A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, as the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments even as I have kept my father's commandments and as I live in his love. All this I tell you that my joy may be yours, and your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. There's no greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. And you are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer speak to you as slaves, for a slave doesn't know what his master is about.
Instead, I call you friends since I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father. It was not you who chose me. It was I who chose you to go forth and to bear fruit, and your fruit must endure so that everything that you ask the father in my name, he will give it to you. The command I give you is this, that you love one another, And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. The vestments we're wearing this morning are red because Saint Matthias died a martyr, and he was chosen as a substitute to fill the ranks. And that's about all I know about Saint Matthias. And having paid my due tribute to him, I pass on to something I knows a bit more about, and that's this misuse of the word love.
As I have said many times, if you'll take the time to go to the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, you will find, as I recall, I may be wrong, 13 columns of meanings of the word love in English. And remember, words are signs, and a sign without many meanings is is worthless as a word. Now you take this reading today when our blessed lord says, love one another. Love one another as I have loved you. There's not a word in here about loving god.
There's not a word in there loving yourself. And this is the kind of text that some people take today as expressing Christ's view on the way we should love. And I'm not exaggerating this at all. It's nothing but a hangover from nineteenth century utilitarianism and altruism of the like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill and that whole elk. Because when you throw God out of the picture, you're left with what?
Yourself and your neighbor. And men like Mill and Bentham and so forth, they threw God out. They were good God fearing atheists. So what are you left with? Yourself and as as John Stuart Mills, he knew he was right on the verge of committing suicide when he had the great illumination.
I must live for my neighbor. Why must I live for my neighbor? Can anyone answer me that question if there's nothing more than the neighbor? Because if I live for my neighbor simply because it gives me fulfillment, as they use that word, that's nothing but an elevated form of hedonism. That's all.
And that's and you see, the point is you can take a text out of the bible. Remember, the bible says there is no god. The next verse the next verses says the fool in his harp. There's practically nothing you can't prove by quoting a text. When when when the young man came to Christ and said, look, what is the first and what is the greatest commandment?
What did Christ answer? He didn't say go out and love your neighbor. He didn't say go out and love yourself. He said love God. Love God.
And that's right in the Old Testament. I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no other gods before me. And you must love me with all you are, with your heart, with your mind, with your soul, with your body, everything. That's all god asks of you, is everything. Everything.
Not a bit of this, not a bit of that, everything. That's what the first commandment is. The first commandment isn't to love your neighbor or yourself. Now what's the second commandment in this business of love? It isn't loving neighbor.
It's loving me. Me. People today hesitate because we're supposed to be so altruistic, philanthropic, charitable, all of these words having an impact. We must be activists, Meaning, we're going out and saving people or doing something for them. When the first thing I have to do is save myself.
If I'm not at peace with God within myself, how can I spread his light and his peace? As I said many times from this eminent pulpit, C. S. Lewis said, when you line up, you'll only understand this if you've tried it, to line up the spokes in a bicycle wheel. And as Lewis said, if you line the spokes up of the bicycle wheel with the hub, then the spokes will be lined up properly one with the other.
And that is certainly true. Because if I love God first, and I love myself because of God, he made me to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him in the next. Let's let's not hesitate going back to the old Penny Catechism. If I do that, then I'm lined up with the hub, and I cannot avoid being lined up with all the other spokes. It's impossible not to be, and that's the way it is.
The standard of loving my neighbor is loving myself. That's what Christ said. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. So there are three commandments of this word love as our blessed Lord used it, and as it goes back into the Old Testament. God first, self second, and then the standard of the love is yourself for your neighbor.
And the standard of loving yourself is the standard of Christ loving you. He first loved you. He chose you long before you ever chose him. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.