A recent homily in the Quincy University Chapel
“You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your
mind and all your strength.”
There
is an apparent contradiction in the way this commandment is stated. How can you
command someone to love? Love is supposed to be given freely, as a gift to the
other person.
Here
is a restatement of that first great commandment that suddenly popped into my
head. It contains language that may sound vulgar, language that preachers should
not use in a homily, but I think it expresses something that is important. It
is important enough to break the rule about vulgar language.
Here
it is, the way I would re-phrase the first great commandment.
“Love
me, dammit.”
Literally,
that statement expresses a truth: if you don’t love the Lord, you are damned.
But the spirit of the statement is the spirit of someone pleading to be loved.
The Lord is showing vulnerability and frustration in the statement. The
statement is saying that the Lord wants and needs us to love him.
When
you look at it that way, the word “commandment” does not quite express what is
going on. It is a commandment in the sense that the Lord needs compliance from
us more than that the Lord is demanding something from us.
Vulnerability
is part of love. Our God is pleading for our love. Our God needs our love.
That’s the way our God has made us.
Love
is a two-way street. When God commands us to love, God is telling us that our
response is just as important as what God just said. We are to approach God the
way a child approaches a parent. There is the child’s dependence in the
relationship, but there is also vulnerability on the part of the parent. The
parent needs the child’s love. The child knows this, and it is a source of the
child’s dignity.
The
reason that every child’s life is precious is that every child has the dignity
of being able to love God and that God needs that response from the child.
Don’t mess with the child, because the child is talking with God, and God is
listening.
We
all have that dignity, even when we are a long way from childhood, and even
when we may have done things that can destroy a relationship. God is just as
vulnerable to us when we have sinned as when we are children who haven’t sinned
yet. Jesus’s favorite statement was “God forgives you.”
So
the next time we think about the great commandment, to love God with our whole
heart and soul and mind and strength, we might re-phrase it: God is saying to
us: “Love me, dammit.”
