Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Dear Friends,

This week when I came into the office, I was greeted by a beautiful, simple flower arrangement that one of our beloved parishioners had placed on my desk. When she stopped by later in the day, she said it was a token from the table decorations at the recent “Fine Arts and Flowers” exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I couldn’t have thanked her more.

There is just something about the unadorned beauty of flowers lovingly arranged that gets to the heart of things and reminds me of what matters most. If you view the images from the exhibit, which paired floral arrangements with selected works of art, you will see what I mean. The flowers capture the essence of the artwork they accompany – whether a painting or sculpture or an ancient artifact.

As I’ve reflected upon this, I’ve wondered…how did the designers who arranged these flowers find their way to the heart of the matter? What did they re-arrange, pare away, strip down, in order to discover what was essential?

It is these kinds of questions that we see Jesus engaging in our gospel reading for this Sunday. “Teacher,” a scribe from the religious establishment asks him, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  We don’t know whether this is a test question or an honest inquiry, but it prompts Jesus to lay out the lines that lie at the core of his life and teaching: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” Jesus says, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Firmly rooted in his Jewish heritage, Jesus gathers up the wisdom of his forebears and distills it into these two commandments that stand at the center of his history and of our own. He has found the heart of the matter, bringing to light what is most important, what is most crucial and essential in our life together.

I imagine Jesus knew that arriving at and living into what is essential is rarely easy. With these two commandments, he extends a call that is compelling in its directness and seeming simplicity, yet the work of love - loving God and one another and ourselves, with all the artfulness and creativity this asks of us - can be wildly complicated. Jesus’ words this week get at something I experience often in my vocation: arriving at something that appears simple and basic is one of the hardest things to do.

Maybe someday, in one of these reflections, I’ll say more about my own creative process, which these past years has expressed itself primarily in my writing: all those words I pared away, or chose against, or let go of, in order to find the final lines, the essential sentences, the heart of the matter.

In the meantime, I am here to ask you: How do you do this in your own life? Where is Jesus’ call to love - this call that draws us into the deepest places in our own hearts, the heart of the world, the heart of God - taking you? How do you sort through all that competes for your attention, so that you can find what is most crucial? What are the challenges along the way, and where do you find beauty and delight in the lines of your emerging life?

In the days ahead, may the heart of God draw each of us closer to what matters most.

In Christ,

Amelie+