Rev Gav
What does it mean to love God?
The two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. The former means to love God with our whole being which is composed of four interconnected parts — our physicality, emotions, intellect, and spirit. Most of us are able to describe our physicality (our body), our emotions (how we feel), and our mind (our thoughts), but how do we describe our spirit or soul?
We instinctively know there is more to us than just being physical, emotional, and intellectual beings. We have an unquantifiable ‘more-ness’ and despite our awareness of it, we have few adjectives in English to describe it. Perhaps the closest we can come is to use words and phrases such as consciousness, a sixth sense, aliveness, self-awareness, or simply ‘being’.
You may recognise your spirit when you ‘know something in your Noah’ (i.e. when you sense something deep down), you sense something beyond yourself, or you have a sense of the numinous. You may recognise your spirit when you have a sense of deep, inner peace or joy — even when your body is trembling, your heart is racing, and your thoughts are hijacked. Some secular psychologists might call it ‘mood’ but we know it is much, much more than that.
All four aspects of our humanity are interconnected and inseparable. It is why when you hear from God, you get a deep recognition that God is speaking in your spirit, but God will speak into our minds, our hearts, and/or through our bodies. For example, God may give us thoughts or pictures, remind us of people to whom we need to reach out, or help us recall memories, facts, or scripture verses. God may fill us with emotions such as happiness, security, or philia love. We may even feel God physically — a sensation of warmth, touch, or empowering strength.
When we gather for church worship, we express our love for God through ascribing worth to God. God is worthy of our love and another way of thinking about worship is as ‘worthship’. When we gather together we express this worth with all four aspects of our humanity. We love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and God loves us back. Firstly, we come to God in our physicality by kneeling, standing, sitting, eating, drinking, speaking, and singing. Secondly, we come to God in our emotionality, for example, through feeling joy as we praise, or grief for our mistakes and failures. Thirdly, we come to God in our intellect by recalling to mind our true natures, making a conscious choice to repent and change direction, by reflecting on words from the Bible, and recommitting our lives to God’s service. And fourthly, we come to God in our spirit, being present with God, allowing God to speak, having a sense of the numinous, and inviting the Holy Spirit to move us through word and sacrament.
It is worth noting that that it is often in the times of silence or quiet, i.e. when we are not using our physicality, emotions, or thoughts, that we are able to sense God’s presence. I once asked the members of a congregation when they felt closest to God, and they all said when they were alone with God in the silence of the church building. So I asked them, if that was the case, why then was our Sunday worship so full of words from start to finish? From that moment on, we purposely included times of silence in worship, and these times became oases of otherworldliness, and moments when we collectively encountered the presence of God.
Our collective worship is participatory and not something done to us. We do not turn up to express love to God as one who turns up to a dinner table to be fed, only to complain if we are fed spinach instead of potato, or the placemats are not the colour we expected. No, our collective expressions of love are designed to enable us to engage with all four aspects of our humanity and all four aspects are subject to our wills that will never be trampled on or overridden by God. When we come to worship we have the right to choose to sit, stand, feel, and think, and we can also choose to be open to encountering God. We can choose to invite the presence of God into ourselves and open ourselves to hearing from God.
Despite what we do collectively at the weekend, as individuals, our whole lives are to be expressions of worship to God and this worship is also participatory. We can express our love for God by the way we go about our daily business — the way we behave, the way we express our feelings, the way we communicate our thoughts, and the way we give time and space to listen and tune ourselves to the heart of God. We an express love through picking up a piece of litter, choosing to buy responsibly, by listening to someone, by thinking of and saying something positive to encourage and build someone up, and by a myriad of tiny choices, opportunities, and moments that we encounter every day of our lives.
This week, it might be helpful to think about when and where you feel closest to God, and also to make a conscious decision to use your actions, feeling, thoughts, and spirituality throughout the day, no matter where you are and what you are doing, to ascribe worth to God, i.e. to love to God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Amen.
