You Will Love Your Cousin
Nov 05, 2009
Steven Bishop
"You Will Love Your Cousin," a sermon by Steven Bishop, Ph.D., assistant professor of Old Testament, given on November 5, 2009, in Christ Chapel
I never liked my cousin Ricky. Don't ask me why. There was no particular reason I didn't like him, it was an amalgamation of small reasons. One Sunday when Ricky's family came to our house Ricky wanted to see my new horse, Peanut. Peanut had many bad habits, but one especially bad habit was his love of biting people. When Ricky asked to see Peanut I happily agreed and did not tell him about Peanut's love of human flesh. As we approached the stall where Peanut was kept I urged Ricky to ‘get closer, move closer'. Then, as if on cue, Peanut did what he did best-he bit Ricky right on the chest. As Ricky lay on the ground writhing and crying I patted Peanut's neck, the only time I ever rewarded him for living into his nature.
Ricky, as you might expect, ran back to the house screaming and crying, "He bit me! He bit me!" Now, Peanut's habit was no secret in my family. My mother came out the back door to hear Ricky's sob story. When she was finished with him she looked up at me and I knew what Moses must have felt when standing before the burning bush: Holy Terror! It would be an understatement to say that my mother was not too pleased with me, she suspected that I intentionally allowed this to happen. She grabbed me by my shoulders, and among the many things she said, told me that I was going to love my cousin. How was I going to do that? It was Ricky! How could she order me to feel love toward him when I didn't even like him?
How can you tell someone to love another? How can you command an emotion?
The book of Deuteronomy is filled with ‘love' language. It appears in the context of particular behaviors toward other people, but more often it is used in reference to loving the God of Israel. Again and again Moses commands the people to love God. Our passage is the quintessential command to love God. It is the first part of the most famous prayer in Judaism, the Shema. There is evidence that early in Second Temple Judaism people were posting the Ten Commandments or this command on their doors and wearing small leather purses that contained this commandment or other Scriptures on their foreheads and arms.
The love language of Deuteronomy however does not connote an emotion, but rather a covenantal relationship. Deuteronomy presents the covenant as the central defining characteristic in the relationship between God and Israel. The best word to describe the meaning of ‘love' is loyalty. Remain loyal to God by remembering the commandments given by Moses.
The command to post and recite and remember the commandments understands that we are prone to forget. The passage continues with a warning to the people that when they get into the land and are enjoying its comforts and blessings not to forget God or more precisely, not to forget the covenant relationship.
Memory loss is a terrible and scary thing. National Public Radio has an ongoing project called the Memory Project. People interview their own family members who are losing their memory in order to hear stories never told and to exercise memory function. Posting and reciting the commandmentss is a way of helping us remember. We have signs all around us that help us to remember our baptismal covenant. We cross ourselves, we wear crosses, we sing, we pray, we partake of the Eucharist. All these signs remind us whose we are and the covenant we participate in.
So if we understand love to be loyalty, we are still faced with the second part of that sentence: to love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Heart, soul, and strength. It sounds like a neat trifurcation of the human, but I want to suggest that it is something else. Many of you are aware that ‘soul' is an unfortunate translation of "nephesh" and it is very unfortunate here. The primary meaning of nephesh has to do with one's life or one's self. Sometimes it can be translated like the personal pronoun ‘I'. I think it is better here to translate it with that meaning. If we don't there is the danger of promoting three types of imagining how we love God. Probably no one thinks that it is offering three choices; "I love God with my heart and I am working on getting my soul up to speed." But it does confuse the practical working out of this command.
I believe that what we have here is an intensification of meaning. That is, this is a building up of the image of complete devotion. Love God with all your heart, more than that love God with your entire self, even more love God with every fiber of you can muster.
This command also has an unusual use of a common word. The word translated "might" appears as a noun in one other Old Testament text. Describing the greatness of King Josiah and his unqualified fidelity to God's covenant the text reads: Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him (2 Kings 23:25). This is a direct quote of our text today. What is unusual is that ‘might' always appears as an adverb meaning "very", except in this case and in 2 Kings. All your might sounds better than all your very-ness, but it conveys the intensification of meaning present in the text. Moses is calling for complete devotion to the God and the covenant.
Love can be commanded when we understand that it means loyalty or devotion to live in a covenant relationship with God.
Today I feel bad about letting Ricky experience that equestrian nip. I have learned that you can love people you don't necessarily like. I am learning what it means to live out a loyalty to a covenant relationship with all my being. Fidelity to my baptismal covenant is how I love God.
