One of my favorite movies of all time—favorite because it can lift my spirits more than almost any other movie, is The Princess Bride. I love its blend of, as one character lists at one point, “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles.” I am one of those people who can quote scene after scene from this movie, and apply lines from this movie to almost every situation, just like my friend Shug Goodlow can do with The Godfather.
The entire book is distilled down to the idea that love is the greatest thing in the world—and that there are many ways to show love.
You can show it by doing whatever you can to make the one you love happy, even in as small a thing as handing her a water pitcher she could have gotten herself but that she asks you for just so she can be near you.
You can show love by never giving up on rescuing the one you love even if you think they’ve forgotten about you.
You can show love by never forgetting the beloved father you lost in childhood, and doing anything you can to seek justice for him.
You can show it by spending an entire day sharing a special book with someone you love, even if you have to convince them repeatedly to stick with you.
Truly, there are dozens of ways love is demonstrated in this sweet, funny, fairy tale. Love sums it up.
In The Princess Bride, the hero, Westley, faces all kinds of opponents, and he overcomes or wins over every one—even the giant. Looking backward from today’s gospel reading from Matthew 22 over the last several weeks, Jesus has now come full circle in being confronted by nearly all the major factions and parties of the day within Israel. The scribes, chief priests, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, and now the Pharisees again, but this time adding in a lawyer—they all have now confronted Jesus and questioned him and his authority.
And these are groups that usually would not be seen as allies. The Herodians were secular Jews who supported a puppet king of the Roman empire. The chief priests and scribes possibly included both Pharisee and Sadducees. Pharisees were those who acknowledged the power of traditional teaching of the rabbis alongside scripture, while the Sadducess didn’t—they were like the fundamentalists of their time in giving authority only to what was written in scripture. But one thing all these groups could agree on—that Jesus posed a threat to their power and their understanding of themselves as being “right.”
With supposedly 613 separate laws in the Torah (365 of them negative), this had been a subject of debate for centuries. And many attempts had been made to distill these various laws down to an easier number.
Jesus once again puts a twist on his answer. The Law, he says, can be summed up in two things. First, he quotes Deuteronomy, a statement known as the Shema, a prayer that Jews were required to recite morning and night every day: Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes back to Leviticus and pulls this lesser-known verse out and sets it alongside the Shema: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And he says this is the same as the first.
Jesus boils down the essence of the Law down to love.
Think about this as what he DOESN’T say the law is about.
He doesn’t say it’s about believing certain things- especially ones that Christians nowadays often argue about..
He doesn’t say it’s about who will get into heaven or “personal salvation.”
He doesn’t say it’s about casting out folk you don’t like or don’t approve of.
He doesn’t say it’s about being RIGHT. He doesn’t say it’s about God being vengeful or punitive.
He says it is about LOVE. And further, he states very clearly that the best way to put your love for God into action is by loving those around you—your neighbors, whether you even like them or not, your political opponents-- it doesn’t matter. He equates those two things as being the same.
Think about that! And then wonder at how revolutionary an idea this still is, 2000 year later! Love that isn’t about individual, personal relationships with Jesus so we can escape punishment, but love that is grounded in forming a community in which all are welcome—what Matthew calls the Kingdom of Heaven, or Dr. King called the Beloved Community.
Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that everything in the Law and Prophets is meant to create a community in which justice and peace prevail—what we would call “heaven on earth.” The heart of God’s kingdom on earth and in our hearts, which was considered to be the seat of a person’s will, is LOVE. That is what makes Jesus’s message so compelling, then and now.
Our Presiding Bishop nearly always includes in every one of his sermons this observation: “If it’s not about love, then it’s not about God.” Jesus states the same thing quite clearly here.
Love is the only thing that can change the world. So why do we have such a hard time doing it?
There is a poverty of real love in the world—and this is true 2,000 years after Jesus’s earthly ministry. We’re too prone to toss off the word love and make it seem common. We love our friends. Most of us love our families, even if that means we have to make our families intentionally rather than by birth. We love our pets. We love Ann and Nancy Wilson of the rock group Heart.
That’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about, however- love that is a response to something we first get. The love that Jesus talks about is grounded in compassion and generous acceptance. It is what Episcopal priest and humanitarian Becca Stevens talks about when she talks about love healing—and if you listen to her, that healing comes from the inside out as much as the outside in. The kind of love Jesus is talking about is also grounded in self-discipline. It is rooted in an open-heartedness that post-modern culture tries to drive out of us with every effort at distraction at its disposal.
When I was a kid, there was actually a popular novel whose tag line was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." What nonsense. Our entire culture tries to convince us that love shouldn’t be hard work. The mere fact that Jesus has to keep telling us to do it tells us that it IS.
So where do we begin? One tangible way to step toward this kind of love is by practicing justice for others—to stand alongside those who are often denigrated or seen as “less than” in our society, and to treat them as we ourselves would wish to be treated. Isn’t that kind of fairness the basis for true justice, and isn’t that kind of justice the foundation for true peace?
What if we were to try it?
It’s the kind of love that calls us to reconsider the kind of off-hand cutting remarks that are poisonous to communities. It’s about giving people the benefit of the doubt and offering the grace we would want to receive when people aren’t being their best selves. We can acknowledge our own woundedness, and instead try to see the pain behind others’ actions, rather than lash out ourselves.
And in this time of COVID, we love each other by remembering what true worship of God is all about. I know we all want to be back together to worship like we used to. It was easy. It was familiar. It made us feel good. But to do so would be to endanger each other. I know many otherwise capable people who have either imbibed the dangerous idea that putting the Lord your God to the test against all evidence is somehow a sign of faith (the “God will protect me because I have faith” cohort) OR who view worship as entertainment and social time more than a time of reverence for God and neighbor. Worship is NOT a “right.” Worship is something more important— a state of the heart, mind, and soul. It’s LOVE in action.
We like to quantify things. That’s why stewardship campaigns are so difficult for everyone involved. We are not a part of one of the traditions that flat-out tell you how much it costs to be a member of this community. Some places are upfront, and say, “Ten percent of your income.” Man. That’s a lot. More power to those people who make that commitment. But most of us resist that. However, love IS about giving without fear, but with boldness and joy.
Especially in this time, the world around us is desperate for signs of this kind of love. The kind of love that blesses us with a grounded awareness of where the hurting is around us, and calls us to minister to those needs in the name of the God we are called to love. That makes visible the God who IS love—unchanging love that seeks to change the world.
It's about living into this blessing from A Black Rock Prayer Book:
The world now is too dangerous
and too beautiful for anything but love.
May your eyes be so blessed you see God in everyone.
Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor.
May your hands be so blessed
that everything you touch is a sacrament.
Your lips, so you speak nothing but the truth with love.
May your feet be so blessed you run
to those who need you.
And may your heart be so opened,
so set on fire, that your love,
your love, changes everything.(2)
What do all the commandments tell us?
Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the world.
Amen.
Love is the only thing that can change the world. So why do we have such a hard time doing it?
There is a poverty of real love in the world—and this is true 2,000 years after Jesus’s earthly ministry. We’re too prone to toss off the word love and make it seem common. We love our friends. Most of us love our families, even if that means we have to make our families intentionally rather than by birth. We love our pets. We love Ann and Nancy Wilson of the rock group Heart.
That’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about, however- love that is a response to something we first get. The love that Jesus talks about is grounded in compassion and generous acceptance. It is what Episcopal priest and humanitarian Becca Stevens talks about when she talks about love healing—and if you listen to her, that healing comes from the inside out as much as the outside in. The kind of love Jesus is talking about is also grounded in self-discipline. It is rooted in an open-heartedness that post-modern culture tries to drive out of us with every effort at distraction at its disposal.
When I was a kid, there was actually a popular novel whose tag line was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." What nonsense. Our entire culture tries to convince us that love shouldn’t be hard work. The mere fact that Jesus has to keep telling us to do it tells us that it IS.
So where do we begin? One tangible way to step toward this kind of love is by practicing justice for others—to stand alongside those who are often denigrated or seen as “less than” in our society, and to treat them as we ourselves would wish to be treated. Isn’t that kind of fairness the basis for true justice, and isn’t that kind of justice the foundation for true peace?
What if we were to try it?
It’s the kind of love that calls us to reconsider the kind of off-hand cutting remarks that are poisonous to communities. It’s about giving people the benefit of the doubt and offering the grace we would want to receive when people aren’t being their best selves. We can acknowledge our own woundedness, and instead try to see the pain behind others’ actions, rather than lash out ourselves.
And in this time of COVID, we love each other by remembering what true worship of God is all about. I know we all want to be back together to worship like we used to. It was easy. It was familiar. It made us feel good. But to do so would be to endanger each other. I know many otherwise capable people who have either imbibed the dangerous idea that putting the Lord your God to the test against all evidence is somehow a sign of faith (the “God will protect me because I have faith” cohort) OR who view worship as entertainment and social time more than a time of reverence for God and neighbor. Worship is NOT a “right.” Worship is something more important— a state of the heart, mind, and soul. It’s LOVE in action.
We like to quantify things. That’s why stewardship campaigns are so difficult for everyone involved. We are not a part of one of the traditions that flat-out tell you how much it costs to be a member of this community. Some places are upfront, and say, “Ten percent of your income.” Man. That’s a lot. More power to those people who make that commitment. But most of us resist that. However, love IS about giving without fear, but with boldness and joy.
Especially in this time, the world around us is desperate for signs of this kind of love. The kind of love that blesses us with a grounded awareness of where the hurting is around us, and calls us to minister to those needs in the name of the God we are called to love. That makes visible the God who IS love—unchanging love that seeks to change the world.
It's about living into this blessing from A Black Rock Prayer Book:
The world now is too dangerous
and too beautiful for anything but love.
May your eyes be so blessed you see God in everyone.
Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor.
May your hands be so blessed
that everything you touch is a sacrament.
Your lips, so you speak nothing but the truth with love.
May your feet be so blessed you run
to those who need you.
And may your heart be so opened,
so set on fire, that your love,
your love, changes everything.(2)
What do all the commandments tell us?
Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the world.
Amen.
Readings:
Links/Citations:
1) William Goldman, The Princess Bride script, at http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/princess_bride.html
2) A Black Rock Prayer Book, used at Burning Man, http://www.ees1862.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A-Black-Rock-Prayer-Book-2019.pdf, cited by Debie Thomas at Journey with Jesus, 18 October 2020.
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