Sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, October 29, 2023

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18+Psalm 1+1 Thessalonians 2:1-8+Matthew 22:34-46

They shall be like a tree planted by water...

The theme for this year's annual giving campaign comes from the Prophet Jeremiah. The broader context of this phrase is this:

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
   whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
   sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,
   and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
   and it does not cease to bear fruit. (17:7-8)

Trees get a lot of airtime in the bible. There are hundreds of references to trees of all kinds, so it is not surprising that our psalm appointed for today also includes words about trees.

Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *
nor lingered in the way of sinners,
nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

Their delight is in the law of the Lord, *
and they meditate on God's law day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *
everything they do shall prosper. (Psalm 1:1-3)

I spend a lot of time meditating on God's law, God's Word. Maybe not day and night, but probably more than the average person in the pew. And I can assure you that not everything I do prospers. The prosperity gospel is not for real. However, what I can tell you is that being rooted in God, praying and studying scripture, when the hard times come, we are better able to withstand them. I don't know how people face tragedies outside of a faith community that is deeply fixed in love of God and neighbor.

Jesus knew a thing or two about this. Whenever he could, he tried to get off by himself to pray. Even on the night before his arrest, he distanced himself from Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

So, when the Pharisees and Sadducees try to entrap him, once again, by asking which commandment is the greatest, it should come as no surprise that he responds by quoting scripture. The Great Commandment is to love God and love your neighbor. Matthew situates this in the context of Holy Week, after Jesus has entered Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, after tossing the moneychangers out of the temple, and after some verbal sparring with the religious leaders. Next week, we will follow the readings for All Saints Day, so we will not get the next part of this sparring when Jesus lights into them, accusing the authorities of doing everything for show, of being whitewashed tombs, rotten on the inside.

The leadup to that is this part about loving God and love neighbor - they are intimately connected. We cannot say we love God if we do not love our neighbor  which is defined as just anybody we come into contact with, anybody in need, anybody who is beloved of God, which is, actually, everybody.

But then there's the part about loving ourselves, and I am pretty sure a lot of us struggle with that. Maybe it's the Puritan heritage of  this country, but thinking too much about ourselves is looked down on. Who, after all, do we think we are?

The best way for me to grasp this is found in the book Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner. He wrote

Love your neighbor as yourself is part of the great commandment. The other way to say it is, 'Love yourself as your neighbor.' Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, strengthen yourself. Ministers in particular, people in the caring professions in general, are famous for neglecting their selves with the result that they are apt to become in their own way as helpless and crippled as the people they are trying to care for and thus no longer selves who can be of much use to anybody. If your daughter is struggling for life in a raging torrent, you do not save her by jumping into the torrent with her, which leads only to your both drowning together. Instead you keep your feet on the dry bank—you maintain as best you can your own inner peace, the best and strongest of who you are—and from that solid ground reach out a rescuing hand. "Mind your own business" means butt out of other people's lives because in the long run they must live their lives for themselves, but it also means pay mind to your own life, your own health and wholeness, both for your own sake and ultimately for the sake of those you love too. Take care of yourself so you can take care of them. A bleeding heart is of no help to anybody if it bleeds to death.[1]

This what it means, I think, to have deep roots that allow us to maintain stability even when the wind and waters of life are raging around us. For Christians, that rootedness is in the gospel of Jesus Christ that says that we are beloved, that we are to love God, showing that love through worship and prayer and sacrament, and that we are to share that belovedness with our neighbors. Loving ourselves means making sure that we take care of ourselves so that we can help those around us withstand whatever difficulty comes their way.

As I wrote in my introduction to this year's annual giving season, this congregation has worshipped on this corner for 170 years. We are deeply rooted in this community. We have done the things we need to do to preserve this congregation and serve our neighbors through our gifts of time and talent and money. I can't help wondering if those who started this congregation could have even imagined that we would be sitting here all these years later. I hope that we can imagine that 170 years from now, the gifts that we pledge in this season will help All Saints persevere through whatever comes our way long into the future.

[1] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2017/12/9/take-care-of-yourself