What's So Often Left Out

Romans 13:8-10

One of the things I love about living here and being a part of this church community is how much people care about serving their community and helping their neighbors.

Small churches like Acworth are full of people who earnestly help, serve, and do good for their neighbors, for their communities.

I think it’s not insignificant how many people in this room work in some kind of service occupation or are retired from one.  Here in this room are nurses, teachers, counselors, volunteers, public servants.

Much of the week is spent in considering how to care for the neighbor or do good work for the community. 

We are a neighbor-loving people and if someone were to ask us what the most important commands in the bible are, many of us might summarize it so:

Love God. Love neighbor.

But something was just left out in that summary of the summary. 

And it’s what is so often left out of Christian summaries that I want to grapple with.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

I want to encourage us because I’m speaking to myself just as much as to anyone else.

I want to encourage us to take seriously this part of the command.

I used to think that the only important part was “Love your neighbor”

We aren’t being commanded to love ourselves, we are just being told that since we already love ourselves, we should extend that love outward to our neighbor as well.

I used to think that the idea that we love ourselves could be taken for granted.

And so we are told to imagine loving the neighbor in that same way.

And I do agree that the “as yourself” part of the command is supposed to be the measure of our love for our neighbor.  It’s like the golden rule in this way.

But I no longer think that it can be taken for granted that we are always already loving ourselves.

I think the high rates of burnout among people in service jobs gives evidence of this.

As we love our neighbor, we need to intentionally love ourselves.

But at this point I think many of our alarms begin going off.

But Pastor, doesn’t 2 Timothy 3:2 speak negatively about people becoming “lovers of themselves”?

Isn’t it wrong to love myself? Isn’t that selfishness?

And so on the one hand we have a command that says “love your neighbor as yourself” and then we have a passage that suggests that the downfall of human civilization in part consists of people becoming “lovers of themselves.”

I think the big difference between healthy and unhealthy “love of self” lies in how we understand who we are and what we are made for.

This is where the first commandment helps us a great deal.

We were made to live in fellowship with God.

When we love ourselves unhealthily it is because we think that we can find our rest and satisfaction outside of the fellowship with God for which we were made.

When we love ourselves well, we care for ourselves by drinking from the water of life,

By abiding in the presence of the one who made us and loves us.

I’ve been rereading St. Augustine’s book, Confessions recently and in the first paragraph of the entire book he says something that has been really powerful to me:

“[Human beings are] part of your creation, and [long] to praise you.  You stir us up to take delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.” (Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1, trans. Burton)

A really important thing we have to keep remembering is that we are created beings

and as created beings we have been given our life by a Creator whose overflowing love gave birth to the universe we dwell in.

And Augustine thinks its really important to remember that God,

the one from whom all goodness, beauty, love flow – like water from the fountain, or rays from the sun –

God is the one who made us.

And we are God’s.  The Psalm goes on “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Ps 100:3)

For Augustine this is incredibly important

since we have been created in the image of God,

since God is our beginning and it is God to whom we will return,

we can find no other place of rest and true enjoyment than in God’s eternal presence.

“you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.”

And so what it means to love ourselves is to find our rest in the one whose love gave us our being in the first place.

This is the sense that we love ourselves well, healthfully. 

We return to the water of life, the food that really sustains us – God’s own presence,

and we return (in my experience, again and again) like the wayward son to the eager and expectant father keeping watch from a distance, and in the midst of our weariness or feelings of guilt or fear or shame,

we find an everready divine embrace, an unconditional forgiving welcome,

a fellowship which can truly nurture us to a healthy way of living in the world,

It’s not a fix to the human condition – we are always pilgrims on a road towards a greater love and knowledge of God and ourselves.

We find not a final and full rest, but a greater rest and joy in the presence of the one who created us in love and who calls us into fellowship with a passionate love.

“you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.”

The command to love yourself is to point yourself to that fountain.

And away from what the prophet Jeremiah calls broken cisterns that cannot hold water –

these are those relationships or activities or things which we expect to fill us in the way that only God can.

From broken cisterns that hold no water, we turn to the fountain of living water, the source of our life who alone can satisfy our hearts.

When we love ourselves well, we receive God’s embrace and welcome and allow ourselves to let go of the will to do it all on our own or to keep ourselves busy

and rather hear and follow the call to “Be still and know that I am God.” (Ps 46:10)

So what I have here, I hope is an invitation for all of you and for myself as well, who are weary and heavy laden – find your rest in the fellowship, the communion with the Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer who is everlasting Love.

On a practical note.

How do we cultivate this kind of self-care?

I think a big part of this involves taking time to remember and realize the relationship you have with your Creator.  I find that I am best able to be aware of God’s presence in my walks through the woods – it helps me to admire the beauty and complexity of the created world and I can remember to be thankful and as Jesus said, “consider the lilies” and remember God’s care for all living things.

I think the most difficult and yet beneficial practice that I’ve learned to do in caring for myself,

is taking time away from work each week.

This is a long forgotten concept and practice in our society.

And something that has been very difficult especially in places like Acworth where the work responsibilities outside the home, at home, and in the community all seem to conspire to consume every moment of the week. 

How can we cultivate a practice of taking a Sabbath, for instance, when there literally is no day when we are not required to work – I think of those people who are working two or three jobs to make ends meet.

But rest is not only important for our bodies – it is hugely important for our ability to love ourselves well and live into our relationship as children of God our creator.

Sabbath is a practice that reminds us that we are not in control and that God will take care of us quite apart from our efforts.  Taking time each week to rest (let alone each night) – maybe it can’t be a full day – but something – and dedicate it not only to eating nachos on the couch and watching movies or tv.  Though that can be really helpful at times –

but spend some of that time taking a walk in the woods or reading scripture or sitting still somewhere where you can remember that God is the one who gave us this gift of existence, and God is the one who longs for our fellowship and to make us aware that regardless of what anyone else says, we are loved.

And if you’re like me, you don’t just need alone time, you need good fellowship with those who know and love you well – seek out those conversations with others that fill you

I want to encourage all of us to value rest and intentional self-care – and encourage one another in this.  Because we live in a society where “productivity, efficiency, and speed” are valued over “faith, hope, and love.”

And I think we will best be able to love our neighbors when we have had the room to contemplate “the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Amen.