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The words in today's Gospel reading should be quite familiar as we hear them each week. " ‘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 neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

In technical terms, we often refer to this as the two great commandments or the summary of the law. It came as Jesus response to the question which is the greatest commandment? The question like so many to Jesus was a trap - In selecting one commandment he could be accused of downgrading the others - words that could later be used against him. Instead, Jesus turned it in on itself and rather than quote one law or commandment, pointed the hearers to the essence of the Law. His words are preserved as a handy summary of what it means to be in tune with God. If you like, what it means to be a Christian. As God's people here in Cressy and district, let us explore how these words inform our calling and guide us into being God's people.

One way to focus in the preparation of a sermon is to give it a title, and although I do always inform the hearers of it when I preach, I always have a title in mind. I think today it would help, that you know the title, as this will be a guide to where we are going. I have called this sermon - Looking up, looking out, looking in. These are what I believe are the three dimensions of faith.

Perhaps one is stating the obvious here, but our first point of faith is looking up. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.‘

Our centrality of faith is a love of God. Our love for God is to be all embracing, all our heart all our soul, all our mind. Every emotion, every feeling, every thought is tied to God. Love is more than just a nice feeling, but carries with it the sense of higher duty. It carries with it the ideal of putting the other first in each decision, in each action, in each priority.

God is to become the central focus of the life of the believer. It is more than just trying please or placate God, but changing our outlook, that we become synchronised with his will and his mind. Have you noticed how in marriage, the wills and beliefs of each individual of the couple become one. It is not so much a decision, but the result of the process of being together, working together and sharing a dream together. It is the same in our Christian walk, that we do not so much learn the will of God, but know the will of God as we grow to become like him. Of course unlike marriage, we have the Holy Spirit working away to make us in to God's image.

Jesus comment shows that devotion to the Father is not enough. Quickly he adds to the first command, the second - ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ The centrality of God in your life and in mine is not exclusive, for our love of God must spill over to those who surround us. I wanted to quote some Scripture here, and turned to the first epistle of John. This could be called the epistle of love, for this is its central them. The difficulty is, that there are many parts of this epistle that could be used, for John had the understanding of the centrality of love. Perhaps Chapter 4:20-21 has a good summary of this - Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Our demonstration of our love for Father in heaven will be shown in the way we treat each other. And this is not an academic exercise, but the practical outworking of our understanding that each person is made in the image of God, and should be respected for that, and those who Christ's carry in them the Holy Spirit and for no other reason, we should love them because of that. Sadly this is the lesson that the church has not learnt well. It is more often Christians rather than non-Christians who hurt other believers. We have allowed into the church, the values of the world and in particular the sense that we are called to judge and execute judgement on others. We disguise it, calling 'tough love' or justify it in the desire preserve the truth (of which we have exclusive interpretation). At best, we portray God as a source of judgement, at worse we drive people away from the source of life, by making him so unattractive or them feel so unworthy.

One of the couples I am preparing for marriage, were refused permission to marry in one of the city churches, because she was expecting her second child in a de facto relationship. If you knew their background the step of marriage was neither natural or easy. How is love shown by turning them away instead of rejoicing with them, that they have now reached a place where they feel safe enough to trust each other in marriage.

What a contrast to the unconditional love of Mother Theresa to the poor of Calcutta. For the most part, she did not help Christians, and she placed no condition on her help of others. She loved people, because God loved people. I am not sure that many of our hard nosed conservative fundamentalist bible bashers will be in heaven, but I know that Mother Theresa will be, for at the Judgement, the question is not going to be on understanding of the theology of the atonement, but on our actions to others which have come from our friendship with Christ. If you don't believe me - the Story of the Sheep and the Goats will come up in a few weeks.

But it is more than just a love of God and a love of our neighbour. Hidden in the story is the third dimension. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, he is reminding us that we must love ourselves. It is true that there is a sense that we are all unworthy sinners in need of repentance, but there is forgiveness of God. We ought to be encourage in our understanding that we are God's Chosen. One of the things that makes me so angry about the whole issue of church rationalisation is that it has in a hidden agenda which declares some gatherings of Christians as worthy and others as unworthy. That some little churches were no longer good enough to be considered Anglican. Some parishes did not deserve to continue and so on.

God has chosen each of you to be here. (There are no accidents in God's plan) God values each one of us, so that if we were the only one who would respond to him. He still would have sent Jesus to die for us alone. It is important and we must never lose sight of the fact that even in the hard times, God values us as a person. I believe it is no accident that in this world which has turned away from God, that the rise in youth suicide is consistent with the isolation of our young people from God. We as a church stand condemned in the sense that we have not ensured this message goes out. Jesus birth and death are the proclamation of God's evaluation of Humanity. Our job is to ensure that the world knows this. Often I wonder that we are not always the best advertisement.

So we begin then with our response to God's love, seeing ourselves as precious. You and I are God's chosen. As we love ourselves, we gain capacity, to love our neighbours and our Father in heaven.

Before we continue, let us take a moment to consider God's love for us, as we listen to the song - What Kind of Love is this?

AMEN.