February 13, 2008 - "LOVE Fulfills the Commandments"

Title: “Love Fulfills the Commandment”
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Day: Midweek Lenten Service
Date: February 13, 2008

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Tomorrow millions of people all over the world will go to stores and pay homage to tradition by buying flowers, chocolates, sickly-sweet sugar candies and lovey-dovey greeting cards for their significant someone’s. Restaurants will be filled to the brim with romantic couples fanning the flames of love over a delicious meal. It is a day when relationships are celebrated. It is a day when love is shown in simple gestures and eloquent words.

Valentine’s Day has always been a bit of a curiosity to me. This is one day out of the year when people pull out all the stops to show love to their significant others. This is one day out of the year when love is unabashedly proclaimed in the streets. This is the one day out of the year when people bend over backwards for their loved ones to show the great extent of their affection for one another. It is the one day out of the year when you can EXPECT to give love or to be loved. The rest of the year, love only comes as a special surprise.

Valentine’s Day, to me, seems like one day of the year when love is treated like a command rather than a gift. I get the sense that many people do the things they do on Valentine’s Day because they feel that they HAVE to – otherwise they will face the wrath of their loved one. Love, in this case, seems to be borne out of fear rather than gratitude. But this seems very backwards to me. Love is not something that can be commanded, is it?

Our texts today would have us think that love indeed IS a commandment. In fact, we hear it from Jesus’ own lips! “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That sounds pretty clear to me. Jesus is commanding us to love.

What’s interesting about this, though, is that commandments usually come in the form of an imperative (for you grammar lovers out there). Imperatives, if you need a little refresher, are simple commands: “Do this! Don’t do that!” But that’s not what we hear in these statements from Jesus. No. What we get are future tense verbs; verbs that explain what we should do, but do not tell us bluntly to do them. In other words, Jesus does not beat us over the head saying, “LOVE GOD! LOVE YOUR NEIGHBORS!” What he says is “YOU SHALL love God. YOU SHALL love your neighbor.” It is as if Jesus understands that love cannot be commanded.

Another pastor I know once pondered this passage before. He asked, ‘Could you imagine a young couple on their first date. The woman thinks to herself, “I really like this guy. He's so handsome. He's so charming. I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with him. What can I do to get him to love me?”

‘Then you hear the woman say in a stern voice: “I command you to love me. You will marry me. We will live happily ever after.” Would a marriage like that work? Can love be commanded?’

I think what we get in our Gospel text today is a yes and no answer to that question. On the one hand, it is impossible to command someone to love. You cannot change a persons feelings or emotions simply by telling them what to do or how to feel. That is absurd. On the other hand, however, to SHOW LOVE to others can be commanded. Jesus, for instance, tells us that we should love our enemies, but by this he does not intend for us to be overcome by warm, fuzzy feelings for them; instead, the command is that we SHOW LOVE – that we ACT LOVINGLY towards them.

Ultimately, the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel remind us that love is not so much a command as it is a way to fulfill the commandments. Love is a way of life. When we live in such a way that we show love to God to our neighbors, we fulfill the spirit of the commandments. So, just as St. Paul later wrote, “love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom. 13:10)

Over the next several weeks, we will be taking a closer look at this thing called LOVE. We will be reminded of how lovely love can be. We will be confronted with how difficult, how risky, how dangerous, how fulfilling, and how sweet love can be. Ultimately, however, we will be reminded that love is a way of life. It is a gift given by God, so that we might have a fuller, more abundant life. For that, we can truly say: Thanks be to God.