How many of you have rules in your house? What are some of those rules? In scripture and in the Jewish faith they had 613 rules! That's a lot of rules… And why do we have rules? Yeah, they help us all get along, learn things and also allow us to not always have control. A lesson that is hard to learn sometimes! In the first reading today we hear about some of those laws like not charging people interest for borrowing money or returning something like a coat to someone if you use it, or welcoming those who are foreigners.
Today in our gospel reading one of the scholars of the law was trying to kind of trick Jesus, because those who were in power were getting nervous that he was gaining a lot of power because so many people were following him. They wanted to know which of the Commandments was the most important and greatest commandment. Jesus said there are two commandments that are the most important - “Love God with your whole heart and mind and soul.” With your whole body, everything. “And love your neighbor as yourself.” And what's so interesting about that is that there were some laws the people thought were more important than others and even though most people would say loving God is the most important, Jesus was taking the law of loving other people and raising it up and making it JUST as important as loving God. Loving God means loving neighbor. And neighbors aren’t just people you know who live by you… because if we think of the world as our neighborhood, than we are ALL neighbors !
Here’s a question for you… If you were going to dress up like love - if love were a costume what would it look like? (get answers) We’ll get back to this…
There is a very important day coming up in our church this Wednesday it's called … “Anybody remember? We celebrate the people who have died, some who have done amazing things. All Saints Day.” (Remind your parents to bring you to church!) What’s a saint? A Saint is someone who loves God so much that they dedicate their whole lives to loving God just like the Commandments say with all of their hearts and minds and souls as well as other people – our neighbors.
They take care of those who are sick. They speak out for people who might not be feeling like they're being treated fairly. They care for nature and protecting it so much that they might even be willing to die if they have to. So the Saints are people who if we looked at them we’d say they look like love. But they're not dressed up are they? So really if we want to talk about a costume for love we don't need one because we should just be love, right? Every day I should be able to say Thomas looks like love, or Leah looks like love or John looks like love..
How many of you have heard of a woman and Mother Theresa? Mother Teresa is one of our newest Saints. She was very small, but her influence was huge. She lived in India and she looked out and there are all these people that were dying in the street and she said this is not right. So she started a ministry where she would have her sisters go out and take all these people in from the street and they would be able to go to her house and they would surround them with people and with good care so that they could die with something we call dignity. Can you say that dignity? That’s an important word to remember because we all have it and we all should be treated with dignity. It’s another word for value.
St. Teresa of Calcutta – her official Saint name - said something that I want all of us to remember she said ”If we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. We have forgotten that we belong to each other.” So, you belong to your family, but you also belong to all of these people and all of these people belong to you! So even though we don't know each other, we all belong to each other. And sometimes especially adults, we forget that. We’re celebrating the 500th Anniversary of something called the Reformation this year and this weekend. For a long time Protestants and Catholics didn’t think they were both Christian and they couldn’t share things together. Now we get along. Another example of forgetting we belong to each other is that we might keep someone from another country out of our city or country. We saw this last week in St. Cloud. And so Jesus in this gospel is reminding us that we’re not just called to love only those people in Princeton or Zimmerman or St. Cloud or Minnesota or the United States or Africa or Mexico. We all belong to each other and when we remember that we are able to live how Jesus has commanded us to live.
So I want to give you an assignment. Everybody here needs to go home and look up a Saint and find something really unusual and how they lived out the call to LOVE. When you find out about someone you come up to Wendy or myself and tell us what you found out, OK? And we’ll have a treat for you if you do that. You have to do it during November though.
The Children's choir opened with a great song that we are going to sing to remind us how big God’s love is and how much Jesus wants us to love like God. Please stand.
God’s love is deep. God’s love is high. God’s love is long. God’s love is wide.
May we remember the two greatest commandments of love and that we BELONG to each other.