Sermon for May 7, 2023 V Easter Year A

Here is today's sermon, october 29, 2023, Proper 25, Year A. The congregation wanted to hear me preach on Matthew 22: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” I use the observation that our limited, contingent love is transactional, and we tend to love God for what we receive from God. We are unable to know God as Himself, since God is wholly Other. Using Iris Murdoch's definition of love as "the nonviolent apprehension of the Other as Other", I explain that we can love God while not understanding or having expectations of God.