Obedience

Love God and Neighbour – Are you a “why” person, or a “how” person?

July 13, 2025 — Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37


May only the Truth be spoken, and may only the Truth be heard,
in the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have a question for you this morning.
Are you a why person, or are you a how person?
What’s your mind’s go-to response?  Why? or How?

Our lessons today deal with the law of God – the wonderful, life-giving, freedom-filled gift which is God’s law. Not a burdensome set of rules, nor is it something that should fill us with fear because of our natural and universal inability to fulfil it without a lot of God’s help; but a gift.  As we read in Deuteronomy, it’s in living into and living out the Lord’s vision for how we should live that we will find true blessing, true prosperity, the lasting inner peace that can carry us – together – through the ups and downs of life.

And Jesus sums it all up for us in a way that I’m sure many of us have committed to memory.  

Hear what the Lord Jesus Christ says: (say it with me!) you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you haven’t committed that one to memory, take it home.  It’s on the front page of your bulletin.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And Love your neighbor as yourself.

What does it mean to live a Christian life?  Love the Lord your God…
What does it look like to follow Christ? Love the Lord your God…
How should we live if we want to see the Lord’s blessing?  Love the Lord your God…

It’s all pretty straight-forward, right?
Look again at Deuteronomy: God, through Moses, suggests that this is all rather easy!  The Law is not far away, hidden in heaven or buried in the depths that we need someone to bring it to us.  The Law, God says, is not too hard for you.  In fact, it’s very near, it’s in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Easy, right?

(…well, lets just say I won’t ask for a show of hands for those who think they’ve succeeded!)

But I will say this: the Law is easy, in as much as it is easy to understand. 
When God says something, He means it.  He doesn’t throw words around lightly.

When He says “all”, it’s simple enough to understand – He really does mean all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  Hold nothing back.  Go all in.

And when He says “to love your neighbour”, again it’s simple enough – there’s no bones about it, no beating around the bush: the word is agapeo, agape, that fullest, sacrificial definition of love, the love that prefers the other above the self, the love that is defined as a desire to see and bring about the well-being of another.   On the one hand, it’s that simple: love your neighbour, desire and seek to bring about what is best for him or her, all the way.

It’s Simple enough… until our minds get in the way!

“It’s in your mouth and it’s in your heart”, God says, “so that you can do it”.

But did you notice what God did not say?

The Law is in your mouth and in your heart… the issue, though, is that, for us sinful human beings, we like to follow our minds. 

And that’s not where God says the Law has been written, even for those who are redeemed, who are filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Law isn’t found in your rational mind. Yes, by grace, over a lifetime of sanctification, we pray along with Romans 12 that with God’s help we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind, or with Ephesians 4 to be made new in the attitude of our minds, or with Philippians 2, that we would come to have the mind of Christ in us as we learn to decrease our self-interests so that the Body of Christ may increase.

My brothers and sisters, we have to be aware of this: yes, the Law is to be found in your mouth, each and every ordinary Christian, sharing that Good and life-giving News, and yes, God’s law is written deep on each and every human heart… but be aware – your mind, my mind, won’t live out God’s law naturally.

So let me as you… are you a why person, or are you a how person?

When you hear the law of God, what is your first response?
Are you a why person?  No shame, I think all of us are “why” people by nature.

You hear someone like me say “God wants you to go all in”… and, the natural human response is to say “what?  Why would I do that?  I’m not a preacher. I put my money in the plate, I pray for my church family, I come out on Sundays, I read my Bible most days.  Surely that’s good enough, or it at least counts for something, right?

Why should I need to do more?  Why should I need to be made into more or “transformed” any more than I already am? I’m already doing so much more for the Lord than most people are, most can’t even be bothered to get out of bed on Sunday morning. …No, I can’t say that I love God with all my heart or all my mind, but come on, why should I need to?  And hey, while we’re at it, it’s not like you’re living a perfect life either… and on and on and on it goes.

Are you a “why” person? 

Are you one whose nature, whose natural reaction, is to hear the simple, straightforward, but all-encompassing law of God, and whose first reaction is to explain why it’s not asking anything more of you than what you’re already doing, or why that simple command might apply to someone else who is doing less than you, but you’re alright.

Or, perhaps you hear “love your neighbour as yourself” – and you hear a crazy preacher who went back and looked at the Greek in Luke and Matthew and at the Hebrew in the quote from Leviticus that Jesus was referencing, and who says, no, it doesn’t mean “care about your neighbour”, it actually means agape, that all-in, self-sacrificing, deeper-than-your-love-for-your-own-blood sort of love, and your mind’s first reaction is “that doesn’t make sense, why would I do that?”. 

I care for the poor, I give money and sometimes even volunteer for stuff.  I pray for the homeless and addicted, I even stick around for coffee hour after church for a bit of fellowship with other church people… but what does God want of me?  Seriously? To have agape, all-in, sacrificial love my neighbour who I don’t even really know, and who wouldn’t do the same for me, why would I do that?  I already do more than most people, why would I actually love some random person as myself. 

A ”why” person.  Like the lawyer in today’s Gospel, who says “yes Master, I hear you… but let’s define our terms so that I can tell you why I’m off the hook”.

Now let’s be clear – there’s no shame in admitting you’re a “why” person, if that’s where you’re at right now.  I will confess that I lived most of my Christian life as a why person, including the first 5 years of my ordained ministry.  Yes, the law was in my heart, yes, it was even in my mouth on a daily basis… but my mind did a very good job of comforting myself to justify why other people needed to grow, but I had probably come far enough when it comes to being “all in” with love for God and neighbour.

There’s no shame in admitting if that’s where you are.  And I say that precisely because admission and confession – giving up that denial – those are the first steps to continuing in that journey of who God is calling you to be: someone who really is all in.

Someone whose mind has been transformed from “why”… to “how”.

You see, a “why” person – and we’re all why people by sinful human nature – uses their mind to decide what is right for them, what is good enough for them, and sets about explaining why they’ve already grown and been transformed enough, why the dead simple, totally straightforward, but breathtakingly hard “all-in” language of God doesn’t mean what it says, or at least doesn’t call them to do any extra.

A ”why” person uses their mind to set their priorities.

What’s the alternative?

But, by grace, we can become “how” people. 
You see, a “how” person knows that their mind is not trustworthy for setting priorities.
A “how” person knows that the law is on their heart, but that the transformation and renewal of the mind is still very much a work in progress. 

A “how” person says: ‘ok Lord… you’re right, I haven’t gone all in.  How can I make that simple command more visible in my life?  What’s the next step?”

A “how” person says ‘Lord, it’s hard… I barely know my neighbours… in fact, there are people I worship with each week and I don’t even know their names, and this is a pretty small church!  And Lord, I don’t feel like I have much time or energy… but you say I need to love my neighbour as myself, and I don’t, so how I can I do that better?  What’s the next step?”

Our homework: some practical obedience!

Friends, put that to the test this week.  I will too.
Take your bulletin home, and each day, recite that summary of the law that Jesus gave us, found on the front of your bulletin. 

And catch yourself… because, like the lawyer in the Gospel, your mind will naturally go to why you’re not called to do more, why this isn’t asking anything of you.

But switch, consciously, intentionally, from “why” to “how”.  Each day, read it, and then pray: Lord, this is your command.  How do I make this more visible in my life?  What’s the next step?

That’s the sort of obedience to God’s Law that changes a life; that changes a church; that changes a community.

Because, when we offer something to God – especially when we offer it off the top and out of our poverty, rather than offering God what is left over, He takes it and blesses it and opens the windows of heaven to multiply it.

It’s like the person who tithes of their money before all else.  Anyone’s rational mind can explain why it makes more sense that you should pay your power bill and pay for the repairs on your car before you give money to the Lord… but anyone who has ever tithed knows that by trusting God and saying “Lord, show me how”, you end up with more than you could have asked for or imagined.

So go all in.  Ask God how that should look, for you to love Him first and fully, and to really have agape, sacrificial love for your neighbours – and, lets start that close to home, right here, with getting to know your church family better, taking someone out for coffee, inviting someone over for tea, meeting up for lunch – like tithing, you offer the time and energy in obedience off the top, and God will give it back multiplied.

This is the law of God.  It is amazingly simple. It is wonderfully straightforward.  But it is also breathtakingly difficult to put into practice.

Say it with me.  Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it; You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

Now… will you start to explain why… or will you ask God to show you how?

To God be the glory, now and forevermore.  Amen.

The Virgin Mary: Someone we can relate to!

August 15, 2021 — Leave a comment

Today the Church invites us to remember, celebrate, and learn from the life and witness of St. Mary the Virgin, the mother of the Lord.  Now I suspect, as in most Anglican circles, some of us come with a strong affection for the blessed virgin, while others are perhaps even a little uncomfortable with the mention of her name, as it brings to mind all the reasons why Christians need to be careful not to become obsessed with saints to the point that it gets in the way of worshipping God and serving our neighbours.

But, you should know me well enough by now to know that I believe there’s always real value in digging in, getting underneath those assumptions, those things that we bring with us when we hear scripture, and instead open our ears and our hearts to hear what God is saying in his Word.

If Jesus is born a man like us, his mother must be a woman like us.

The fundamental reason that we celebrate this day is the simple-yet-mind-blowing fact that we believe that Mary, an ordinary, faithful woman growing up in an ordinary home, going about her business of loving God and loving her neighbour, became the God bearer, became the one who bore Jesus Christ, the one though whom all things were made.  God – supreme over all the universe – loved us so much that he entered into a young woman’s belly for our sake; not unlike the way he continues to be present among us, becoming our heavenly food and drink for our sake (but that’s another sermon for another day).

The point is, I think we need to strip away some of the ‘hype’ about the virgin Mary, so that our eyes can be open to the shocking extent of God’s love for us.

As Christians, we believe that God became man; he became one of us.  He didn’t become like one of us.  He became one of us, except – being God – he was able to do what we could not, and resist the power of sin, and forge a new path for us to follow.

If we strip away the pious romanticism about Mary and the holy family, I believe we’ll find great comfort.  We’ll find a saviour who doesn’t just know about our griefs and burdens and struggles,[1] but who knows them, who has seen them first hand, not just from his throne in glory, but in the dusty streets and in the joy and tears in the faces of those around him.

Mary’s Messy Life

If we stick to the words of scripture, we’ll see that Mary isn’t all that different than any of us.  And that’s the point – God didn’t choose some super-human heroine to rub our messy lives in our faces; not at all!  No, Jesus came to share our lives, to walk alongside us, to give us an example, and to reach out in love to lift our heavy burdens as we learn to take them off our worn-down shoulders, and share our yoke with the one who holds it all together and offers to lift us up if we’ll follow where he leads.

As we look at Mary from the pages of scripture, we see someone who looks familiar.

She’s a young woman who loves God, who trusts in His promises, but like any of us, is still shocked to find out that she has a role to play in God’s plan.

She finds herself saying “yes” to God in a difficult situation – a situation that throws everything that she and her parents have planned for her into a tailspin.  As much as Christmas pageants tend to gloss over the situation, she finds herself as the talk of the town, pushing her fiancé’s patience to the limit as he tries to distance himself from the scandal.  And it’s no small thing – we usually skip over those verses in Luke 1 where, after Mary conceives the Lord (and, as Matthew tells us, after word gets out), she leaves town in a hurry, leaves her parents’ house and Joseph’s family, and this pregnant woman travels 160 km by foot to her cousin’s house in Hebron.[2]  She makes that hard journey home three months later, just in time to head out with Joseph once more to Bethlehem to do paperwork for the census when she’s nearly full term.

Mary’s life wasn’t the romanticized one of Christmas cards and the soft, flowing fabrics of statues and artwork.

She was a busy mother of what might have been a blended family.  The gospels tell us that Jesus has at least 6 siblings, four brothers and at least two sisters.  Unlike most people in that era, Mary didn’t always have the support of her extended family.  We know they moved around: they moved all the way to Egypt with a toddler before returning to Nazareth.  And, as much as 17th century art work has given us the image of Joseph and Jesus working in a woodshop making furniture, what we do know from the actual words of scripture is that Mary’s husband has a skilled trade working in construction.  We know from historical sources that there was a shortage of construction workers in the early first century because of all the Roman construction in the area, so for Joseph to earn that reputation, chances are that he was like so many working in the mines, or the oil patch, or foreign workers harvesting in our fields today, leaving home for work during the construction season, and leaving Mary home with the kids to make ends meet until the next payday. 

Jesus knows what it is to grow up in a working home, where parents are making costly and painful sacrifices, facing loneliness and difficult decisions.

I also feel for Mary because I know what it is to have a son who speaks his mind, who tends to see things as they really are, and who is discontent with the simple, expected answers to life’s questions.  We know, from age 12, Jesus was teaching others to read the scriptures properly.  I can only imagine what that was like at home, or what sort of reports got sent home from Sabbath School at the synagogue.  And, of course, we know from John 7 that Jesus and his brothers didn’t always get along as adults, so we can well imagine what Mary went through when they were growing up.

And then it would seem, too, that somewhere along the way, by the time Jesus is ministering publicly, Mary is widowed, standing alone with the other women at the cross watching, helpless, as her own son dies, having pushed the limits of love, having done what is right rather than what is expected, as He finally accomplished that purpose as Messiah that she had secretly carried in her heart since the day the angel visited over three decades before.

Jesus knows what it’s like to test a parents’ patience; to see a family struggling to hold it together; to see relationships strained; to know real heartbreak, and the pain of loss.

Scripture paints a picture of Mary that isn’t extraordinary or super-human, but instead looks a lot like us.  And that’s good news, because God didn’t come for those who have their lives all put together; he came to save those who were perishing, to lift up those who were worn down, to carry the burdens and heal those who are willing to be honest and ask for the help that Christ offers to all.

Mary, full of grace.

Mary needs to be like us, so that her Son, Jesus, can be like us.

And yet the angel says “Hail, favoured one”, “Hail, full-of-grace”, “Hail, you who are blessed among women”.[3]

And, so I ask, is that grace, that favour in the Lord’s sight earned because of any special thing that Mary has done?

No. The good news about Mary’s life and witness is that it could be any of us.  Like all of the saints throughout history, Mary did nothing to deserve her part in God’s plan.  Mary certainly wasn’t full of her own grace; she received the grace of her saviour as much as anyone else.

Rather, Mary finds favour in God’s sight, she’s blessed among women because, as God calls, her heart is open, she trusts His promises, and she says yes.

She’s one of only two people named in the Creed – Mary says “yes” to God, Pontius Pilate says “no”. 

Called to be saints.

And so, whatever mess or stress or pain we find ourselves in – and let’s be honest, we’ve all got stress, and we’ve all got a bit of a mess – Jesus knows what it’s all about.  He’s been in a small town, he’s been in a messy family, nothing you’ve got is going to surprise Him.  So put your trust in him, and take him at his word.  Let him carry your burden with you; put his yoke around your neck and let his strong back pull you along when you’re at the end of your rope. 

Because, as the body of Christ gathered here, we too are called to be saints.

Like Mary, we’re not saints because our lives are perfect; the saints are those who say yes to God even when they’re not. 

So, my friends, whatever you’re facing and whatever you’re carrying, as we come to pray, as we confess things done and left undone, as we approach the Lord’s table to say “Amen” – “so be it” – and take the Lord’s body into our bellies, let’s take this opportunity to say “yes”, to hand it over, and to trust in the one who has been there, and who reaches out in love – even Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen.

[1] Isaiah 53

[2] Luke 1:39-40 says Mary went with haste to see Zechariah and Elizabeth in the hill country of Judah.  Zechariah was a priest (Luke 1:5-7).  Joshua 21:10-11 identifies “Hebron, in the hill country of Judah” as the city of the priests.

[3] Luke 1:28