I have bookshelves full of volumes that try to tell me how it is that we all ought to live our lives to the Glory of God and the establishment of God’s Kingdom. There are books that try to interpret what Jesus said and did so that we can all bring into fruition the things that God has in mind for humankind. I have always thought that Christianity tries to say much too much and doesn’t do enough. Jesus made it all rather simple. He taught his disciples, and us to obey the two commandments:
Love the Lord your God with all of your heart,
with all of your soul and all of your mind. This is
the first and great commandment. The second is
like unto it: Love your neighbor as a person like
yourself. On these two commandments, hang all
of the law and the prophets.
This certainly sounds simple enough. Why is loving our neighbor such a terrible problem? How did we get so far off track?
I’ve always been fascinated by the Crusades, those holy wars in the middle ages when Christian armies were sent to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslim hordes. There were a number of crusades and great destruction and loss of life involved. The problem is that these were Christians, supposedly following the teaching of Christ who nevertheless involved themselves in killing lots of people because of their different religion and their occupation of the supposedly beloved city of Jerusalem. The great warrior Saladin killed many crusaders at the Horns of Hittin, in a colossal battle and King Richard the first of England killed many Muslims in the city of Jerusalem.
This is only one moment in the Christian abandonment of the simple teachings of Jesus. Christian history is full of conflict. Each of our denominations is a moment in time when we couldn’t agree and as a result separated from each other. It continues today. Our recent experience in the Diocese of Pittsburgh with the Anglican departure is only another in a long line of disruptions that are caused by our inability to love our God and to love one another.
It crosses over into our personal lives also. We all have lines that we don’t want others to cross. These can be political, racial, religious or any number of other places where we don’t want to tolerate difference. I have listened to many conversations that have included comments and warnings about other people. I have participated in these conversations sometimes and have said things that I am not proud of. I know from living in the trenches that loving God and my neighbor is a wonderful concept that is very difficult to live out in my life.
I think that one of the reasons that we have Christian communities is so that we can practice our loving. God drops all kinds of people into our midst. They all have needs that we know nothing about. When we are able to have conversation with them and to discover what their lives are about, we get somewhere with our loving. And when we get somewhere with our loving, we can look back over our lives and see those moments when we have not been lovers at all. Those for me are moments that require repentance and amendment. Community can call that out of us and bring us into relationships that make our lives whole. That, I believe, is why we are here, why we come to church each week and break bread together. Thank God for our community. It makes a profound difference in this world and it somewhat makes up for the multitude of sins in our Christian history.
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