To love neighbor involves love for their neighborhood. To love God involves love for God’s creation. – Dennis OrmsethĀ reflects on loving as God loves.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common LectionaryĀ
Readings for Sunday October 23-29, Year A (2011, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2023)
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Psalm 1
I Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
āāYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.ā This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it; āYou shall love your neighbor as yourself.āā (Matthew 22:37-39)
Coming as it does at the end of a block of narrative in which the conflict between Jesus and his opponents over his mission and his authority is brought to the fever pitch that leads to his death, this saying, the so-called ādouble commandment to love,ā constitutes something of an epitome of both Jesusā teaching and his practice. Citing both Moses and the holiness code from Leviticus, Jesus demonstrates his loyalty to the faith of Israel and thus silences his critics. Again we have an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of care of creation in the mission of Jesus, if we can show the connection of this saying to that concern.
To love the neighbor requires love of their ecological neighborhood.
We have previously given attention to the second half of the saying, concerning love of neighbor, most recently in our comment on the texts for Lectionary 23. With reference to Paulās ethical counsel in Romans 13:9-10, we asked, āCan one imagine that one could love a neighbor, doing the neighbor no wrong, as Paul specifies, without also caring for the āhoodā in which the neighbor lives?ā
āCare for the neighborhood as an essential aspect of love of neighbor,ā we urged, āencompasses all aspects of the web of relationships, natural no less than social, economic, and political.ā We refer the reader to that discussion, and turn to what happens to be the more important and decisive matter of the first half of the saying, āYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all our soul, and with all your mind.ā
Love for God involves loving all that God loves.
In a recent discussion of the biblical meaning of love, Michael Welker makes the key points that are needed here. āIf we take the time to compare the numerous statements about love in the biblical traditions,ā he writes, āwe are first struck by the multitude of ārelationsā that cause them to speak of ālove.āā Contrary to what he regards in contemporary discussions of love as ācaptivity of thoughtā to a āparadigmatic concentration on the affective person-to-person relation,ā Welker argues that ā[a]part from the great variety of ālove relationsā in the biblical traditions it is striking thatĀ for centuries the love of God is strictly connected to the respect for and āattention to the commandmentsā or to the āholding fast to Godās word.Ā Correspondingly, āto love Godās nameā and āto serve Godā (Isaiah 56:6) can be connected.ā . . . The ālove of GodāĀ Ā . .Ā Ā quite obviously also means to take up and pursue Godās intentions as they pertain to the good order and the well-being of creation in general.ā Love of God, he urges with specific reference to the saying of Matthew 22:37,
“. . . includes, and even opens up, law-abiding and loving relationships to the world, to fellow human beings, and even to other fellow creatures, according to Godās intentions. The so-called ādouble commandment of loveā should thus not be regarded as a combination of two different basic relations, but as a strict connection that says something important about the biblical understanding of love in general” (Welker, āRomantic Love, Covenantal Love, Kenotic Love,ā in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis,Ā John Polkinghorn, editor, pp. 130-31).
The ālove God loves with and wants to be loved withā is both revealed in Jesus and made available to us through him as a power with which we, too, can love the creation.
Covenantal love dignifies our role as Godās partners in tending creation.
Love in this perspective takes two forms, covenantal love and kenotic love. Both are of crucial significance for the care of creation. The covenantal form of love, Welker stipulates,
“. . . bestows a great dignity on human beings. They are dignified to take up and pursue Godās intentions in relation to creation, Godās interests in the well being of creation. They are dignified to reveal Godās will and Godās plans for creation. And they are dignified to work toward the fulfillment of the divine creative, sustaining, and transforming agency. No less is expressed in the notion of the imago Dei” (Ibid., p. 133).
But given the great āweight of loveā thus conferred on human beingsāāFor who could claim that he or she could respond to this calling and take care of Godās intentions for the creation? Who could claim to participate in Godās strength and being?ā (Ibid.)ā, God also āunconditionally turns to creatures in order to liberate them out of the depths of confusion, lostness, and sin, to win them for the coming reign of God, and to ennoble them to the experience and enactment of Godās love, something they can only experience and enact as a new creation.ā
Kenotic love is Godās burning passion of all living things in themselves.
In this kenotic form of love, God reveals Godās own āburning passion for creaturesā in themselves, and ānot just for their suitability to the divine plan for the world.ā This love involves āa passionate interest in the otherness of the other, a passionate interest in letting the other unfold himself-herself in freedom, a passionate interest to pave ways for the unfolding of his-or-her life, all are characteristic of kenotic love.ā Not just a matter of curiosity, this love
“. . . seeks to win the other for a new life in a new creation. The kenotic love of God seeks a newĀ covenantal relationshipāwithout boundaries, without exclusion, but with the divine purpose to win the beloved one for participation in the divine life and in the divine plans for creation. The life of Christ offers guidance to help us become familiar with these plans” (Ibid., p. 134).
How can weāChristians and congregationsānot love and care for creation?
With this assertion we profoundly agree, in light of our course of discovery of such guidance in our comments on the readings for Year A of the lectionary. We can perhaps sum up his argument this way: If love of neighborhood is inherent in love of neighbor, so also is love for Godās creation inherent in love for God. To love God is to respect Godās work of love, the whole creation. It is to love what God loves, with the love with which God wants it to be loved, the love which is ours in and through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This love can be exercised most directly and effectively in relationship to oneās neighbor and the āhoodā that we and our neighbors share. Surely it belongs to the practice of every Christian congregation to demonstrate to the community surrounding it that this is very much what Christian faith is about.
To love the neighbor requires love of their ecological neighborhood.
Love for God involves loving all that God loves.
Covenantal love dignifies our role as Godās partners in tending creation.
Kenotic love is Godās burning passion of all living things in themselves.
How can weāChristians and congregationsānot love and care for creation?
Originally written by Dennis Ormseth in 2011.
dennisormseth@gmail.com