I’m sort of glad that my wife isn’t at this service, right now, because I’m going to tell you about the loves I’ve had. Yes. I’m going to tell all. I loved my family. I felt the warmth of my family’s love for one thing, and for another, they were the ones who provided me with everything I had. I loved every one of my pets, because they were so cute and cuddly, and later, because the dogs especially stuck with me and did what I told them to do when no one else would. I loved candy because it tasted so good. I loved Christmas because of all the presents, Halloween because of all the candy, Thanksgiving because of all the food, the 4th of July because of all the fireworks, and summertime because of all the playtime. I loved my friends because they kept me company and made the days more fun. I loved sports because of the adrenalin rush. I loved almost all of the girls I ever dated because, well, let’s just say because I did. I loved my car because it got me where I wanted to go – most of the time. I loved college because, even though it wasn’t free, I was. I love my family, meat and pies, and nature and tennis, and traveling and games, and fires in the fireplace and wine, and films and snowball fights and, well, I could go on and on.

I wonder what you’ve loved – what’s made you feel warm and sentimental and all excited, even thrilled, inside. Think about those loves of yours. That’s what most of us think of when we use the word love, and they’re great, aren’t they?

Now I want you to put those ideas of love completely out of your mind, because when Jesus used the word love, as He did in today’s Gospel, it had very little to do with any of that. That kind of love often has to do with what we get out of it – the sensations, mostly physical and psychological – and how emotionally wrapped up in those feelings and the objects of them that we get.

The kind of love that Jesus talked about was different. It's more like what happens when you’re dead tired and your baby cries out at 3:00 AM, so you get up to help. It’s the kind of love that washes your aged parents when they can’t do it themselves. It’s the kind of love that leaves work in the middle of a meeting to pick up your spouse because the car’s broken down. The kind of love that Jesus talked about in today’s gospel reading had very little to do with warm, fuzzy, exhilarated or sentimental feelings, and nothing to do with what the object of that love can do for you or what you can get out of it. If it has anything to do with feelings, it often has more to do with the suspension of resistant feelings and the suppression of avoidant feelings – because you’d rather do something else. In fact it’s the kind of love that involves what you do regardless of what you feel.

That’s one of the problems that people often fall into when it comes to the love that Jesus talked about. There are a lot of Christian folk, who devote way too much energy trying to manufacture feelings of affection for God, or responding to their fellow creatures on the basis of tender feelings. But when it comes to the kind of love that Jesus taught, feelings are almost irrelevant. It’s not that loving feelings should be removed, but that when we don’t have them, feelings follow faith in action. Loving feelings tend to come after loving actions have been done.

Jesus said, “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” It would be as much of a mistake to think of this kind of love as emotional affection for God as it would to think that Jesus was talking about emotional affection when He said, “Anyone who does not love me more than family members is not worthy of me.”

When Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart,” He meant that we’re to love God above every other impulse or devotion of will. In short, we are to do what God wants rather than what we want to do.

When Jesus said, “Love God with all your soul,” He meant that we’re to give our spiritual devotion to God and to no other power – whether human institution or spiritual force. Our spiritual devotion to God is meant to be exclusive -- reserved for our Creator alone.

When Jesus said, “Love God with all your mind,” He did not mean that we’re to abandon reason, but that we are to put aside all intellectual rationalizations when it comes to obeying God. We’re to use our minds to try to figure out how to apply God’s instructions to us in a complex world.

When Jesus said, “Love God with all your strength,” He meant that we are to use our bodies as God intended us to use them and in service of His purposes for us. That includes time, abilities, and resources – to put them to use in God’s service. Jesus meant that we’re supposed to put God first – in every aspect of our lives: body, mind, spirit, and choice – no matter what.

Jesus meant love in the same way when He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s not about emotional affection. After all, how many of us actually feel emotional affection, sentimentality, or passion for our selves? I’d be concerned if we did – if we looked into the mirror and felt a swell of passionate craving or sentimentality. No. He didn’t mean having affection for our neighbor or that we should like everyone whose path our cross. He meant that we should treat others – especially those with needs that we’re able to address – as we would treat ourselves. When we’re hot we do what we can to cool ourselves. When we’re cold we warm ourselves. When we’re lonely we contact someone. When we’re hungry we eat. When we yearn for God’s help we turn to Him. That’s what Christ calls us to do in relation to others. When we act out of love in these ways – toward God and toward other people – eventually, sooner of later, our affection for God and our compassion for others will follow suit and grow. Those feelings aren’t even the goal, though. They’re byproducts – natural consequences and rewards for our choices to love God above all else and other people as our selves.

The reading from Exodus provides some bare minimum examples of that kind of love, but they’re all negative. Don’t take advantage of aliens, widows, orphans, the poor or a neighbor who’s indebted to you. Honestly, they’re more about fairness to the vulnerable than about love, but love also involves fairness.

Actually, the kind of love that Jesus commands is more like this. I once knew a woman, named Elizabeth, whose husband had been a missionary. She was hardly a self-effacing type, but almost aristocratic in her bearing when I knew her. Earlier, back in the 1950’s her husband went to minister the Gospel to a tribe of natives in South America, while the woman stayed here to care for their newborn daughter. The tribe killed him, and she was devastated, but when their daughter was old enough, they both went to live with that tribe -- to pick up where he’d left off. Now, obviously, she didn’t do it out of affection, or gratitude, or for what she’d get out of it, but simply to put God first and to love those people as Jesus taught. Many in the tribe were converted because of her courageous love. With His help we can love sacrificially, too. And when we don’t, Christ continues to give us other chances and more help by His Spirit – training us, all along the way, to love God above all else and to love our neighbors as ourselves.