Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 23, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It has long struck me as interesting, and a bit odd, that Jesus’ Great Commandment enjoins us not simply to love our neighbors but to love them "as yourself." What does that mean, "as yourself." Why not simply love the Lord your God and love your neighbor? Wouldn’t that be a sufficient and much simpler way to put it? One answer to that question, of course, is that Jesus didn’t make these words up or pull them out of thin air. He is quoting his Scripture, Hebrew Scripture, and specifically Leviticus 19:18, which we just heard read a few minutes ago. Still, Jesus could have left "as yourself" out and didn’t, so we still have to ask: Why "as ourselves?"

The only answer that I’ve been able to come up with is that there is an assumption behind the phrase "as yourself" that was unspoken and unquestioned in these Bible verses, in the original from Leviticus and in Jesus’ use of that original in the saying we know as the Great Commandment. That assumption, it seems to me, is that the way we love ourselves is an appropriate model for how we are to love others. The assumption is that we do in fact love ourselves properly and authentically and that we will be doing God’s will if we love others the same way. That there is such an assumption behind these words is the only reason I can find for their inclusion in the Leviticus passage and in the Great Commandment.

And, frankly, I’ve got a problem with that assumption. Maybe in the 5^th or 6^th century BCE when Leviticus was written, and in the first century CE when Jesus lived and when Matthew was written, that assumption could go unquestioned. In Jesus’ time there was no science of psychology. Freud and Jung were 1,900 years in the future. The complex inner workings of the human psyche were totally unknown. It was quite easy to assume in those days that everyone, or at least everyone who wasn’t possessed by a demon, did love himself or herself appropriately and authentically. That is far less true today, however. Our inner dynamic, our relationship with ourselves, is far more complex and far more problematic than anyone realized in Biblical times. Indeed, I don’t think that we can assume at all that the way we love ourselves is an appropriate and reliable model for how we are to love others. I had a friend once who used to say: I think we do love our neighbor as ourselves, which is to say, not much. I have said from this pulpit more than once that the hardest person for us to forgive is our self, and a lot of heads have nodded when I’ve said it. Similarly, I think that the hardest person for us to love is our self. To love authentically, that is. To love the way we should, the way God intends us to love. Indeed, today we know that so far from loving ourselves appropriately, much of the time we sabotage ourselves without even knowing it. That’s something that we are aware of that the authors of Leviticus and Matthew were not.

Now it may be that the idea that people don’t really love themselves seems strange to you; but if it does, let me suggest that the reason you have trouble with the idea may have something to do with the way we understand the word love. After all, nearly everyone appears superficially at least to be more concerned about themselves than they are about anyone else. Indeed, for at least the last twenty-five years or so, our culture has told us in myriad ways that greed is good. The reigning political ideology among us is that individual greed, individuals being concerned about themselves and their immediate family above all else, is not only good for individuals but in some mysterious, inexplicable way is good for society as a whole as well. It’s nonsense, but never mind. Segments of our society who benefit from it have been tremendously successful in selling it to the rest of us. This ideology determines almost our entire political culture regardless of political party.

Greed, that is, self-centered living, can look a lot like the love of self that Leviticus and Jesus were talking about. I mean, if we live for ourselves, we love ourselves, right? If we try to make as much money as we can, we love ourselves, right? If we buy the biggest house, the biggest car, the biggest TV, we’re taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, right? If we spend all our money on ourselves and our family, we love ourselves, don’t we? And since all of that’s true, then loving our neighbor as ourselves means giving money to charity, right? It will probably come as no surprise to you that my answer to all of those seemingly rhetorical questions is no. None of that is what love of self and neighbor is. Not authentic love of self and therefore not authentic love of neighbor.

Now the focus of the second part of the Great Commandment is on love of neighbor, but it ties that love to the way we love ourselves. So it seems that if we want to understand how we are to love our neighbor, we have to figure out what genuine, authentic love of self is. After all, Jesus wouldn’t call us to inauthentic love of our neighbor, but if our love of our self is inauthentic, then our love of our neighbor will be inauthentic as well. That is seems to me is one key point the Great Commandment is making.

And indeed if we look at the state of the world today we have to say, don’t we, that, that our love of ourselves must be awfully inauthentic given the way that true love of neighbor is the exception not the rule. After all, there is a school of great wisdom that holds that the state of the world is simply a reflection of the inner state of the people in the world. The Dalai Lama, a very wise man in many ways even if he doesn’t get it about gay people, says that if you want peace in the world, begin by creating peace within yourself. Jesus’ saying about love of self and neighbor suggests to me that he believed the same thing about love. The way we love others will simply be a reflection of the way in which we love ourselves.

And the evidence is that we must not love ourselves very well. The best evidence for that fact is way that war among humans seems to be the rule not the exception. War against the neighbor-and everyone is our neighbor, as Jesus made very clear-is the ultimate expression of hate. It is in every instance the opposite of love. We can often come up with all sorts of justifications for it, but we can never say that it is an expression of love of neighbor. And it is everywhere in the world today, and it always has been. We like to say we use it as a last resort, but for the most part we humans don’t. We use it as a first resort more than a last one. We think it is the fastest and easiest way to solve problems, to get our way, and even-paradoxically and nonsensically-to maintain peace. And in every instance it is an expression of hatred and not of love. The reason it is so prevalent among us, let me suggest, is precisely that it is the external reflection of an internal disorder, of an inauthentic and false love of self. We do not truly love ourselves. We do not love ourselves genuinely and authentically. Because you see, all that greed isn’t true love of self. Greed isn’t love, it’s selfishness. And if we want to end the dominance of hatred of the neighbor in our world, we’ve got to start by learning what it means truly to love ourselves.

In the Great Commandment Jesus doesn’t tell us what authentic love of self is. He didn’t tell us, but in his life he showed us. We think of Jesus as being selfless, self-giving, and he was; but it is precisely in that selflessness that we see what genuine self love is. That’s because what we see in Jesus is a man fully committed to becoming fully and authentically his true self. Jesus seems selfless because he was so completely and authentically himself. He was fully and completely the person God created him to be. Indeed, for us Christians, he was the only fully authentic person who ever lived.

And here’s the thing: He wanted that same total development that he wanted for himself for everyone else. He wanted every person he met, and he wants us, to be and become the full, complete, authentic person God created that person and us to be. That’s how he loved them as he loved himself. He wanted for them, and for us, what he wanted for himself. Full lives. Authentic lives lived in love. Lives with basic needs met but not lives of material wealth. Lives in which their needs are met but not at the expense of others and certainly not lives of wealth and ease bought at the expense of the misery of others.

Friends, the reason our world doesn’t reflect those values-and believe me, it doesn’t-is because that’s not how we love ourselves. Our love of ourselves is selfish, and it is therefore inauthentic. And we can’t love others appropriately until we begin to love ourselves appropriately. As long as our love for ourselves is a false love grounded in ego gratification and material wealth, we will relate to the world in hatred and not in love. If we do not practice authentic love toward ourselves we cannot practice it toward others, and our world will continue to reflect that fact. Our world will continue to be characterized not by peace, mutual respect, and mutual well-being but by war, that ultimate expression of hate.

So. Do you want to change the world? And by "you" I mean each one of us and everyone else in the entire world. Start by changing yourself. Give up your life of ego gratification and passion for material security. Learn authentic love of self. It will change the world. It is probably the only thing that can. Amen.