What this sermon aims to say is humility comes before love.
What this sermon aims to do is recognize humility as strength in love.

Love the Lord our God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.

I don’t often begin a sermon with the scripture, but it may be worth it to say this and just sit down, letting each of us sit with what does that mean for us. What would it mean to love God with all your passion? What would it look like to love God with all your prayer? How would life change if we loved God with all our intelligence? Oh, and now put that in perspective with love others as well as you love yourself.
Love the Lord our God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and Love others as well as you love yourself.

And just for a moment go to the words in the Old Testament where God spoke to Moses and told him to say to the congregation of Israel. “Be holy because I, God, your God, am holy.” And just in case you didn’t catch it, there too you can find the words, “Love your neighbor as yourself. I am God.”

Like, what else is there to say. Turns out there is not much else to say. Live with these tenets and love would prevail in our world because as individuals we would all take ourselves out from the center of our universe and make God the center. And our God is holy. Our God is the one who says, “love your neighbour as yourself” and this is predicated on the command to be holy.
There is so much to be said even though I could have just stopped and let you ponder those two commands. We could all spend a lot more time quietly considering what it means to love God fully; with everything we are and do. Yet, let’s go further…

One thing to consider is that God said to be holy, so there must be some possibility for us to be holy. Even if we fall short, there is holiness in us as we are made in the image of God.
Think about that, no matter who you are, what you have experienced in life, you are made in the image of God, the image of a holy God, the image of our loving God. That means that we have some capacity to be both holy and loving. If you are someone who has grown up thinking you are worthless or if you are someone who has had a very good life…if you are anywhere on that continuum, think of yourself humbly, as having a seed of the divine in you. And if God is love and that seed of divine is in you, you have both the capacity for love and are loved.

That thought leads to, if we have the capacity for holiness and the capacity for love because of God, then loving God with all our passion, prayer, and intelligence becomes the most important thing on any list. It becomes a way of life, and there is no way to love God with all that we are and do and then turn around and not care about everyone else…the neighbour in your home, your community, or globally. If you love God, you become humble enough to recognize that everyone is created in the image of God. And if you treat another person with unkindness, as less than, as not worthy of care and compassion, then that is actually saying that somehow you are more worthy of all of those things, at which point humility flies out the door.

It is as Jesus said, you have to set these two commands, the command to love the lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence, this statement is set alongside of, love others as well as you love yourself. Everything in God’s law hangs from these two statements. Do one and not the other and everything falls.

And this is where it may be helpful to take a posture of humility in our relationship with God and with others. Humility does not circumvent our own worthiness, God loves us, we are children of God, we are unique and important in our own right just because we are human beings. Humility does not mean that we are to be humiliated by another, which is why that second command stands alongside the first. To be humble means that we are acutely aware of the worthiness of all humanity. Even the most broken person is still made in the image of God.

This does not take away the need for justice and facing of consequences, but when that is necessary, it is done in a spirit of love and mercy. If we treat those who have greatly harmed others with the same harm, we are not loving the divine image of God in them. Again, it is not that there are not consequences to actions, but rather in living out our faith we see the humanity in another, and that means also seeing the holy in another. I know that may stretch our imaginations. It does mine, which is why we are continually in need of loving God with all our being.

Let me give you an example of humility, it is the example that Jesus used as he continued to speak with the Pharisees in our scripture reading today. Jesus asks the Pharisees to explain how David, under inspiration, named Christ his Master? Now David was considered a great king. It was anticipated that an heir of David would be the expected the Messiah to come for the people of Israel. And yet David humbled himself, this great king, to say that the Messiah, whoever that might be down the line, would be David’s Master.

You may have heard the saying that pride comes before a fall, but let’s flip that on its head and consider that humility comes before being able to love as God commands us to love. It is in humility that we love God because we realize that we are not the be all and end all of our existence. We see others as valuable gems that shine with the brilliance of God’s divine image.

Now, because we all fall short of being image bearers of God in the world, things in the world are distorted and corrupted. Be we can correct those imbalances, those distortions, by living into the command to be image bearers of God. We are to be holy, because God our God is holy.

Can you imagine a world where people are humble enough to say to anyone, “you are holy, you are worthy, you are loved?” Think on that. How do you go to war with another country if you understand and believe all people are holy, worthy and to be loved? How do you round up your neighbour or despise them if they are holy, worthy and loved in God’s sight. How can you hit your partner in violence or commit a crime against another if you understand all people to be holy? Remember if all people are living this way, then that is how they see you too, holy, worthy, and loved.

Is this utopian? Probably, be we are commanded in our capacity as Christians to live this out. Can you imagine what the world would look like, how it would be transformed if just Christians could live this out well, or strive for it more and more each day? Humbling ourselves for the sake of love?

Love doesn’t happen when power, pride, and wealth are corrupted and their use distorted, but how can anyone know what love looks like if it is not practiced beyond those that we think are worthy of our love.
And what makes any of us worthy of love?

It is our humanity; it is God within us who is holy. We are loved and worthy of love because God is holy and this holy God loves us.

If you feel like we are going around in circles with this thinking, we kind of are. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because God first loved us.” We imitate God’s character, God’s divine, loving, character. Thomas Aquinas defined love as to will the good of the other. Love is a decision each and everyday to put the well being of another at the center of our lives. If that is happening then others are also putting our well being at the center of their lives.

Again, we don’t live this out perfectly, which is the gap that concerns us and why we so cling to centering ourselves on our own well being. However, if we begin each day with a posture of humility, one that says, we love God and will strive to love people, no matter their status or lack there of. If each and everyone of us is doing that, then maybe we can begin to see the world shift and the power of love, the power of holiness that demonstrates a posture of humility, grace, peace, and love, maybe that will bring the hope needed to turn this whole lived existence around.

We do this, this loving our neighbour as ourself, as we continually seek to love the Lord our God with all our passion and prayer and intelligence.
We live in the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of Christ, and the grace of God. There is hope. Live out your calling to be holy because God is holy and watch in anticipation for a shift in your world, in our world. Amen.