“Jesus’ Command, Love’s Demand” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, October 18, 2026, Year A / 20th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25) – Deuteronomy 6:4-9 • Leviticus 19:9-18 • Matthew 22:34-40
THEME: Loving God and neighbor has the power to make this world more like the next.
Two years ago, Beth and I were in England. We were traveling from the Lake District in the north down to Cornwall in the south. Along the way we stopped overnight in a little village, not far from Bristol.
As we were walking home from dinner, we came to the town square. Just as we walked past the beautiful medieval church, a magnificent symphony of church bells began to ring out. The sound echoed all around the square. It was like being engulfed in a sonic wave of heavenly glory.
It made me wonder. Church bells are basically huge chunks of bronze. They are incredibly heavy. Some weigh as much as 3,000 pounds. How can bell manufacturers make such massive things sound so glorious when they ring together? So, I did some homework.
The answer is this. They fine-tune each and every bell by shaving off minute amounts of metal from the inside. Before computers came along, they tested the sound of each bell, using a tuning fork.
That is where things get really interesting.
Experts use different tuning forks, each of which vibrates at a specific frequency. They strike the fork on something else and then they hold it against the outside of the bell.
If the bell is in tune, it will actually begin to resonate and ring in the same tones as the tuning fork itself. I was amazed that something so small and delicate as a tuning fork, could make such a massive object swell with sound, by a mere touch.
When Jesus gives us his Great Commandment in today’s text, he is telling us that we can have that same power when it comes to sharing our love of God and our love of neighbor.
Once again, Jesus finds himself jousting with his opponents. So far, he has passed every test. Now, he is confronted by a Pharisee, an expert in the law. This pharisee asks him which of the 613 commandments of the Mosaic law is the greatest.
It’s a trick question. Every principle of the law is as important as every other. To break one statute is to break the whole law, and to elevate one command above the rest is to demote the others. If Jesus picks just one, he will be discredited as a faithless heretic. Or so they hope.
The stakes are high. Remember, Jesus has already been accused of wanting to abolish the law.
But Jesus has a deeper understanding of the law than any legal expert. When God gave the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, his purpose was to enable his people to live intimately with him, and in loving community with one another. The law is all about love, not legalism.
In response, Jesus cites the most sacred Jewish prayer from Deuteronomy. It commands God’s people to love him with all their heart, mind and soul. To this very day, this prayer is the heart of Jewish piety.
Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
It starts with our hearts. By heart, Jesus means more than the place where our emotions come from. The heart is the center of human will. It is where we form our desires and our commitments.
When we say “my heart is in it,” we mean we are truly dedicated to whatever it is we are pursuing. To love God with our whole heart is to desire and be committed to God, and what God wants, above anything and everything else.
When it comes to loving God with our mind, this is fairly easy for us Presbyterians to grasp. We are well-known for embracing the intellect and education. So much so, that Pentecostals have even given us a nickname. They call us God’s frozen chosen. Not us, gang! Not here at Silver Spring.
Alistair McGrath, one of the greatest Biblical scholars of our time, calls this the discipleship of the mind. He says, “We cannot love God without wanting to understand more about him. . . We cannot allow Christ to reign in our hearts if he does not also guide our thinking.”
So that is how we love God with our heart and our mind. But how do we love God with our soul?
This is a bit more nebulous. The soul is that part of us where the Holy Spirit dwells. The soul transcends the mind and the body. The soul is the center of God-consciousness.
When we are close to God, we feel God’s power and God’s love. Our soul responds with a sense of awe. That is a powerful feeling. We have all felt this.
It happens when we worship in an especially moving way. It happens when we suddenly understand scripture in a new light. It happens when we have one of those eerie God moments, when the events of our lives mysteriously and magnificently align, and new possibilities emerge.
To love God with our whole soul is to seek and embrace these moments, to treasure them as the blessing and proof of God’s presence.
All of this is what Jesus means when he commands us to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul. The dedication of heart, the discipline of the mind, and the seeking of the soul – these are what make it possible for us to truly love our neighbor.
When it comes to loving our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus is surprisingly specific. He points us to Leviticus 19.
Clearly, he spent a lot of time reflecting on this passage. It calls God’s children to respect the rights of others and to defend the rights of the vulnerable. It is about concern for the poor, the hungry, the alien, the marginalized and the oppressed.
Leviticus 19 makes it clear that the love Jesus wants from us goes way beyond the warm, fuzzy feelings we usually think of as love. Biblical love requires action. It requires justice, especially for those whom Jesus calls the least.
These are not two separate commandments. They form a single law of love that sums up all 613 statutes of the Jewish law, both the major and minor prophets, and, for that matter, all the teachings in our New Testament, too.
All of these boil down to a single command, in two parts. Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. Love is the theme that runs throughout the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New, from Genesis to Revelation.
Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor is the key to unlock the meaning of all scripture. If we are reading scripture to mean anything other than this, then we need to pray for guidance and read it again.
Augustine of Hippo famously said, whoever thinks he understands the Holy Scriptures, but whose interpretation does not build up the love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand scripture.
These two parts of Jesus’ Great Commandment are not just connected. They are inseparable. We cannot claim to love God if we do not love our neighbor. And we will not love our neighbor very well if we do not love God.
To love God with all our heart, mind and soul, means choosing to love our neighbor in the same self-giving way that God loves us.
When we do, mysterious and miraculous things begin to happen. In ways big and small, the world around us begins to look more and more like the Kingdom to come. That is because acts of loving kindness are contagious.
When you and I live out the Great Commandment, we are like those delicate tuning forks that are used to tune church bells.
Just like those tuning forks, our faith has two prongs: the love of God, and the love of neighbor. When we put these two into action together, they resonate with each other, and they reinforce each other.
When we reach out to touch the lives of others with love, they start to resonate with us, too. Before you know it, all our lives are ringing out like a chorus of church bells calling God’s people to worship him by following his son and serving others in need.
So, let me ask you. How are the two prongs of your faith? Is your love of God resonating in your love of neighbor?
Whose life will you touch this week?
What loving kindness will you share to resonate with them and their lives?
Whoever and whatever that is, don’t be surprised if the result is as glorious as a symphony of church bells, calling us all to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourself.
This is how we become more and more of a grace-filled family of faith sharing Christ’s love with all.
May it be so.
