Proper 10: Deuteronomy 30.9-14; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: graft in our hearts the love of your name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of your great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

JESUS met the lawyer on his own ground. When asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus pointed to his area of expertise, the law. He did not have to look elsewhere, or learn new things, to find the answer to his yearning. In the words of Deuteronomy, the word was not unreachable, but in his mouth and his heart for him to observe.

That accessibility is extraordinarily comforting, and yet also challenging, because it removes any excuses, for him and for us, about not knowing how to express our love for God.

Thomas Troeger, the poet and hymn-writer, has some wise insights on the summary of the law which Jesus commended:

If we love God with all our heart, but not with all our mind, then feeling runs untested and unchecked by reason's light, and we will not grow up into the full stature of Christ. Or if we love God with all our mind, but not with all our heart, then our thought becomes entirely calculating, lacking tenderness and grace, and we will not grow into the full stature of Christ. Or if we love God with all our soul, but not with all our strength, then we will fail to embody our faith in acts of compassion, and we will not grow up into the full stature of Christ. If we love God with all our strength, but not with all our soul, then our lives become spiritually vacuous, and we will not grow up into the full stature of Christ.

By way of contrast, when we give all of us to all of God, then faith becomes a process of allowing our varied ways of knowing to correct and balance each other so that we are no longer "divided creatures". Instead we become whole people, able to help heal the fracture epistemologies that divide our world into conflicted camps.

The Preacher, April 2013

Troeger puts his finger on the integrity of love for God. Flowing from a holistic way of being, it entails openness to honour and to develop our hearts, minds, souls, and strengths. Equally important, as the lawyer said, the law binds loving God to loving our neighbour as we love ourselves. The Colossian Christians had grasped this: their "faith in Christ Jesus and love . . . for all the saints" fell naturally into one sentence.

At the end of the parable, Jesus reframed the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbour?", to the subtly but significantly different "Who was a neighbour to the man?" He made it personal, because there cannot be disembodied or inactive love.

Snoopy's famous observation, in Schultz's "Peanuts" cartoon, "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand," expresses humorously the real challenge involved. Jews and Samaritans were estranged, and yet a lawyer should know the law's command to love not just his neighbour, but the alien as himself (Leviticus 19.34). The depth of his discomfort is evidenced by his inability to bring himself to say "the Samaritan", resorting instead to describing actions impersonally. It was challenging stuff, once Jesus had put flesh on the bones.

In Hebrew thought, the heart is the seat of the will; so loving God with all our heart means steadfastly directing our resolve towards God. This is a richer and deeper understanding of love than most popular culture allows. This week's collect prays for love of God's name to be grafted in our hearts. This is another way of expressing the prayer in Colossians that the Christians will be "filled with the knowledge of God's will and lead lives worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work as you grow in the knowledge of God".

Love takes shape in action. Once the Christians at Colossae "truly comprehended the grace of God", the gospel began to bear fruit among them.

The petition in the collect is wisely comprehensive, predicating our prayer for help to grow in the knowledge and love of God on the fact that God is the author and giver of all good things. The readings remind us that "The Lord will again take delight in prospering you," and that, in the process, we may encounter strange neighbours, who are our path to loving God. This is a deceptively challenging collect to pray.