Matthew 22:34-46
October 29, 2023
At the beginning of January, I
encouraged all of us to take a Star Word. Star Words are an Epiphany practice
that our congregation began a couple of years ago, and the word we pick is
really the word that picks us. For whatever reason, whether it’s clear to us or
not, our Star Word is a word that we need to live with and live into over the
course of the coming year. If you didn’t take a Star Word last January, you’ll
get your chance again in just a few months.
The Star Word that I chose last
January – or the one that chose me – was “tenderness.” When I got it, I
thought, “Hmm. I guess this means I need to be mindful of how tender I am with
people this year. Maybe there will be particular people I need to be tender
with.”
Within just a couple of weeks of
receiving my word, my mom died. Five days later, I fell and broke my wrist.
Without warning, I went from days that seemed fairly normal and typical to
grieving and to hurting both physically and emotionally. And I went from
feeling relatively in control to feeling helpless, needing assistance with the
small, everyday things I generally take for granted, like taking a shower,
opening a bottle, and tying my own shoes. And because so much seemed to be
happening at the same time, it took me a little while to realize that the
person I needed to show tenderness to was me.
It should seem obvious, I guess,
that I needed to show myself some tenderness during that time. I don’t think
anyone would have argued that with me, but I discovered that I’m not very good
at being tender with myself. I think I should just push through pain or grief
or both. I’m more than happy to help someone else. If someone else in my
circumstance had come to me needing help with a small task, I would have done
it gladly. I’m sure you would have too. But when it was me needing the help, I
was embarrassed and even ashamed that I couldn’t do for myself. But life can be
so hard and sometimes we can’t help ourselves, so a little tenderness toward
self is necessary.
I know that I’m not alone in this,
in struggling with tenderness toward myself. I think our struggle with is
connected to our culture’s equating self-compassion, self-tenderness, and
self-love with self-centeredness and self-obsession. And certainly there are
self-centered people out there, plenty of them, who take it to the extreme of
narcissism. But that’s a whole other sermon.
The thing is, showing yourself some
tenderness, some compassion does not mean that you are self- centered. However,
being filled with self-hatred or toxic shame or guilt can make you
self-obsessed without even realizing it. Brent and I are big fans of the public
radio show, The Hidden Brain. If you don’t catch it live, you can listen
to the podcast. About a month ago, Brent told me about an episode that focused
on self-compassion and how necessary it is. The guest was a psychologist who
told a difficult story about herself from her days as a graduate assistant. I
won’t go into the details, but she messed up big time. She made bad decisions,
life-changing errors in judgment, and she suffered overwhelming shame, guilt,
and self-loathing because of them. In her words, she was a mess. And the more
she focused on her shame and guilt and self-hatred, the more inward she turned.
The more self-centered she became. Amid this inner chaos and with her outer
life in tatters, she was invited to attend a meditation group. She went reluctantly,
but through the process of sitting quietly and mindfully, she began to grasp just
how self-centered her shame and guilt had made her. It had become all about
her, even though it was negative, it was still all about her. And it wasn’t self-love that did it. It was the
lack thereof.
This changed her life. This changed
her research. She quoted studies that have been done that show that people who
are constantly berating themselves, beating themselves up, who refuse to cut
themselves some slack are more self-centered than those who do. She stated that
self-compassion is not about letting ourselves off the hook for our mistakes or
not being accountable. It’s about recognizing that we are all a mess. And the
people who acknowledge that, who show themselves compassion and tenderness and
love, are much better at loving others. To show yourself compassion opens you
up to the needs of other people. If you can be compassionate to yourself, you
are better at being compassionate to others.
In this passage where Jesus states
what we know as The Greatest Commandment – and it really is – we most often
focus on only two tenets of it. We are to love God and to love our neighbor.
But as we read this morning, that is not the end of the sentence. We are to
love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. I think we overlook
this last part to our detriment. And I think Jesus knew this.
At this point in Matthew’s gospel,
Jesus knows that he is in the last days of his life. He knows that those in
power are plotting against him, plotting to have him killed. And as scholar
Debi Thomas pointed out, it is interesting that when he is asked this question
about which commandment is the greatest, he doesn’t quote doctrine to them. He
doesn’t tell them to adhere to dogma. No, he tells them to love God with all
your heart, your soul, and your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And
Jesus isn’t calling them to participate in a feeling or an emotion, he is
calling them to a way of living. Love God with everything you are, your whole
being, and love your neighbor as yourself.
And how did Jesus show this kind of love?
How was he a role model and an example of this kind of love? Jesus had
compassion for those who suffered. He had compassion for the crowds who were
hungry and who were like lost sheep without a shepherd. He had compassion for
the blind, the lame, the voiceless, the ignored, and the marginalized. He had
compassion for those who were labeled as sinners and therefore less than by
others. And he had compassion for those who did the labeling in the first
place. He spoke truth to them, but he still did it with love. Jesus’ compassion
was not just a feeling. He demonstrated it. He acted on it and lived it. In
Greek, the word for compassion relates to the gut. When you have compassion for
someone, you feel it in your gut. Your gut twists in compassion for others.
When you see the suffering of others, whoever they may be, your stomach
clenches in empathy and compassion for them. And you act on that compassion. You
act on that twisting of your gut for someone else’s suffering.
When reading this passage in the
past, I’ve thought of Jesus’ words as linear. You love God first, then you love
your neighbor, and if you have time, throw in a little love for yourself. But I
think that this is far more cyclical than it is linear. Loving God with
everything we have, we everything we are opens us up to loving our neighbors,
and loving our neighbors opens us up to loving God even more. And
loving ourselves makes us more loving of our neighbors, and when we do both, we
love God even more. And when we love God even more, we love
ourselves and our neighbors even more. It goes around and around
and around.
To love God, to love our neighbor,
and to love ourselves is not just an intellectual exercise. It is a physical,
physiological, emotional, mindful, active response. To love God, to love our
neighbor, to love ourselves is to see suffering and pain and hurt, no matter
who is experiencing it, and respond with love, compassion, and tenderness. And
to love God, neighbor, and ourselves, is to act on all of the above. Our
neighbors here and around the world are suffering. Humanity is suffering. No
matter what side you have chosen in this terrible war in Israel- Palestine,
humanity is suffering. Humanity is suffering in Ukraine and in Russia. Humanity
is suffering in the Sudan. Humanity is suffering in Mexico. Humanity is
suffering in Lewiston, Maine and in Nashville and Uvalde and Baltimore and
Buffalo. Humanity is suffering, and I’m not saying that all of this suffering
would be alleviated or ended altogether if we just knew how to show ourselves a
little more compassion, if we took the words “as yourself” a little more seriously.
But if we can be compassionate to ourselves, more tender and forgiving to the
mess we sometimes are, then maybe we could be more compassionate, tender, and
forgiving of the mess in others. Maybe self-compassion helps to widen the
circle of love that Jesus called us to follow. Maybe if we could allow
ourselves to be human, then we could remember that even those we might consider
enemies are also human and worthy of the same dignity and respect that we are,
and vice versa.
One final note, when we love God,
we’re not just loving an idea or a concept or even some being in the sky. We’re
loving the One who became like us, who took on our skin and our blood and our
bones, who took on our frailties and our limits, so we could finally figure out
what it means to really be human. And thanks be to God for this, because when
it comes down to it, it is the incarnation, the belief that God became like us,
that keeps me going. It gets me up in the morning. It gets me in this pulpit, even
when I feel that I have nothing to offer, even when I feel as though my faith
has shriveled in the face of humanity’s suffering. God became us because of
love for us so we could finally learn how to love God and love one another and
ourselves. Humanity is suffering, and the Greatest Commandment is needed now
more than ever before. Indeed, it is the only thing that will save us.
Let all of God’s children, all of
humanity, say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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