“You are to love the Lord with all your heart;
with all your soul;
with all your mind;
with all your strength.”
You know, they say the greatest distance in the world
is the distance from your head to your heart.
There is probably some truth to that in many ways.
Others say that women mostly operate from the heart
and men mostly operate from their head.
I am not sure that is totally true.
It is certainly not true in my experience
but it would tell us why we need both the male and the female;
or the masculine and feminine spirituality.
The integration of both is the best.
There is a certainly a difference between
head knowledge and heart knowledge;
and we really do need to have both.
For example: we all know intellectually what mercy is;
we know what it means to have mercy granted.
But I do not think we fully comprehend it into our hearts
until we have experienced mercy.
In other words, when we have done something terribly wrong
and we know we have done wrong;
and we are due rightful punishment or consequences;
then the person who is the victim of our wrongdoing
says to us with complete, unconditional affection
“You are forgiven.”
It almost feels wrong.
We might protest,
“No. No. Punish me. You need to punish me. I need it.”
But we have to accept that is mercy.
And when we experience that mercy, it really changes us.
We are never quite the same
because we always remember how this person was merciful to us.
Or even, probably more universal, is that of love.
We all intellectually understand what love is.
I don’t think any of us need a lesson in that
but when we experience love;
when we are loved and we love somebody,
like when we are loved
not for what we have done or for what we have,
but we are loved for who we are with all our warts and weirdness;
and for all our gifts and strangeness
that we are loved just the way we are;
and when we actually feel that in our hearts that changes us.
The gap between the head and the heart just disappears
and we totally understand what love truly is.
It is this joining of these poles,
these sort of two ways of thinking,
often called polemic thinking,
is the joining of the two that is powerful.
It is what Jesus was constantly hammering away.
We hear in all his entire life
that we see recorded in the gospels and
Jesus tries to bring these two together.
Sometimes, it is almost comical the way the disciples
or those in his audience cannot seem to get it.
At other times, it is far more subtle
where Jesus is trying to get it more nuanced.
And today is one of those more nuanced points.
Jesus was asked by this scholar, well-meaning probably,
God-fearing scholar and asks, “What is the first commandment?”
He was not trying to do it necessarily to trap Jesus
but he was looking to find eternal life.
Jesus says what is the law that came
from Deuteronomy in the first reading,
which is the law known by all good Jews.
Every Jew would have known it by heart, called the Shema;
they would have known it was to love the Lord with all you heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
This would have run off their tongues with no great effort.
They knew, head knowledge, what it meant.
But Jesus didn’t settle there.
He drops it down into the heart and says
“Oh, and you have to love your neighbor as yourself.”
because that is really where the practice gets it;
where the rubber hits the ground right there.
Now you have to love your God
but to do so you must love your neighbor as yourself.
And here’s the thing of it;
today we have these catechumens who are joining us today,
and it is in a special way to be made clear for them.
We all know who Jesus is; and we all believe in our heads.
That is why you are here:
You are believers and you have come to follow Jesus more deeply.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.
You believe in Jesus.
The second part, and where this practice comes into being is
“Do we follow Jesus?”
No where in scripture,
not in a single place in all of scripture
did Jesus ever say, “Come and worship me.”
Never once.
Not a single time has he ever said those words.
But he has said multiple times, over and over again,
“Come and follow me.”
You see that is the temptation for us,
as we stay up in the head,
that we know and we believe in Jesus
and that is a head, intellectual trip.
But unless we bring that down into the heart,
which is what we are called to do in discipleship,
following Jesus, doing the hard work of loving
that we really do not get Jesus.
It is a very subtle thing for us Catholics and Christians in general;
it is almost easier to worship Jesus.
It is a temptation because we think we have done our duty.
We come and worship Jesus and then we leave.
We have done our job.
I went to church on Sunday.
But that is not what Jesus says.
Here is the food to go and to follow Jesus;
to go and to do as he has done;
to love as he has loved.
So then comes the question,
“Who is our neighbor?”
Who is this person?
And again, we have to look to Jesus
because Jesus leads the way.
He shows us how to do this and how to do it really well.
He picks out the orphans.
And he picks out the widows.
And he picks out the lepers.
And he picks out the blind. Why?
Because they are on the periphery.
They are the ones who are least able to take care of themselves.
And the ones who are pushed out.
And Jesus says those are your neighbors.
The ones who are furthest away.
In one sense, it is easy to love those who we are closest to,
although I am not always sure that is true
but I think we’ll go along with that.
It’s easier to love those who are closest to us.
But I think what we have to do is we have to open our eyes
to see those who are on the periphery of our lives
and to notice them like Jesus notices them;
and to love them as we love ourselves
as evidence of our love for God.
I hope you, candidates and catechumens,
are going to learn from this community,
which is how to do that well,
which means we have to do it really well for them to witness it;
for them to see it.
And that is why we come to Eucharist every Sunday
because we know, if we are honest, that is hard work.
It is not easy to do that right every single Sunday;
every single week from here.
But then we have to ask the question specifically for our own life.
I cannot answer this.
You have to answer this for yourself:
Who is the neighbor in my life?
Who is the one who is on the furthest extremity of my life?
Who do I not notice?
Who might be really in need of help?
And that might be a loved one whom we know;
who we have not been loving as well as we know we should.
So today, let us not get fooled into just worshiping God;
I mean that is great, worshiping Jesus is great
but let’s make sure we follow Jesus.
And let us make sure that we take to heart
that we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart;
with all our soul;
with all our mind;
with all our strength;
but more importantly
we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.
