Love the Lord your God

So the first part of the scripture reading for this Sunday starts out: "Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. 'Teacher,' he said, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?' He said to him, 'What is written in the law? What do you read there?' He answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.' And he said to him, 'You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.'"

I've been thinking about this passage for a long time now - primarily because I have to preach on it tomorrow. This goes immediately into the story of the Good Samaritan, by the way, as the lawyer asks who his neighbor is. But I want to focus on the first part, and it's caused some problems for me. Interestingly, it's one of my favorite verses/concepts, and it's found in several places in the Bible. I love it, because it encompasses all of who we are - heart, soul, mind, strength - the possibilities of what it means to "love God" with those aspects of us are endless, and I'm completely fascinated. And the fact that "doing this" will give life? I think that's great. Because I interpret that not only as life after death, but life in the here and now. It's a great flip on our traditional 10 Commandments.

But this week, this text just exhausted me. I knew that I was being compelled to preach on it, but I couldn't figure out why, because it's just stressful to me right now. So I started complaining to God about how, with all of the other leaders and teachers and preachers and prophets of the faith, he had given words to speak and I had none and, well, I have to preach this thing in 16 hours. But I think I've figured it out. It's that I don't know how to love God when I don't understand how and if I've received love myself.

Obviously, I have received love in life. Family, friends, co-workers, supervisors, students - all have shown me love. But as a dense human being, the reality of that is easily forgotten. And I think that my congregation is in the same place. So the question now becomes: how do I preach about loving God while at the same time speaking tangible love to them?