Love to the Lord - "Your First Love"
A sermon by the Rev. Michael Gladish
Dawson Creek, February 4th, 2007
"Jesus said... 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40).
No doubt we all memorized "the two great commandments" as kids. Many of us also memorized the Ten Commandments and reasonably well know the first one, which begins, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; you shall have no other gods before my face...." And so we know that the first rule of spiritual life, indeed of all life, is to honour God - specifically the Lord, Jehovah, who reveals Himself as Jesus Christ.
But how seriously, how thoughtfully, and how deeply does this teaching affect us? How do we love Him, and how do we experience this love?
Today we are going to consider the first of the two great commandments, and next week we will consider the second. Then, next month, we will consider the two loves that are their direct opposites, the loves of self and the world. These, we are taught, are the four fundamental loves of all human life, and so it seems good to give them some focused attention.
We live in an odd culture, though, as many of us find it difficult to talk about love. Oh yes, we often refer to things we love, or things we love to do, and popular music is filled with love songs, but the truth is we still find it difficult to speak of love freely and easily in conversations. For one thing, it seems a very intimate and private subject. For another, it makes us feel exposed and vulnerable, concerned, perhaps, that someone should take advantage of us or disapprove or make fun of what we hold dear.
But, we read, "Love is a person's very life" (DLW 1), which we often experience as inspiration, or motivation. Interest or affection is a form of love, as is enjoyment or delight, and when we have no interest or delight in something we tend to reject it or avoid it.
Speaking of God the Writings define the essence of His love as "to love others outside of itself, to desire to be one with them, and to make them happy from itself" (TCR 43). Of course a true definition doesn't use the word that is being defined, but this description fits beautifully with the definition in DLW 47, namely, "Love consists in willing what one has to be another's, and in feeling the other’s delight as delight within oneself.... In contrast, to feel one's own delight in another, and not the other's delight within oneself, is not to love, for this is loving self."
The point is, true love comes from the Lord, and just as His love wants to give all it has to others, we experience it as we also want to give what we have to others - not get, but give. Still, love is about conjunction, and so it also seeks to be loved by others. When there is no reciprocation there is no conjunction, and so the love is not fulfilled. Thinking of this, can you imagine how the Lord feels when we reject or disregard His love? Should we care about this? Does it matter?
We have spoken in classes recently about the Ten Commandments, especially about how they were written on two tablets of stone - one teaching about love to the Lord and the other about love to the neighbour. Here is a beautiful passage about how these two loves are linked: -
"Love to the Lord cannot possibly be separated from love towards the neighbour, for the Lord's love is directed towards the whole human race whom He wishes to save eternally and to join so completely to Himself that not a single one of them perishes. Anyone therefore who has love to the Lord possesses the Lord's love and so cannot help loving the neighbour" (AC 2023).
So now we come to the book of Revelation, where we read in chapter 2,
"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, 'These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lamp stands: "I know your works, your labour, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have laboured for My name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (Rev. 2:1-4).
What is this "first love"? Is it not the love of the Lord, which loves all people and wishes to save every one of us eternally ... so that not a single one of us perishes?
How much different is this from the description of the Ephesians who seemed to see it as their mission in life to judge and criticize others, albeit from the Word.
To be sure, we must exercise judgment - good judgment and prudence - but unless we can do so in the spirit of the Lord's love we are not really serving the Lord but, ultimately, our own needs and sensibilities. For we would all like everyone to see things as we see them, even to think the way we think, but to criticize on that basis is not to love, it is to promote our own agenda.
So then, how can we love the Lord, and realistically how does it feel to do so?
Well, first of all, since we are all unique individuals the feeling of love to the Lord will be unique for each one who experiences it. But perhaps a parallel can be drawn to true marriage love where, we read, apart from any other sensations we may feel, there are states of innocence, peace, tranquillity, inmost friendship, complete trust, and a mutual desire of mind and heart to do the other every good. These states in turn may lead to (and these are the exact words) bliss, felicity, delight, pleasure and ultimately, the happiness of heaven (CL 180).
Why do we make such a comparison? - Because true marriage love is based on the marriage of goodness and truth, and it is this marriage - really a marriage between the will and understanding in each of us - that brings us into a relationship with the Lord.
In this connection the Writings paint a beautiful picture of those who trust in the Lord. They say, among other things,
"Though concerned about the morrow, yet are they unconcerned, in that they are not anxious, let alone worried, when they give thought to the morrow. They remain even-tempered whether or not they realize desires, and they do not grieve over loss; they are content with their lot. If they become wealthy they do not become infatuated with wealth; if they are promoted to important positions they do not consider themselves worthier than others. If they become poor they are not made miserable either; if lowly in status they do not feel downcast. They know that for those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and that no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state" (AC 8478:3).
But the question is, how can someone come to experience that trust, which is an aspect of love, especially in cases where life has been hard, perhaps full of disappointments? It's one thing to say "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind," it's quite another thing to do it.
And so we come back to a universal theme in the Word, a theme represented in story after story of the Old and New Testaments beginning, for example, with Cain and Abel. Cain represents faith as an intellectual concept, Abel represents the life of charity. In the story Cain rises up against Abel in jealousy and kills him. So the intellectual mind thinks up all sorts of reasons to dispense with charity and live in a sort of ideal world by itself. But this cannot bring real happiness and fulfilment, and so we see that Cain is cursed - yet the Lord preserves Cain, as He preserves our intellectual faith, and provides him with an extended family until another brother, Seth, is born to replace Abel.
In this and literally hundreds of other stories we can see in the spiritual sense how an intellectual faith is preserved in us until the life of charity can be revived. In other words, although we may not feel any love for while, in fact may scorn and reject it, if we cultivate our faith and allow it to develop we can experience new states of love in time.
And how do we cultivate our faith? - Very simply, by doing what the Lord teaches, and not out of fear or for the sake of reward but simply out of respect and because it is the right thing to do. This commitment leads to love. In effect it opens the window for love - which comes entirely from God - to flow in.
Put in practical terms the teaching is "Shun evils as sins and approach the Lord..." (Faith 12). He then will provide both faith and love. Or, in New Testament terms, as Jesus said, "Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5).
"Fruit" in the Word represents the good of charity or, one might say, love in action. So, further on in the same section Jesus says, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love.... (and) this is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
Of course none of this happens overnight. In fact it's a process. And several passages in the Writings liken it to the grafting process in fruit trees or vines. And here's a fun fact: did you know that apple seeds from a given tree are all different from each other genetically, so that new trees grown from seed will produce an infinite variety of different trees, every one with different kinds of apples? In order to get consistency in apples you have to take branches, or stock, from the tree you want to duplicate and graft these branches onto the trunk of another tree.
So in order for us to receive and grow in the Lord's love we have to take "stock" from the Lord's Word and graft that into our way of life, doing as He teaches us even though it does not come naturally, until the stock "takes" and begins to grow and bear fruit - HIS fruit in OUR lives!
The teaching is extremely simple: Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15) - which could also be stated "If you WOULD love Me..." or "if you WANT to love Me, keep My commandments."
Think again about the love in marriage: if you don't pay any attention to your wife, or if you patronize her or discount what she says or how she feels can you really say you love her? If you don't appreciate your husband's ideas, or if you make no effort to identify with them or share his interests can you really say you love him? Why does he like doing what he does? Can you fathom it, get to the bottom of it, feel HIS delight as delight within yourself?
Men, can you learn to feel your wife's delight as your delight? Can you be happy not just because she's happy but actually find happiness in her happiness?
Or if you're not married can you apply these principles to a friendship or some other relationship with an important person in your life?
If any of this makes sense then you may be able to see how you can receive and feel the Lord's love in your life, and how you can have love to the Lord.
It's not going to happen overnight. You're not going to simply "fall in love" with the Lord. What will happen is that by keeping Him in mind every day no matter where you are, and by putting into practice the things that He teaches, you will come gradually more and more to appreciate the wisdom of His ways and the love that is behind that wisdom. Then you will begin to feel that love in His constant presence, you will begin to trust it more and more, and you will begin to experience the innocence, peace, tranquillity and happiness that are the signs and expressions - the manifestations - of His love in your daily life.
Again, the Lord said, "...you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful (for temptations and struggle are a big part of this process), but your sorrow will be turned into joy... and your joy no one will take from you" (John 16:20, 22).
Amen
Lessons: Deuteronomy 6:1-9: the First Commandment
Matthew 7:12-23 (the Second Commandment)
True Christian Religion 287
