Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Dear Friends:
If you grew up in the Episcopal Church with the 1928 Prayer book or our older, Rite I liturgy, you will remember that our Sunday Eucharist always began with the words that we hear in our Gospel passage for this week:
“Here is what the Lord Jesus saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
I kind of regret that we don’t begin our Sunday service with those words any more, because they remind us, right off the bat, that “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” (Stephen Covey, First things First).
So many things right now vie for our allegiance and attention. A global pandemic. Economic distress. Social unrest. A contentious election. In the midst of all that swirls around us, how do we know what is the main thing? Is it our family, our church, our vocation, our callings in the world?
In today’s gospel, a lawyer tries to trap Jesus by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” I’m glad he asked because it leads Jesus to clarify the main thing: Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. At the same time, I hear the echo of words I recently read by the spiritual leader Cynthia Bourgeault. “Very, very simple. It only costs everything.”
The main thing is very, very simple: to love God. It only costs everything: all our heart, all our soul, all our mind. But what does that mean? John Calvin said that we can only know and love God if we know our whole self, all the hidden caves of our hearts, souls and minds. Only with greater understanding of our most intimate, vulnerable self in all our fractured radiance - each of us precious images of God’s strength revealed in and through our weaknesses - are we able to love our neighbor, in whom we see the best and the worst of ourselves. And this will cost us, no doubt. It will cost us our prejudice, our fear, our religious boundaries, all our walls and wars -everything that keeps us from the one path, the one pursuit, the single purpose, the “main thing.”
As we move through the challenging weeks before us and try to discern what it is that is ours to do – let us remember to keep the main thing the main thing: to love God by learning to love ourselves and letting that love flow to others. We do not have to do all, or see all, or be all. Very, very simple. It only costs everything.
In Christ,
Amelie+
