The passage above is referred to as the Greatest Commandment. Recently, I had the privilege of preaching on it for two weeks as a way of tying up a rather lengthy, but I think fruitful, series looking at Christian ethics. This is how the Greatest Commandment is found in the book of Mark, however, there is also a version of it in the Gospel’s of Luke and Matthew as well, all of which have the same takeaway: love God with all that you are and love yourself and neighbour in the same way. It is this kind of love that all of what it means to live as a Christian hinges upon.

Now, the nature of preaching is that there are always a number of things that end up on the cutting room floor for time. Otherwise, every sermon would go on for hours, leading to eyes glossing over, children crying, and Sunday roasts finding themselves burnt in the oven. One of the things that was cut in my looking at the Greatest Commandment this time around has to do with how Jesus describes loving the Lord with all our being. We are to Love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind, he tells us.

Three of these aspects of humanity are items that I don’t think we Evangelical Christians have many problems remembering. In my experience, messages and books about loving with all our mind, our soul and our heart are common in our circles. These are the parts of a human being that we think of as what ‘really matters,’ and largely our ministries reflect this outlook, often focusing on learning (think Sunday School, Bible Colleges, etc.), on feeling (think prayer groups, modern worship music, etc), or outreach that focuses first and foremost on winning souls for the Lord (think evangelistic crusades and the many other forms of evangelism modelled upon them).

But there is a fourth item on Jesus’ list as well. We are to love God with all our strength, he tells us. That is, to love God with all that we are means that we are to love our Lord with our bodies as well. For a first-century Jewish man, like Jesus was, it is not surprising that the body is listed alongside the mind, the soul and the heart when it comes to describing what it means to love God with all that you are. It is not surprising because in Jewish thought from the time your body was not separable from who you are. After all, without your body, there isn’t much of a ‘you,’ is there? So of course if you were to describe what it means to love God with all that you are, the body would be on the list of the attributes that would need to be involved, because your body is not a separate entity from who you are.

This understanding that our bodies are inseparable from who we are can be seen elsewhere in the New Testament as well. Think of how Jesus is resurrected. It is not just his mind, soul and heart that come back as some kind of spectre, but Jesus’ body is resurrected as well, wounds and all. Or, think of what happens in the ascension. Jesus, body and all, ascend to heaven to be with our Heavenly Father. Or, even think of how the New Testament ends, with the bodies of the old heaven and Earth passing away only to be resurrected as our Lord was, washed clean, made new in that same glorious way.

That our body is an inseparable part of who we are, is an important biblical truth to remember because it impacts how scripture is read, it impacts how we Christians look at ourselves and those around us, and as we also saw, it impacts how the Church goes about its mission in the world. We are called by Jesus to love others as Christ loves us, and so if we are to love God with all that we are, body included, clearly, our Lord loves us for all that we are, body included, in turn. That this is true, how can we be content loving ourselves and others in any way less wholistically than this? To ignore that our bodies are a part of who we are, or worse, to think of them as purely useless, as only write-offs, as through-and-through sinful or as simply junk impacts how full our relationship with God can actually be, as well as it negatively affects how we see an love ourselves, and our neighbours as well as all of the rest of creation in turn. If we think of our bodies as of no consequence, it is surprisingly easy as our health concerns pile up to come to believe that God is cursing us with them. And from there, it is no stretch to believe that the physical wellbeing of our neighbours is of no consequence to us either and that all creation is just as disposable as we think of our own physicality as well.

In the Greatest Commandment, we are called to love our neighbours as ourselves, body and all. In other words, we are to love others wholistically. All of them, not just their mind, their soul and their heart. This means that while it is good to care about things like education, worship and evangelism, we also have to make sure to remember the rest of what makes up the person we are seeking to love as Christ commands us to as well. If our neighbour is hungry, to love them is to work to find them a reliable source of food. If they are tired, to love them is to find them a place they can rest their heads to sleep tonight as well as the nights to come. If they are sick, to love them is to find them both medicine as well as healthcare for the struggles that are to come. If they are lonely, to love them is to bring them into a community that they can be a part of. If they are jobless, to love them is to help to find them a place to work. And if they are without hope, to love them is to work to show them that hope always remains not just in the time to come, but in the here and now as well.

On October 30th, MEMC is going to play host to Community Economic Development (CED) training modules open to the community. Recently, I was asked why as a church this would be something we should be involved in bringing to our town. After thinking it through for a bit, my answer was this. CED training is all about teaching people how to find problems that exist locally and then how to find local solutions to address those issues. Often these problems will be somewhat mundane. Things like, “there is no place to buy this and this a doo-dad in town, so we should find someone to sell it.” But just as often, these problems can be profound. Maybe there is a lack of accessible counselling services nearby. Maybe there is a shortage of childcare. These might seem like minor issues to those of us who don’t have to wrestle with missing them but for those who do, not having them is the difference between seeing hope in the world our God has made and being completely and utterly overwhelmed by it. If we are to love our neighbours wholistically as Christ calls us, I simply cannot see a way that these kinds of problems are not also ours to contend with. To show our community the love that Christ calls us to embrace them with, I simply do not see a way that community development isn’t squarely in our list of things to do. CED is all about findings the local problems that exist all around us, problems that can impact our health, happiness and outlook, as well as coming up with lasting local solutions to address them. As such, by my figuring at least, time spent in CED training is time that will pay dividends to our church’s call to love our neighbours down the road. Click here if you want to find out more about the CED training or sign up.

But even if this kind of training is not something you feel called to, I ask you to reflect on what it means to love the whole of someone, body included. How do you think this outlook impacts how you think of your own body? How does it impact how you think of other people and God, as well? How does it impact how you see the rest of creation? I suspect the answer to these questions will show you more about how you think of the world than you may know.