Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis August 24, 2008

Matthew 22:34-40

“Loving Out, Loving In”

Thousands of people have gone to personal growth workshops run by Dr. Cherie Scott-Carter to learn how they can find fulfilling loving relationships and sustain them. She usually begins by asking the participants to describe the life partner of their dreams and how this person would treat them. Most people say they want someone who is kind, considerate, and loving; someone who will treat them with respect and unconditional acceptance and listen to their wishes, goals, and dreams; someone who will make them feel special and cherished; someone who will cheer at their successes; someone they can be open and honest with and who they can trust with their heart, mind, body, and soul.

Then she asks these same people how many of these behaviors they extend towards themselves. Most of them admit that the answer is little to none. Many of them acknowledge that they are critical of their own flaws and quick to beat up on themselves for their mistakes. They routinely override many of their own needs and turn a deaf ear to their own emotions. They devote little time or attention to connecting with their own hearts and spirits. Physically, emotionally and spiritually they take pretty poor care of themselves.¹

I suspect this is a pretty good description of most of us. Most of us feel something of a love deficiency , so we look for someone to love us as we long to be loved. If we find a mate, each of us hopes that the other will intuitively understand us, fully appreciate us, faithfully take care of us, and selflessly devote themselves to making us happy. But neither of us knows how to love the primary person that we were given to take care of–ourselves–let alone have enough love left over to selflessly love another.

As long as we feel a love deficiency in our lives, we will have a hard time creating a satisfying love relationship with anyone. We’ll see love as something we’re supposed to receive instead of something we create. We might manipulate, appease, or cling to our partner to keep from losing the bits of love we find. We might sell out our own dreams, gifts and needs or settle for anyone we can find who won’t reject us, to keep our loneliness at bay. We might fill our lives with stuff or stimulation or status to try to fill the hole inside.

To some degree or another, this is the human condition. You’ve probably already thought of a number of humans who have this condition. But is it possible that you sometimes have a love deficit that keeps you from loving yourself and others fully and living freely?

How do we deal with our love deficit? Self help gurus tell us we need to start by loving ourselves better. But if we try to love ourselves by dipping into our love deficit, all we’ll come up with is self indulgence and self entitlement. Will that bring more love into our lives? I don’t think so.

Jesus opens up a whole different way of filling our love deficit in his teaching from our scripture reading this morning. He doesn’t have us start with loving ourselves or loving others, but with loving God. This is the first commandment and the first step to filling our love deficit.

How does this work? We can start by opening our awareness to God’s gifts to us. Are you breathing? With every breath and every heartbeat, you are receiving the gift of life, with the capacity to behold a sunset, make a baby laugh, smell a rose, be moved by music, look deeply into someone’s eyes, or taste a bowl of ice cream–Death by Chocolate, on a warm fudge brownie, with hot fudge, whipped cream and a cherry on top.

Think about your own life–given to you by God at this place and time, with all the opportunities and blessings you experience. Think about the people God has put in your life to help you learn what your soul has needed to learn to deepen and expand–sometimes through their words and example, sometimes through the challenges they presented. You aren’t just an accident of nature. You were created unique in all the world, and God has opened doors for you, quietly guided you, and given you what you’ve needed at each turn to keep you moving forward on your life journey, that eventually ends back in God’s embrace.

Think about the divine love that was embodied in the life and death and person of Jesus, who reached out to the lost, the lonely and the loveless–touching, healing, embracing, forgiving, teaching, empowering, and calling each one to the fulness of life. That same divine love is still alive and is offered to us in every moment, and Jesus invites us in every situation to both taste and help create God’s realm of love, peace, joy and hope in our lives and our world.

Think about the spiritual truths you are learning–that abundance grows through gratitude, that love flows through our lives by sharing it, that we find forgiveness as we learn to forgive, that we find our true selves as we offer ourselves in service to the world--and think how those mysteries link our spirits with God’s Spirit.

As we open our awareness to all these gifts, we can’t help but feeling love flowing through our beings. How can we not love One who loves us so lavishly, so deeply, so unconditionally? We love God because God loves us. And even deeper than that, we love God because God’s love is an essential, irrevocable part of who we are and what we’re here to discover. To love God is to experience our own eternal worth, the preciousness of our soul, and our purpose for living. Loving God teaches us how to love ourselves as God loves us.

How can we have a love deficit if we’re in touch with all of this? The essential truth of us is that we never really have a love deficit at all. We just keep losing our awareness of how loved we really are, no matter how many flaws we can name off, how many mistakes we’ve made, or how discouraged we may feel.

Then Jesus says that the second most important commandment is like the first–we need to learn to love our neighbor as ourselves. So what would it mean to love ourselves as creatures who are created, sustained and forgiven by God, knowing that God has entrusted to us the primary responsibility for caring the body, mind and spirit that God has given us? Would it mean calling ourselves an idiot when we make a mistake, or would it mean telling ourselves, “I made a mistake. I’ll take responsibility for my part in it, do what I can to correct it, learn from it, and do better next time.”

Would it mean over-giving to everyone until we’re depleted and blaming them for being so dependent on us, or would it mean taking time to be replenished and blessed by God’s abundant gifts as we go along, so we are giving out of fullness rather than emptiness?

Would it mean stuffing our feelings when we’re sad, anxious or angry and pretending everything is okay, or would it mean taking time to compassionately listen to our inner self like we would an upset child, and find ways to comfort, care for or reassure ourselves?

Would it mean indulging our tendencies toward gluttony, lust, laziness, and instant gratification, like we might spoil an unruly child? Or would it mean keeping our bodies healthy, expanding our minds, deepening our spirits, and developing our gifts so that we can become all God created us to be?

When God gave us life in this body, God entrusted our body, mind and spirit to us to care for and develop. To fail to love our selves is to devalue the special gift that God created just for us and that God loves with infinite love.

But when our lives are flowing with God’s love for us and our love for God, we find that love naturally flowing out to our neighbors. When we’re in touch with God’s unconditional love, the barriers, distinctions, and divisions between us and others dissolve. We can empathize with others, identify them as our own brother or sister, and even to make sacrifices on their behalf.

Those of you who were here yesterday for Everett Miller’s memorial service heard an extraordinary example of that kind of love. Everett was in the Marines in Okinawa during World War 2. His unit was supposed to lob hand grenades into caves to kill or wound any Japanese soldiers that might be hiding in them. He came to a cave that was used for human burials. Something told him they shouldn’t throw a grenade into this cave. At great risk to himself, he walked into the cave by himself, searched it, and found a Japanese mother and her young daughter who had been tightly crouched in the cave for several days, hiding from the Americans. He gently led them out to safety and freedom.

This is a true war hero in my book. He loved his neighbor–a pair of unknown Japanese that some would have called enemies–as he loved himself.

Here’s another war hero. Gil Hale, Lynda Hale’s wife and Barb and Don Easterly’s son-in-law, just sent me an update on Gil’s brother, Robert Hale. In 2004 Robert had a very successful oral surgery practice in the southern California, was president of the San Fernando Valley Dental Society, earned a 7-figure salary, had a gorgeous house and several luxury cars, and was at the peak of his career, when he was called to active duty by the Army Reserves to serve in a MASH unit in Afghanistan putting together bomb-shattered and shrapnel-shredded faces of our wounded military personnel, coalition troops, civilians, and even enemy combatants.

When his tour was over, he returned to his family and his practice, but it wasn’t the same. He was living in luxury while people in the Middle East were dealing with severe deformity and excruciating pain. He decided his fellow humans needed his talents for something more pressing than pulling wisdom teeth and doing root canals. He said, "We live in extraordinary times under extraordinary circumstances. Our soldiers are risking their lives daily. The Army has asked doctors who can wear a uniform to step forward at this great time of need. I have seen the need, and I am stepping forward." So he gave up his practice and posh lifestyle, moved with his family to San Antonio, and enlisted at Army pay to teach medical interns everything he knew about how to restore the mangled faces of the victims of war. He said, "In private practice, everything is about the money. In the Army, it's everything but the money."²

What is it about, then? Duty to your country, but more than duty. Service, but more than service. In Robert Hale’s case, it’s about loving your neighbor as yourself.

When our hearts are open to the energy of love, we can love inward, and take responsible care of the body, mind and spirit that God has entrusted to our care–ourselves. We can keep our lives in balance, set healthy boundaries, and make time to receive and appreciate and enjoy the gifts of life that God pours into our laps. When we do this, our lives are sustained.

But our love doesn’t end there. We can also love outward, and allow our love to touch people who may have no way to repay us, people who may not be like us in any way other than that they are a fellow creature created and loved by God. When we do this, our lives are expanded, our hearts opened, and our spirits are deepened. When we look at it this way, loving our neighbor as our self is not a sacrifice; it’s a blessing.

Think about yourself for a moment. Are you feeling a love deficit? Are you wishing for someone to bring more love into your life? Did you know that it’s part of your life purpose to learn how to turn that deficit into an overflowing fountain? Jesus shows us the way. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength”–so you can discover the love that is continually offered to you by your Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer and Eternal Friend. “Love yourself”–with compassion, patience, forgiveness, and a vision of who you can be–because this is how God loves you. And “love your neighbor as yourself”–so that unconditional love can bless you as it flows through you.