Proper 26, Year B, Track 1
Ruth 1:1-18
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34
"A few weeks ago, a senior Facebook employee leaked some very revealing and concerning documents about how the social media giant has been conducting its business. One thing that caught my eye was a document showing how user reactions affected the type of content they would see on their personal Facebook feeds. For many years, the only way to “react” to something on Facebook was with a “like.” In early 2016, they introduced an additional six ways to “react.” Rather than just “liking” a post, users could now choose the “love,” “care,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry” reactions to more accurately express how a post made them feel. What users didn’t know until now was that the algorithm that decides what content users see in their personal feeds actually weighted the reactions differently. For at least three years, Facebook gave five times more weight to angry reactions than to likes, meaning that the content eliciting those angry reactions would reach a much larger audience than content eliciting positive reactions. Oftentimes that would lead to users seeing more content that was misleading, poorly informed, and intentionally controversial. And wouldn’t you know it, nine months after the launch of these new reactions, Americans experienced one of the most acrimonious presidential elections in our modern history. Facebook is far from the only culprit, however. Outrage and anger sell, and we keep buying it up.
Amidst the worst public health crisis in a century, paired with deep economic uncertainty, we have all become a little angrier. We are tired, we are stressed, we are afraid, and too often that makes us lash out. Violence has skyrocketed against retail employees, flight attendants, health and education professionals, and others who serve in public-facing jobs. Domestic violence and gun violence have also soared in the past two years, reflecting the toll being taken on our mental health over the past two years. All of this is evidence of something that we know but are often too ashamed to admit out loud: it is so much easier for us to hate our neighbors than it is to love them. Our love for the people around us is tested in times like these, and more often than not, we fail to live up to the love Jesus models for us. We also fail to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength, for Christ makes clear that these two directives are inextricably linked. Every Sunday we admit as much in the Confession of Sin before the Eucharist. “We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” No matter what sin we bring before God, we know that at the root of it, all our sins are violations of both of those commandments.
But what does it look like to love God and our neighbor wholeheartedly? There are enough examples to keep me talking from now until Advent at least, but I love all of you too much to put you through that. Let’s first look at our gospel reading from Mark. There are accounts of Jesus explaining the Greatest Commandment in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but Mark’s account has a unique addition. Matthew and Luke begin Jesus’ answer with “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…,” but Mark does not. In Mark Jesus answers “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’” This is a direct quotation of Deuteronomy 6:4, in which Moses tells the people of Israel what they must do if they are to prosper in the land the Lord has given them. This verse forms the first half of the Jewish prayer known as the Shema Yisrael, which is considered the most important prayer in Jewish worship. Observant Jews say this prayer twice a day, and traditionally teach their children to say it at night before they go to bed. If possible, these are to be the last words that a Jew says before they pass away. God is the beginning and end of all things and the means and purpose of our existence. Just as our lungs breathe without us thinking about it, or our heart pumps blood, or our eyes blink, so too should our love of God be so innate that we should die if ever were we to lose it. That is what it means to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
What about loving our neighbor? Well, this makes that first commandment look like the easy one. The story of Ruth and Naomi is a particularly beautiful example of how we should love one another. Naomi lived during the period of the judges in Israel, a time after the death of Joshua and the elders when God’s people began losing their way. During a famine, Naomi and her husband and sons move to Moab, which is roughly modern-day Jordan, just across the Dead Sea. While this may have not been a particularly far journey for the family, they were venturing into a land with very different cultural and religious customs and beliefs. After the death of Naomi’s husband sometime after, her two sons married two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then after they had lived in Moab for ten years, both of Naomi’s sons died, leaving her not only stricken with grief, surely, but also in a deeply vulnerable position. Widows, particularly those without sons, were often among the most neglected ranks of society in the ancient world, objects of manipulation and abuse. Her best hope was to return to her homeland where she might be taken in and cared for by some extended family. Strangely though, her two Moabite daughters-in-law, likely both young enough to remarry and have children, both express a desire to return with Naomi to Judah. We never really know why they feel this way—this is certainly not how the old jokes about mothers-in-law tend to go—but clearly, Naomi must have been kind and loving to them for them to do this. I imagine Naomi was probably quite touched that Orpah and Ruth would want to come with her, but she was confident they would be better off in their own land, where they could once again attempt to start their families. Orpah is eventually convinced by Naomi and relents, but Ruth does not, and Ruth’s words are a deeply touching testament to the kind of love that God wants us to have for one another. She says “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” To the married folk out there, have any of you ever felt such intense love for an in-law before? Marriage may be the joining of families, but I don’t know of any that take that concept quite as seriously as Ruth.
Then, of course, we have Jesus Christ, the greatest example of unconditional love we could ever ask for. When I was writing this I was reminded of one of my favorite lines from Eucharistic Prayer D: “When the hour had come for him to be glorified by you, his heavenly Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Jesus loved them with his last breath on earth, even though he knew that Peter would deny him, that Thomas would doubt him, that crowds would shout “Crucify him!” He loved them to the end, and loves them still, as he loves us despite our myriad failures.
It is easy for us to love our friends. It is even relatively easy to love strangers if we put forth the effort to do so. But our neighbors can and do include those who have hurt us and others. Our neighbors can be unkind, remorseless, even sadistic. How can we possibly love people like that? How can we love when we know we may only receive apathy or scorn in return? It is an intense exercise in patience, forgiveness, and measured expectations, but as 1 Corinthians 13:5 famously tells us, love “does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” It is so hard because it feels completely contrary to our nature, but that is also why it is so powerful. Unscrupulous actors may take advantage of anger for profit, but love changes us in dramatic, lasting ways.
To be clear, forgiveness does not retroactively justify unjust actions. Each of us who has wronged another is still responsible to God and to each other to take responsibility for our actions and do what we can to make things right. But sometimes we must forgive knowing that another may not put forth that effort, or that the damage they have caused is truly irreparable. It is at those times we must remind ourselves of something Mark Twain once said: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” When we cling to anger, regardless of whether or not it may seem justified, it diminishes our capacity to love and eventually consumes us. When we withhold love from our neighbor, we withhold it from God, and we withhold it from ourselves. We all see how this plays out in tragic examples of extremism around the world, where people who have been hurt become so consumed by the injustice of their hurt that all they desire to do is make others feel it too.
But there is no room in our hearts for us to hold on to both anger and faith. Let us remember that “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” All of us can be powerful instruments of God in this world, but first, we must learn to walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself as an offering and sacrifice to God. Amen."