4^th December 2014

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 26 October 2014

Lessons - Leviticus 19:1-4; Deuteronomy 6:4,5; 1 John 4:7-12; Matthew
22:34-40

The second commandment is like the first, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' (Matthew 22:39)

These days there are not too many people who are tempted to love God so whole-heartedly that they lose sight of their neighbour's need. Nor are they likely to treat others so well that they will satisfy God's demands. Most try to be 'neighbourly' in a Christian kind of way, even if they do not go to church. Jesus' commandment to 'love our neighbour as ourselves' is thought to be common-sense advice.

Today, the 'love commandment' is widely thought to be about what we should do for others. The focus is on 'us' and 'our love' for them. However, we seem to think that the most important love is 'self-love'. We assume that it is only possible to love others, and God, if we first love ourselves. The first and great commandment of contemporary spirituality and therapy is 'you shall love yourself'.

This seems to agree with Jesus' command to 'love others as yourself'. In fact, it is the very opposite! As vital as it is to help folk overcome feelings of self-loathing and arrogance, it does not help to tell them to first love themselves. Self-analysis can help us see things in our own lives that have contributed to a poor or an inflated self-image. But it cannot free us from being preoccupied with ourselves - negatively or positively!

The first thing to see is that the second commandment identifies our fundamental human problem. 'As you love yourself' is not very flattering!

It exposes the fact that we love ourselves far too much. Comedian John Cleese defended himself against the charge of narcissism, by insisting that narcissists were 'foolishly infatuated with themselves'. With him it was the real thing! Jesus like-wise pokes fun at self-love which turns us in on ourselves - and separates us from others and God. Even in helping others we are focussed on what we are doing to help.

At the same time as laughing at us, the commandment drives us out of ourselves. Instead of being self-centred, we are called to love neighbours in need with the same level of concern that we normally reserve for ourselves.

Jesus strips us of self-concern and frees us to see the need of our neighbour
- whether the person is 'one of our own' or a 'stranger'. Genuine love is self-love turned inside out. We find ourselves, not by looking inwards for something good or god-like that we can love in ourselves, but by looking outwards to the needs of others.

Practising this 'love' is not natural. If it were, it would not have to be 'commanded'! And it is not to be confused with the kind of 'love' that is widely assumed to be 'right' purely because two 'selves' deem it to be so.
Genuine love of neighbour, unlike this generalised love, commits us to love even those whose 'false loves' demean God's good purposes for life together.

Such a magnificent love would be impossible except that this commandment follows the first great commandment to love the Lord God with all our 'heart and soul and mind and strength'. Love for neighbour is a direct and inescapable consequence of love for God.

We often miss the ambiguity in the phrase 'the love of God'. It can mean 'God's love of us' or 'our love of God'. In Scripture, 'God's love for us'
comes before 'our love for God' and makes possible our love for God and for other people, particularly those who have done wrong. It is vital, then, that we see 'God's love for us', not in relation to shallow or misguided ideals of 'love', but in relation to God's costly love for all in an often loveless world.

In Israel's history and the person of Jesus, the love of God 'for us' is singularly shown in God's hatred of evil and God's mercy to sinners. The truly loving God, enters into the world's misery, takes it upon himself and, in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, conquers its dreadful power.

Therefore, the 'love of God' - God's love - is love that puts wrongs right and people who have done wrong into 'right relationship' with God and others.
God's love is reconciling love. When John says that 'God is love' (1 John
4:7ff) he means the costly, self-giving, redemptive love embodied in Christ's crucified and risen love for people, like you and me, who do not naturally love God or one another as much as we love ourselves.

Our love of God and our neighbours should flow from joyful recognition that we are undeserving beneficiaries of God's forgiving love. As we have freely received, so we must freely give! In this way, we are freed from 'self-love'
which looks in vain to find our worth within, and are freed to experience the freedom of loving God for his unparalleled mercy and goodness to us and all people.

It is now clear why it is mistaken to interpret the 'second commandment' as affirming our preoccupation with self-love. The commandments do not say that we should first 'love ourselves' in order to love God and our neighbour. No matter how well-intended, focusing first on self-love leads to navel gazing and treating ourselves as final judges of our strengths and weaknesses, our worth and worthlessness.

There is, of course, a vital place for skilled, compassionate counselling that helps us understand destructive influences in our lives. Self-loathing and self-assertiveness both cause great distress to us, our neighbours and God. But if the message of God's unmerited love for us - self-centred beings that we are - is not heard, then, no matter how much better we understand our poor self-image or affirm our 'good self' or the 'divinity' within, we will still be taken up with loving ourselves. We may think that we have changed.
But we will still be 'foolishly infatuated with ourselves'.

We are freed from the power of 'self-love' only when it is redirected outwards to the love of God and love of others who are suffering because of their own sins or because they have been unjustly treated by others. It is only as beneficiaries of God's grace that we will know our true worth as forgiven sinners who need not fear evil or death. Then, we will know that we are loved children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ!

The priority of 'God's love for us' in enabling us to 'love our neighbours as we love ourselves' is splendidly affirmed in the UCA service for the Baptism of a Child (from a liturgy in the French Reformed Church based on 1 John 4:19):

Little child, for you Jesus Christ has come, has lived, has suffered; for you, he has endured the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary; for you, he has uttered the cry, 'It is accomplished!' For you, he has triumphed over death; for you, he prays at God's right hand; all for you, little child, even though you do not know it. In baptism, the word of the apostle is
fulfilled: 'We love, because God first loved us'.

We are all 'children of God' who so often show that we too 'do not know it'.
Nevertheless, we must freely confess persistent self-concern so that we are free to rejoice in the knowledge that all of us are recipients of God's redeeming grace. Such an acknowledgement takes us out of ourselves so that we can love God as 'Lord' and other people as they, too, are loved in Christ.
This is what it means to truly 'love our neighbours as ourselves'.

May the Holy Spirit so open our eyes to the Father's love for us that we shall be provoked to love others as we have been loved in Christ.
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Rev Dr Max Champion is Minister in St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia.

Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.