"[The LORD] brought [Abram] outside and said, 'Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.' And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness." [Genesis 15:5-6]
Long before the commandment is given, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength," the invitation is given: "Trust me. I will do good to you and yours." The essential tenet of Israel's faith--to love God--doesn't come until centuries have passed since old father Abraham takes a leap of faith and trusts the impossible-sounding promise of the Divine.
For whatever else that means, it certainly says to me that we can't love God without first trusting God. And we probably can't love other people very well without trust, too.
But for the moment, let's just consider our relationship with God. It is certainly true that loving God (and yes, its corollary of loving our neighbors) is at the core of our faith as Christians. Jesus says those are the two greatest commandments, and they both come from the heart of the Torah in the Jewish faith in which Jesus was raised. Certainly, to be a follower of Jesus involves loving God, as well as loving other people. But even that basic Christianity 101-level teaching is built on a more essential prior foundation: trusting the God whom we are learning to love.
The same is true, of course, in families and households: raising children means teaching them from their earliest days that they can trust you, if you are a grown-up in their lives. While of course, the hope is that those children can say, "I love you," to the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings who will be a part of their lives, that love is called forth by the experience of trusting those adults and family members. And that means, of course, that parents have to model being trustworthy, even when they are not shown love in return. When children are very young and have no means of expressing affection, but really are just able to communicate need, parents still provide for their children and show that they are reliable. And when children get older and their adolescence makes them bristle at everything their parents say, it is the job of the parents still to show themselves to be trustworthy, even when the children are rude or thoughtless, irresponsible or unreliable. It is the role of the grown-ups to be trustworthy, so that children (of whatever age) can trust those grown-ups--and then, to be sure, that is meant to call forth love from the children just as surely as they have already been loved by the parents.
Well, I want to suggest that our relationship with God is not that different. So when we look back to those first tenuous beginnings of the story of the people of God, we don't begin with God decreeing commandments, but earlier and further back. We start with God being trustworthy and calling forth trust from the people with whom God chooses to be in relationship. We start with a promise out of the blue to Abraham and Sarah--one that comes with no strings attached, no fine print, and no conditions. It is a one-sided promise, made wholly by God and dependent completely on God to carry it out. And it is from that beginning, as God is revealed to be faithful and worthy of the leap of faith Abraham will make, that the groundwork is laid for Abraham and Sarah's descendants to be given the commandment, "Love the Lord your God." Only after they have learned that this God is worthy of their trust can they be called to love God.
And the same is true, I think, for us. As much as we want our children, our church families, and our congregations and communities to love God (and that is a noble desire, to be sure), we don't start there with just barking commandments at them. We don't start with, "Here is what you have to do in order to make God happy." We start with, "Here is God who already unconditionally loves you and is completely faithful and worthy of your trust." We begin by showing them the ways God has been reliable before. We help them to see the signs in their own lives that reveal God's goodness. We tell them the stories of how God has come through for God's people before, and we just let them soak those stories in. And from there--out of that rich soil--we trust that seeds that are planted will start to grow. They will come to love God, and to love the neighbors God has put in their lives--but that comes as a response to realizing they are loved and they are secure in the care of Someone who is reliable... faithful... worthy of their trust. Love is possible when trust lays the groundwork.
Maybe that's worth remembering in our churches and congregations, too. If we want to see people deepening their commitment and love for the work of their church, maybe we have to first show the community as a whole that we are worthy of their trust--that we will be there with them for the long haul, and that we will love the communities where we are regardless of what we "get" out of it. We earn the trust of those around us when we show up in times of struggle or need. We earn the faith of people around us when we don't bait and switch people with a conditional gospel that starts out sounding like, "God loves you," but keeps adding fine print like, "... but not if you're...." or "as long as you..." or "unless you should happen to..." We become the kind of churches to which people are drawn when they know that God's love is reliably shared with them. In other words, others can be drawn more deeply into love when they first come to trust us as a community of God's people.
So let's start there. Whether it's children or grandchildren in your own household, or kids in your own local congregation, or the wider community that is watching and listening, let's be people who keep pointing to the utter faithfulness and trustworthiness of God. Let's tell the stories of where God has been faithful in our lives. Let's share the inherited memory of God's people in the Scriptures of every time God has come through in the past. Let's start making sure that everyone around us knows they are loved already, unconditionally, by the God who keeps promises. And let's just see if that doesn't help each of us to grow first in faith... and then into love.
Lord God, remind us of your faithfulness, so that we can trust you more deeply, and love you more fully.
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