A Different Kind of Love

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 22:34-46 Deuteronomy 34:1-12

As I have been reading commentaries and listserves about “the greatest commandment” these past few weeks, I have found myself caught up in several different conversations about some pretty fascinating stuff … well … fascinating to those of us who are professional exegetes. We get into the scriptures and dig around in there and look for all the little contradictions or images or translation issues and make a really big deal about how they change “the whole interpretation of a text” because that’s what it means to be a professional exegete. We’re people who are paid to nit-pick about the details of scripture.

This time around, my colleagues and I have been talking about questions like: “Isn’t it interesting that the Pharisees asking for the one greatest commandment in the law and Jesus gives two commandments as an answer?” and “Why would the lawyer ask for the greatest commandment when everyone would have known the answer? What was the catch?” and “What was so hard about Jesus’ question? If David was speaking by the Spirit, wouldn’t the Pharisees have viewed his words as a prophesy and assume that they would be words spoken to a Messiah who was still a son of David sometime in the future?” … and the perpetual discussion of the three types of love: eros, philia, agape or intimate love, brotherly love, and unconditional or self-less love.

If you think those are long and confusing questions, you should “listen” on the conversations! They are a bit tedious at times, and since none of us really have the answers, things tend to degenerate after a while. But it is easy – for me – to get lost in the discussions and forget the more basic questions that can make these verses difficult to understand. Thankfully, I was brought back to earth by a question from our bible study. I think it was Rich Fleisher who said, “How can we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our mind and still have room for anything else?”

Now there’s a question worth pondering.


A couple of years ago, Carrie told me a story. It was soon after Alistair was born, and we were struggling to figure out how to juggle the needs of two children. Personally, I think that’s the hardest transition to make. You go from having two adults to one child to having, quite often, two children and only one parent. (shake head in disbelief)
Anyway, Carrie had been talking with other mothers and passed on this modern folktale:
There was a young mother who was finding it hard to manage life with her new baby. She didn’t seem to be able to figure out what her child needed when he was crying, and she knew that she was supposed to be able to … perhaps through some kind of intuition. She was up all night, and with all the chores that needed to be done around the house, she didn’t get much sleep during the day. She was a wreck.
Then, one day, when she was walking her son past a local park, she saw a woman there with five children playing and a young baby in her arms. “How do you do it?!” she burst out, close to tears. “How do manage six kids?! I takes all my time with just one.”
The woman looked at the young mother and replied, “It doesn’t take any more time to raise six children than one.”


Love isn’t quite the same thing as time, though. Time comes in a fixed amount – here today and gone tomorrow. And it often feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything that we want or need to get done.

Love doesn’t march on. It doesn’t run out. It would make sense that if did. Then it would fit into our world of limited resources. But, that’s not the way of love. There always seems to be more of it. If you’re a parent … or a child, you know that instinctively. Do you love one parent more than another? One child? If a new person comes into your life, do they slowly take over space in your heart from somebody else? … Maybe the Grinch standing at the top of Mt. Strumpet would be a better image to describe the nature of love. Somehow, our hearts seem to grow and grow and grow to make space for more and more.


That makes it a little easier to answer Rich’s question. We can love God – at least with all our heart – and still have space to love others. But our heart is not all that God asks for, and when you add in those other two, it still feels a little intimidating. And here’s where those twisting conversations I can come in handy.


One of the good bits from this week’s trip through the listserve discussion is this. The word for “love” that Matthew uses in this text does not fit into that three tier system I mentioned above. It’s certainly not erotic love. But it’s not brotherly love or even completely self-less love as you might think (though agape comes the closest). In fact, there’s really not a Greek word that fits the situation. The Greek translators of two millennia ago just had to do their best with what they had.

“Love” in these verse isn’t even really a feeling in the way that we think of feelings, which may be what gave those translators so much trouble. This love is about commitment and dedication. In the Hebrew that Jesus was quoting, the word used is hesed which is translated in other places as “steadfast love,” and usually refers to God’s love for the chosen people. So, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” means to commit yourself to God in the same way God is committed to creation. And, “love your neighbor as yourself” means committing to yourself to your neighbors’ wellbeing (and to your own, by the way) in the same way that God is committed to the wellbeing of all humanity.


Now some of you, I’m sure, are thinking, “that doesn’t make it sound any easier. Now it’s not just love. It’s dedicating my whole self to God and then trying to find something left to others … not to mention myself.” (raise hand) You are not alone in that. Our spiritual history is filled with people who tried to balance these two commandments … tried and failed. King David, the disciples, Paul (at least in his early years), Jacob, Adam and Eve … from the very beginning, it seems, we have been struggling to find space in our hearts and our lives for God, ourselves, and our neighbors, and we tend to come down on one side of the equation or the other … usually ourselves.


And then there is Moses. For more than forty years he served God and the people with his whole heart, mind, and soul with only one or two lapses. He endured a lot of frustration and fear in the process, I imagine. He stood up to the greatest power of the time to demand the release of the slaves, after all. And, he led those same people through a barren land and took care of them despite their whining and complaining. He even stood face to face with God and argued for them when they had abandoned both God and him to worship gold.

I think, he must have found a good deal of joy in journey as well. How else would he have been able to keep it up for so long. He watched as the Hebrews grew up as a people of faith. He watched as his own family grew up on the journey. And, in the end, he got to see the promised land before he passed his work on.


Now, even the people who wrote his epitaph centuries later said that there has never been anyone else like Moses. The other great prophets and leaders don’t quite live up to his accomplishments. Some have signs and wonders nearly as impressive on their resumes. Some were granted visions of great power. Some worked tirelessly for the people. But none of them were able to put the whole package together. And that makes it hard to imagine that we normal folks would be able to come anywhere close.

On the surface of it, I think that’s right. But here’s another gem mentioned in passing in one of my conversations: “you cannot love God wholly without also loving your neighbor as yourself and vice versa.” What my colleague meant by that is that God’s deepest desire – God’s strongest commitment is to care for the well-being of all creation and especially humanity. If you dedicate yourself to God, you dedicate yourself to that over-riding purpose. And that means that you will be dedicated to your neighbors and yourself as well. On the flip side, if you commit your life to caring for your neighbors, you will be committed to following God’s will.

The hard part is making that commitment with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind because there really isn’t room for anything else. But, the is joy and fulfillment that comes from that decision reaches into every part of our lives.


Some of you, I’m sure, have heard me talk about getting baptized a year after I was married. It was a long time coming, and I was finally able to let go of my own need for control just long enough to go through with it at 29 years old. (I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken a firm grasp on that need for control again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be…. Two steps forward for one step back.)

When I went through the vows that I would be taking with pastor Alice, I realized that I needed to think about a few things … well just one thing actually. I was about to commit my life to God, but I had already made that same promise to my wife. I could not then – and I still can’t now – guarantee that living out that commitment would not take me away from her at some point. That’s not to say that it would break apart our marriage or threaten my love for her, but my vow to be there for her in every circumstance of our lives might have to be stretched if we were both truly called to different places for a time. Such things do happen when we strive to follow God’s will.

Ten years later, following God has led me to meaningful work and deepened my commitment to care for others. (I honestly don’t know if I would have made it this far as a parent if it weren’t for that extra something that keeps me from total breakdown in the midst of all the whining and everything else.) My life is richer and more joyful than I would have imagined.

I still wonder about that possibility, though. I still wonder if the day will come when one of us will be called across the country or across the globe. But, I also still remember the thought that the final bit of my worry. It was when I said that the God I believed in would only choose to separate us if there were no other way. The God I believe in would prefer to have loving couples stay together. It is better for them, and together – supporting each other – they can do more good than they could on their own. I still remember those words, and I still believe them.


It is not an easy thing to love God or to love others. But it does get easier when we stop trying to see them as two different things. Then, the struggle that we face is not in finding a balance. It is in making the decision to love … to love with a commitment care for the well-being of all humanity – to those closest to us and to those we only cross paths with for a moment. It is consecrating our lives to the service of God and neighbor each day, knowing that we will probably fall short, and then getting up the next day to try again.

It’s not easy, and it is all-consuming. But that is the path of discipleship, and if we follow … day after day after day, our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that come only to those who love.