed to do? [Stop.] Do I have a choice about it? [Yes.] Yes, I can choose to obey or not. If I stop, but I do it grudgingly, have I obeyed the stop sign? [Yes.]

If Mom tells me to clean my room and I do it grudgingly, have I obeyed her command to clean my room? [Yes.] (I think Walt Disney had a different message, but he didn’t fool me with that silly song, “Just Whistle While You Work.” Baloney! If Snow White had seen my room, she’d have whistled a different tune, probably “Battle Hymn of the Republic!”)

Last is God’s Law. If I obey God’s Law—any part of it—grudgingly, have I truly and fully obeyed him? Can you obey God grudgingly?

Jesus wasn’t the only one who said that all laws can be summarized as “Love God and love your neighbors.” Many said the same before and after him. And I believe that is why the first of the Ten Commandments is first. “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no others.” “Love me!”

We’ve heard plenty of times that love is not just an emotion or feeling, it’s not just how you feel about someone or about attitude. But to show how deep this commandment runs, I’ll remind us all that this love commandment includes all of these! It includes emotions, feelings and attitudes. Love God with all your heart!

“Heart.” The Greek word for heart was “kardia.” We get “cardiology’ or the whole “cardiovascular system” from this. The lawyer was actually quoting the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love God with all your heart, soul and mind.” But the Greek kardia and the Hebrew agree that it wasn’t just the heart. Kardia referred to the whole of those organs that bumped, thumped and gurgled: the heart and stomach and even the intestines. They felt that these organs, taken together, were connected to the will, to a person’s sense of bravery and resolution. We still say today, “Have some guts!”

“Visceral” is a good word for this. Visceral means, “pertaining to the guts.” We get the words “victuals,” or “vittles” from it. Visceral.

David Cooper, a Jewish theologian, recently [1997] wrote, “The essence of faith has always been a visceral connection to God. Visceral, we are connected by all that gives us life: heart, stomach, blood, and food, everything vital, including your very will to live and act.

If you have doubt, think of our service of Holy Communion, where we physically “ingest” the promise and living presence of Christ through eating bread and drinking wine. Ours is a visceral faith in and connection to God.

Loving God with all your heart means much more, then, than sending him an occasional Valentine card. It might include one, but it’s a Valentine that says, “I am entirely committed to you, God. I’m ready to do anything, say anything, and go anywhere. Whatever you have said, whatever you might ask of me, Lord, I am ready and resolved to do without fear or hesitation, with my whole will.”

That’s what it means to love God with all your heart. Wow…and we’ve just started!

We are also to love God with all our soul. The Greek word for this is psyche. We get “psychology.” The psyche was the vital principle, the central thing that causes a person to live, but more exactly, that thing that causes us to be a separate, individual living creature.

It means to love God with your life and breath, willing to die, to put your good name on the line, your personality and everything that adds vitality: health, wealth. Everything physical about, in and around you, you offer to God. And everything in you that is you: your personality, your feelings and psyche, offered to God and his will.

That’s what loving God with all your soul means.

Third, love God with all your strength. The Greek is ischus. It means, “strength, power, ability or force.” It’s a word that added an extra boost to loving God with all your soul. Taken together, we are to love God with all the strength and force of our personalities and physical livelihood…every muscle, every talent, everything about you, offered to God and his mission!

Last is loving God with all your mind. The Greek is dia-noia, meaning, “through knowledge.” Love God with all that comes through knowledge and thought. Concentrate on God. Align all thoughts with him and his will. Learn his Word. Learn what it means, and how to apply it. Think of nothing else besides, “My God, how great thou art!” Learn and do only those things that express and show this greatness.

That’s what loving God with all your mind means.

So, all together: thoughts, physical bodies, welfare, abilities, emotions property, all for God, all the time. Perfect obedience. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind!

After the lawyer answered his own question, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “Do all this—and love your neighbor as yourself—and you will live. Do all this and you will live!”

And with that, the lawyer realized the overwhelming task. Jesus had led him into an incredible truth. Obeying God to inherit salvation and obeying God to inherit a relationship with God is a task that no Biblical hero ever achieved, not David, not Moses, not even Abraham! Yet, God still demands that relationship, and obedience!

How?

The answer actually begins in the lawyer’s first question: “Teacher, what must I do—what must I do—to inherit—to inherit—eternal life?” This lawyer wasn’t the first, and he is not the last to try to earn his inheritance.

We sometimes attach strings and conditions to our inheritance. This only clouds the truth. An inheritance, a true inheritance, is something you receive, not by virtue of anything you do, but by virtue of your relationship with someone. Literally speaking, an inheritance is something you get by doing nothing else except by being born!

It is given or passed on, not earned. To try to earn an inheritance is like trying to earn or pay for the gift of life (including eternal life). There is a way…but it is impossible. That way demands the will and perfection that you can only find in God.

There’s the key! If we are to ever even attempt to obey and love God heart, soul, strength and mind, then God has to—and did—give us the relationship, give us the salvation and eternal life, not based on our earning it, or re-earning it, but only because we are his children…only because he says so!

And, if grace that free and extended to other people makes you feel nervous, or offended, then I remind you that it is grace; you didn’t earn or deserve it, either!

At last, when our salvation, forgiveness and eternal lives are secure—which they are (unless you want to argue the effectiveness of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice)—when we are secure that God has given us salvation as a true inheritance, then we are finally able to stop worrying and fussing over ourselves, our own little world, and how we stand before God. Finally, we can obey, not grudgingly, not fearfully, not to try to convince or prove anything to him, and not to earn anything.

When we know that God has already given us and secured in us everything that matters, we can obey God because we want to, because we love him…emotionally and actively.

Our relationship with God is an “I, Thou” relationship. I once mentioned that one of the saddest words that the English language ever lost was the word, “thou.” We think those “th-words” like thou, thee, and thine were all cold and formal words. Actually, not long ago, you’d call anyone “you,” even your friends. But you would reserve the word “thou” for your closest relationships, for those people you might otherwise call “beloved.”

So, to call God “Thou,” to suggest that our relationship to this high, incredible, untouchable, unreachable, un-earnable God was an “I and Thou” relationship, was to say that he was also as near and dear as a husband or wife, a parent or child, a “loved-one.”

This described a connection and relationship with God of heart and guts, genes and muscle and mind! We belong to our Father, and not only can we not earn that, it cannot be taken from us, either! It is a physical, spiritual, and visceral connection. It is a fact.

“O God, thou art my God!” And that is why we love him…emotionally and actively…because he first loved us…emotionally and actively…through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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