Love in Action - Loving Our Neighbors

‍ Love in Action - Loving Our Neighbors                          

Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:34-39 

September 20, 2026  

Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA

 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.                                               Leviticus 19:18

 34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”              Matthew 22:34-39                  

 PDF of SERMON AVAILABLE BELOW

Lawyers are good at asking questions.  Sometimes to get facts.  Sometimes to trick the person into giving more information. Pharisees were scholars and keepers of the law.  One of them asked Jesus a question.  “Which commandment in the law is the greatest? Which is the first commandment? The number one spiritual obligation?" Jesus gives two answers, "Love God. Love people."

 Matthew says nobody dared ask him any more questions. Who can blame them? Jesus gave an irrefutable answer. What is the summary of our religion? What comes first?

 Jesus says, “Love God.” Love the Lord with everything you are and all that you have. And without so much as taking a breath, he tags on a second commandment, from Leviticus 19, “You shall love the neighbor as much as you love yourself.” It is a stunning answer and cannot be argued against.

 Those who teach the faith will sub-divide the Ten Commandments this way. The first four commandments are about loving God: no other gods, no attempts to capture God in an image, no misuse of God’s name, remember your creation and redemption by saving a complete day for God every week – remember Sabbath time. Love God.

 The remaining six commandments constitute loving the neighbor. Honor your parents, for they are your closest neighbors. Don’t take your neighbor’s life, don’t take your neighbor’s spouse, don’t take your neighbor’s stuff. Don’t lie or distort the truth about your neighbor. Don’t desire anything your neighbor possesses.  Love people.

 Jesus talks about neighbors.  As I read this morning from Matthew, he responds to one lawyer’s question by quoting Leviticus 19.   In Luke, when another lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.  And then he asks – who acted like a neighbor?  The shocking answer is the one person the lawyer hated – a Samaritan. 

 And Jesus says in Luke 6:42 - Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.”

 Neighbors.  Scripture passages – instructions from Moses and prophets in Hebrew scripture, Jesus’ teachings, Paul’s letters and other passages.  Love our neighbors.  Not with words but with action. 

 It is a good day to remember this teaching as we commission our PDA team of volunteers as they go next week to spend 5 days rebuilding homes in Altadena.  Our neighbors who lost their homes to the Eaton fire.   A way to give help and hope. 

 Love God. Love people. Love your neighbor.  Simple, right?  Maybe not. 

I kept thinking about this second commandment this week – Love your neighbor.  What other words would help flesh this out? 

 Let’s look at a parable, God is like…. The father in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  Luke describes the father as “filled with compassion,” not only for the “lost son” who returns home but especially toward his older son who is deeply hurt.

 God is in every way compassionate, generous, perfectly lavish with love. Be compassionate toward your neighbor.  That is a more helpful word.

 Is there another word?  The moral theologian, Father James Keenan, describes compassion as the “willingness to enter into the chaos of another person’s life.”  Isn’t this what Jesus does? Think of the Samaritan woman, the adulterous woman, the hemorrhaging woman, the blind man, the lepers, anyone sick, poor or on the margins.

 I would argue that if Jesus is anything, he is empathic. If compassion is being willing to suffer alongside another, empathy is understanding how they feel. Jesus embodied empathy and entered into the human experience. This is what we mean when we refer to the theology of the incarnation.  Practice compassion & empathy toward your neighbor.

 When Bishop Mariann Budde preached at the Interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation in January, 2025, she beseeched the President to have mercy on the most vulnerable among us. Her words triggered an avalanche of Christian Nationalist condemnation. Much of it highlighted what her critics literally called “the sin of empathy.” Their argument was that “empathy” amounts to a false gospel of “kindness” that enables a culture of “coddling” and “weakness.”

 There were many reactions from some conservative and evangelical Christians.  “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.”  “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic.” 

 Let me define empathy: it is not a feeling. It is the ability to recognize and respond to the reality, emotion, and pain of others. It is putting yourself in one another’s place, understanding their context, seeing things as they see them, even when it doesn’t match with your own experience. Empathy is not toxic. Nor is it a sin. It moves us from understanding to action. And this is why the ability to empathize is a threat to those with a need to control.  

 Father James Martin, in response to this backlash of empathy posted on social media, “The lack of empathy is at the heart of our mistreatment, mockery, and demonization of the poor, of migrants and refugees, of LGBTQ people, and all those on the margins.”

 It is clear.  Empathy and compassion are at the heart of Jesus’ life on this earth. These are what love your neighbor means. This is what God is like and what God demands of us. As Christians, we must never compromise these gospel values; never surrender our human decency and dignity for power, greed and spiritual poverty.

 We love your neighbors here in San Rafael & Marin County so we are practicing compassion & empathy.  We take action and serve others because we are imagining not having enough food to eat or a safe place to sleep or going to an afterschool program with only limited options and resources.  We are home to MIC because we imagine communities who do not have a robust interfaith community of leaders who work together.  We imagine what it might be like to lose our home in a fire.

 The practice of loving our neighbors takes this important ingredient.  And it was put so well by one of my favorite writers and poets Wendell Berry.  Discovering and rediscovering some of his poems, essays and interviews lately.  Close with an interview he gave in 2004

 In January 2004, Sojourners associate editor Rose Marie Berger spent a Sunday afternoon in February with Wendell Berry at his farm in Henry County, Kentucky. Berry is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and essays.  He has farmed in a traditional manner for nearly 60  years. Berry spoke with Sojourners about religious practices, Bluegrass country, community, and Jesus.

 We can become a warrior civilization and live by piracy; on the other hand, we're capable of lovingkindness, of genuine affection, of generosity, of friendship, of peaceability, of forgiveness and gratitude. It's a question of where you want to put your influence, how you want to apply the little means that you have….

 One of the oldest human artifacts is the trade route. People were trading in obsidian and other rare things long before history. So we know there's going to be trade, we know that you can't isolate a culture and keep it going without cultural interchange…

 The serious question is whether you're going to become a warrior community and live by piracy, by taking what you need from other people.

  I think the only antidote to that is imagination. You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors. You have to have at least enough imagination to understand that if you want the benefits of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you want forgiveness, you must be forgiving.

 May we hear the invitation each day – Love God. Love people. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. May we use our imagination as we practice compassion and empathy. Amen.

Resources

Rev. Canon Dana Colley Corsello, “The Sin of Empathy,”  3.30.25  Washington Cathedral     https://cathedral.org/sermons/the-sin-of-empathy/

 Rose Marie Berger, “An Interview with Wendell Berry, “ Sojourners magazine  July 2004        https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2004/web-exclusive-wendell-berry-interview-complete-text