Texts: Leviticus 19: 9-16; Matthew 22: 34-40

Sometimes on Sunday afternoons as I am driving I listen to a program called “The Great American Songbook.” Now, before I make this comment, you should know that I really do enjoy the old songs with their old renditions, Jo Stafford singing “The Nearness of You” or even Vera Lynn with her “There'll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover,” a glorious old World War II song. What I really can't stand is schmaltz.

The word schmaltz, which we use as a derogatory term referring to maudlin sentimentality, has its origins in old Yiddish cooking; the word actually refers to rendered chicken or goose fat, a staple in orthodox Jewish cooking, which prohibited the use of butter or pork lard in cooking meat. How the word moved from a kitchen to the world of soap operas may have something to do with how fat is rendered, melted over medium heat so that what is hard becomes liquid.

But neither Jesus nor the earlier passage form Leviticus speak of schmaltz as an aspect of love. The one thing real love certainly is not is schmaltzy. There's nothing sentimental in Jesus'' answer to the temple leadership seeking to trap him with their question. Indeed, if we look at the Decalogue and the whole of the Torah tradition, it is about the two parts of love that Jesus said are united: love of God and love of neighbor. They are not and cannot be separated. We cannot claim to love God and hate our neighbor. Neither is easy – that is, loving God or loving our neighbor. In fact, both are really difficult.

First, we are commanded not just to love God with all our heart, but with all our soul, and all our mind. More than anything else, that means, we are to think, to approach our love of God with an inquiring mind, asking what it really means to love God. Loving God goes beyond simply saying a few words of belief or going to church on Sunday, beyond supporting worthy causes like Heifer or the church with money, although doing those things is a response to our love of God.

Loving God means we ask hard questions about ourselves, about what is demanded of us in our time and then responding to the difficult answers we get. Because those answers will be difficult. We have to put aside all our old feelings and prejudices – and we all have them. I certainly have mine. I have a really hard time tolerating a lack of what I'll call “get up and go,” especially when I see battered women do little more than acquiesce to their mistreatment or when I see people shrug off serious stuff.

The second part of Jesus' statement, loving our neighbor as ourselves is just as difficult. It's not even easy to love people in our own family, not to mention those people outside the family we call “neighbors.” Now, loving is different than liking and we often confuse the two. We can care for, love in a deep Christian sense, people we do not like. In fact, we often do that. We care for people in an abstract sort of way. But that's not what Jesus was talking about. In fact, if you read the Leviticus passage, you'll realize that loving God means we have to do certain things.

Because the Leviticus passage refers to the habits of a premodern agricultural people, it may seem easy to shrug it off but listen carefully to what the passage says: There shall be no unjust or partial judgments against the poor; with justice we are to judge our neighbor. How on earth can the poor have any justice without access to legal aid? This is not a pitch for lawyers as they are maligned by the Tea Party and their ilk. It is a statement that, truth be told, public service lawyers are essential to protecting the rights of the poor in court. The tenant or the victim of domestic violence will have a hard time proving injustice or abuse without good counsel. People who are uneducated and fearful of the judicial process do not know how to present their arguments in a coherent manner, one that will get them justice in the broad sense of the word.

Loving our neighbor as ourselves means we must give to others what we want for ourselves. The passage in Leviticus tells us not to reap the edges of our fields or strip the vineyards, but to leave a portion for the poor and the alien. What does that mean in today's world? It means don't be greedy. Now, loving is different than liking and we often confuse the two. We can care Take enough to live and share with others. It means more than just dropping a dollar into a beggar's cup. It is an affirmative duty to share our resources. How we do that is left to our intelligence and imagination. That's the mind part of loving God – learning to be creative with what we have and giving to others in creative ways.

Real love is more than schmaltz or soap opera drama. Real love entails making difficult choices for ourselves in order to ensure a posterity. It may mean having more expensive gas or making difficult choices about our priorities. And it means that we must think about more than ourselves or even our families; we must consider our neighbors, or, the wider community.

If we go back to the old songs that we sometimes consider schmaltzy and listen carefully to the words, we will realize that they aren't so schmaltzy. The musical style was different: There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover – when the world is free – a response to the terror unleashed by Hitler's drive into France and the threat to England. In the You Tube video, Vera Lynn sings the song against the sound of Spitfires taking off to fly to France. During that war, the British had to act with intelligence, imagination, and courage. During those dark days, they decided to ship their own British children and European refugee children to Canada to make sure there would be the next generation. It wasn't schmaltzy love but a self-sacrificial love.

Loving God and loving our neighbor are intentional acts, often with serious attendant consequences. But this is what we wer called to do. And there's nothing schmaltzy about it.

Let us pray: Holy Giver of our minds and hearts, help us to find creative ways to work them together so that we may truly show our love of you by loving our neighbor. Amen.