Our Gospel lesson today is focussed on the Great Commandment, which we sometimes call the Summary of the Law. Every Sunday we say this Summary as part of our Rite I service at 8 am. In past sermons, I have tended to emphasize its uniqueness: how in response to this question designed to test him, Jesus put together two commandments that had never been combined before. Now I want to suggest that these choices of Jesus about which commandment is greatest, might have been debated before, during and just after the lifetime of Jesus. For example, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rule of the Community begins with the statement that "to cling to God with all one's heart and soul" is the essence of what God commmanded through Moses and the prophets. The Essene author said, this means in turn that we must love all that God loves, and hate all that God hates. Probably this would have been written 100 or more years before the birth of Jesus. Then in the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Hillel said, "what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor". And just after the lifetime of Jesus, Rabbi Aqiba said, that "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" is the great principle of the Torah.

So I propose that there may have been a significant amount of agreement between Jesus and the Pharisees about which commandment was greatest, but that they disagreed about how to interpret that great commandment. These chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, from 21 to 25, give us repeated arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees, over interpretation of Scripture.

In general, it may be said the Pharisees believed that loving God with all one's heart and soul and mind, meant obeying all 613 commandments of the Law. Further, if there was a conflict between two commandments, they chose to keep the commandment which emphasized ritual purity. On the other hand, Jesus believed that loving God with all one's heart and soul and mind, meant loving and caring for the people, and things that God love. For example, if a choice must be made between obeying the laws of the Sabbath, or healing a man's withered arm, the Pharisees chose to obey the Sabbath laws, and Jesus chose to heal the withered arm.

In the lifetime of Jesus, and today, the main question is, how can human beings love God? How can we, mortal embodied spirits, love the immortal, invisible Creator? We hear the word love primarily as an intense emotional mixture of desire, delight, respect, loyalty and attachment. Most of us need a picture or an image before we can love in that way. But the word love also means, be devoted to, and it means, choose to the exclusion of all others, and it means follow. These are the meanings of the word love with respect to God--a person can choose God, be devoted to God, and follow in the way of God. Using these meanings, we can now think of some people who loved God very much. The prophet Jeremiah would be one, because Jeremiah did all manner of foolish things, such as breaking a pot, and wearing a yoke around Jerusalem, for the love of God. And the Essenes, who wrote the Dean Sea Scrolls, withdrew from Jewish socity to create a pure community at Qumran, for the love of God.

Among Christians, there were the desert fathers and mothers, who rejected life "in the world" in order to spend all their time in prayer, for the love of God. St. Francis embraced Holy Poverty, and led thousands of Franciscans to do the same, for the love of God. Some of the knights who went on Crusade to Jerusalem, believed that their fighting was for the love of God. Certainly the great wave of missionaries coming from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, were motivated by the love of God.

All of these ways to love God are quite drastic, and involve a departure from one's normal life in order to go and to do something entirely different. Is it possible to love God in the midst of one's normal life? Of course it is, but paradoxically it may be harder to do, than making a drastic outward change. The reason it may be harder, is that such a person who makes a decision one day, to love God with their whole heart and soul and mind, continues to live the same life, outwardly, but must make drastic inward changes. The first change is the rejection of other masters. To put God first, means to give a lesser or subordinate loyalty to family, to work, to friends, to money, to church, to home . . . . Jesus is clear that we cannot serve God and anything else as equal to God. So normal life continues, but now we must discern which of our daily activities we love more than God, and let them go to a subordinate position.

A second inward change begins when we ask ourselves how our own actions, and words, reflect the nature of the God we love. If we are devoted to a God of peace, how can we embody peace, become makers of peace? If we are following a God of justice, how are we promoting justice? If we choose a God of love, how can we become more loving? A third inward change will inevitably begin, for we will soon discover that God wants us to love all that God loves: both people known to us, and people unknown, and unlike us, as well as objects, places, animals, projects, issues, which we would NEVER have involved ourselves with, if God had not asked us to get involved. Loving God is a big commitment, costing all we are and all we have, for God will invite us into the very renewal of creation.

This is a challenging commitment to make and to keep. It sounds like a complicated process of balancing priorities, and self-evaluation, and sacrifice. It is just at this point that we can learn something from Native American spirituality. Although the details differ from one tribe to another, most Native Americans believe that everything in the world is connected. Human beings are not in a special category, separate from the rest of creation. So the sun is a grandfather and the moon is a grandmother. The animals are brothers and sisters; the trees and plants, the rain and snow, the rivers and mountains are all part of the same connecting web of life. This is the reason the four directions are addressed in the beginning of the Native American liturgy. The presence of God, the Great Spirit, is recognized in everything, from the cry of the loon to the morning fog.

It follows, therefore, that Native Americans tend to recognize all human beings as their relatives, members of their extended family. And if relatives, then they are people who are welcomed into the home, people who are sheltered and cared for as family. I can best explain this by telling you a true story. It is told by the Rev. Mitchell Whiterabbit, a Winnebago Indian and Episcopal priest,. He tells how his grandmother never locked her doors, because if someone wanted to get into the house, they must need what is in the house. She believed the Creator had given her a lot: a home, enough to eat, warm clothes. Grandma said, we have a responsibility especially for the poor, and for people who have been in jail, and for folks older than she was. This meant that we were always taking in orphans, teens who had run away from home, hitchhikers . . . it was and is a culture of sharing, in which a person gains status by how generously they give. Having been raised by such a grandmother, Mitch served as a Navy Chaplain in World War II, and lateer established the Native American Theological Association to help tribal members attend seminary. When those supported by NATA graduate from seminary, they do not receive gifts; instead they give gifts to those who have helped and supported them.

Another way to describe the theme of this sermon, is with that old word stewardship. In the church, this word sometimes gets reduced so much that it refers only to pledging. In fact, stewardship is the much bigger idea that God asks us to be God's partners in taking care of the world, and taking care of each other. Among Native Americans, this bigger idea is expressed in the culture of sharing, and in the recognition of nature as part of that web of connection, for which we must care. So last Sunday, we were being good stewards by planting new trees, and we are being good stewards by hosting the rotating shelter, and by having a Family Ministry Director to create programs for our youth, and by repairing the damaged columbarium. Above all, stewardship means bearing witness to the abundance of God's grace and love. In the 1950's, a retired Episcopal priest, who was a Santee Sioux, moved to California and felt, at the age of 79, that he had more to give. Fr. Thomas Rouillard assisted at St. Thomas for 10 years; I am wearing his beaded stole today.

And so this question of how we are to love God, also includes the question of how we are to care for God's earth, God's people, God's church, and God's lost sheep. Partly we do this work of stewardship by maintaining the life of St. Thomas, so that together we can do more, much more, than we would be able to do individually. Partly we serve as stewards simply by trying to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds. Mostly, we are temporary assistants in the great workshop of creation, contributing in ways we are not conscious of, far beyond what we might imagine. God calls you, and me, into an ever-deepening love and an ever-growing care, for all that is.     Amen