Loving God with All Your Soul

Sermon delivered September 26, 2010

Matthew 6:25; 10:37-39; 16:24-27

The Greek word psyche (sookhay, which in English we pronounce sykee) can be translated into English according to context by many different words. Life, soul, and self are three of the possible translations. Jesus tells us that we must love God with all our psyche (our life, our soul, or our self). We need to remember that Jesus is quoting the most famous passage in the Old Testament where the equivalent Hebrew word is nephesh which has a very similar range of meanings. Whether in Greek or Hebrew, this word is not just some little, invisible part of us. In the passages I will read in this sermon, every time you hear life or soul, it means more than we might assume. It means our whole living, breathing, feeling, thinking, loving being.

But this sermon is not an essay on Greek and Hebrew words. It is about what we most love, about what we most trust, about what makes us most anxious, about what costs we are willing to pay, about what burdens we are willing to bear, about what rewards we are likely to receive. Listen closely to the Word of our Lord:

Mark 12:30 “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

What or who do you most love? You are in church, and so you know that the right answer is “God.” But how true is that really?

If you were not in church and it was not a preacher asking you, if instead it was your best friend, the friend with whom you can be totally honest with no fear of judgment, asking you, “What do you most love?,” what would your answer be?

Do you love God more than family, more than country, more than money, sex, or power, more than work, more than your vehicle, more than your latest toy, tool, or techno-gizmo, more than romance, more than your friends, more than entertainment, more than food or drink, more than feeling high, more than the Razorbacks? Uh-oh, there I went to meddling, and on a day when that is a sore subject (after the loss to Alabama).

Let’s be clear. Love is not a feeling. It is a deep commitment to the well-being of what or who is loved. The Bible repeatedly asks us to make that kind of deep, all-out, nothing-held-back commitment to the glory of God, to help the world see how holy, loving, good God is, how worthy of our deepest worship and service God is.

But that is often not the case even for people sitting in worship services. Shawn Wallace, the relatively new pastor of First Christian Church in Rogers, during his first summer was brave enough to serve as a counselor at our regional Chi Rho camp for sixth through eighth graders. He reports what he saw there. A tiny, short sixth grade boy fell head over heels for a tall and sweet 8^th grade girl. Besides the age difference, the height difference, and the maturity difference, there was the fact that the girl’s friends were aghast that she allowed this runt to show his admiration for her, but she was admirably undeterred in her kindness to the smitten young man. Not all was so admirable. Because the odd young couple sat directly in front of him, Shawn unavoidably watched during a worship service through the prayers, the songs, and the sermon that the boy’s entire body was continuously turned sideways toward this girl of his dreams, his love-struck eyes fixed on her every move and action.

He was missing what was far more important and was simply unaware of it. Shawn asks, Do we ever come to worship, sing the songs, pray the prayers, listen to the message, all the while centering our hearts and minds elsewhere…perhaps on someone with whom we think we are in love, but maybe it is our job or our anxieties, maybe it is on who just dared to say, “Amen,” or how we could have stated something better than someone leading worship. Indeed, there is a proper focus for the kind of undivided attention the sixth grade boy was paying to the eighth grade girl. When we worship God, we should be as enamored with God, as focused on Jesus, as the boy was with the young woman of his dreams. Nothing should be able to steal our attention from the One who in Jesus Christ has shown such receptive attention to us beyond all our deserving.

Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Jesus has a knack for posing one sacred item against another. There are people and relationships that we really ought to love and treasure and honor. None are potentially more important than those with whom we are in family covenant. God ordained the marriage covenant to be a firm anchor around which healthy family life can be built and through which we can live out our loyalty to our Creator, and we are to model Christlike love in our relationship to our spouse. We are commanded to honor our parents and to care for them in their old age. We are commanded to nurture our children, training them up to live godly lives with a wise blend of discipline, teaching, and mutual enjoyment. Jesus is not taking any of that back when he asks us to love him even more than we love these cherished family members. Nor is Jesus being egotistical in wanting to be first in our hearts. It is not about him. It is about our need to get our priorities straight. If God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is not first in our hearts, nothing else will work right.

When Judy and I got married, like most of you, we did not have good and mature understanding of how to build a solid Christian marriage. We did a lot of things the wrong way, and scars on our hearts are the cost we paid. But one thing we had right, and without it our marriage would not have survived. We knew that we could not look to each other to fill the holes in our souls, that only God can do that, that we had to put God first. We know that even more clearly today. In our advanced years, we are still learning, but we know a lot more about how to let God fill those holes. We know a lot more about putting God first. The most loving thing we can do for our spouse, our parents, our children, or for anyone, is to love, honor, and obey God first, and then to help them see and experience God’s love coming back through us ever more deeply for themselves. Unless God is our first love, we will not have hisa full love to offer to others.

Matthew 10:38 “And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

There is an initial cost to putting God first. A person who puts God first will often be misunderstood and sometimes punished by the world. Jesus describes that cost as taking up our cross to follow him. He urges us to sit down and to count the cost before we set out on the path of discipleship. The rich young ruler had wealth, social standing, and religious expertise and influence. He had to be willing to junk those in order follow Jesus. He was not ready to pay the cost and walked away sadly. Jesus sadly watched him go. I want to think that he came back later. But we do not know that. Some people who walk away never come back. The things for which we walk away from putting Jesus first never fulfill what we hope from them. They are always disappointing in the end, painfully and bitterly disappointing, but sometimes it takes a lot of living to discover that. It is far better if we simply see from the first how surpassingly more worthwhile Jesus is. So far as I know, the Apostle Paul was never wealthy, but, prior to his awakening to Christ, he had social standing and religious expertise and influence equal to that of the rich young ruler. Yet when he actually met the crucified and risen Christ, he was so deeply impressed with the surpassing worth of Jesus that he junked his entire upwardly mobile life and accepted his calling to become apostle to the Gentiles, of all things the most reprehensible thing he could have imagined before. He put it this way in Philippians 3:7-8: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” And in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul paid a real cost. There was social loss, emotional loss, physical loss to be paid. He was frequently beaten and jailed. In the end he was martyred. In deciding to follow Jesus, he really paid a price. But, after Jesus himself, no human being has more than the Apostle Paul to do with the fact that we Gentiles are gathered here this morning in the name of Jesus. At the end of his life, even as he was being poured out like a drink offering, he could be legitimately proud that he had fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith, and he could delight to know that he was departing to be with Christ in eternity. Oh, that we might share even a portion of his passion for Jesus! Paul, in losing his life for Christ, found his true life, his true soul, his true self.

Matthew 16:26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

If God is not the center of our life, our soul, our self, then we have sold God out for the pursuit of something that will ultimately disappoint us. If we have sold God out for passing emblems of worldly success, there will come the time when we are called to give account for where we have directed our attentions, energies, and aspirations in life. We will too late want back the one thing we have most needed, but have traded away for nothing that lasts.

Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?.... 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

What Jesus is saying is that our true and enduring psyche, our true and enduring life, soul, and self is found only when we surrender it to God’s reign. We give it away and it comes back to us loaded with blessings valuable beyond the measuring of them.

There is a great relief available to us when we put God first and seek first his reigning love, power, and righteousness. When we trust God, we are relieved from constantly worrying about lesser things. But more than that, there is in the end the great reward of a psyche, a life, a soul, a self, that cannot be taken away from us, not even by death.

Trade everything in to God and get back more than everything.

That sounds like a bargain too good to pass up. Go for it!

Perhaps, when yo professed your faith and walked into a baptistery and were immersed—or, if you were baptized in another tradition before you were a believer, but later were confirmed—perhaps you did not recognize that you were supposed to be dying to sin and self and coming alive to God, loving God above all else, loving God with your whole life and soul.

What do you do about that now? You claim the benefit of your baptism by redirecting your life to the total love of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—above all and with all. You say to God, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord to Thee…Take my love, my Lord I pour at Thy feet its treasure store; take myself and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.”