Love your neighbor as yourself?

A lawyer asks Jesus what the most important rule in Scripture is, and he responds by quoting Deutoronomy:

"Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength..."

You can almost see the Pharisees grinning as they think of all of the ways in which they have done a better job of that than the rest of the world.

But Jesus continues, adding a second: "...and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself."

Their grins disappear.

These two sentences have spawned centuries of speculation, rule-making, and charitable giving.

But some of us are more perplexed than anything by that second command: how am I supposed to love a neighbor as myself if I have a hard time liking myself?

I've written before on the trouble with self-negation and the Church, and since then I've thought about it quite a bit.

And yesterday, something occurred to me:

What would happen if you flipped that command on its head?

What if that verse really read "love yourself as you love your neighbor?"

Does that change how you would respond?

"Sister, you are a preacher."

It all started when I walked to the podium, opened the Bible to Jeremiah, and, knowing what came next, smiled. There appeared, again, that strange feeling that this was, somehow, right.  Jeremiah 1 was already imprinted on my heart in a way that only the Spirit can be responsible for. My sermon said, more than once, "we are Jeremiah--and we are Jeremiah together."

And it was better than I could have ever imagined.

On Tuesday, for my Preaching Foundations class, I preached my very first official sermon as a seminarian. (Okay, it was more like a 13-minute homily-ish-thing, but I'm still claiming it as a sermon.)

Preaching, for me, is always an odd experience. I tend to lose myself in what I'm saying, and sort of forget that there are real people listening.  If I didn't have a manuscript in front of me, I would have no idea what I'd said once I sat down. (This has legitimately happened before.)

But this passage, in particular, worked its way into my soul and stuck there. My own story is so wrapped up in this call narrative that Jeremiah's words became my own, and I claimed God's words to Jeremiah. 

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you."

Apparently, it showed.

My professor and two local pastors evaluating me were oddly enchanted with what I had to say. Having seen the video of my sermon, I'm going to go ahead and blame the Holy Spirit and its penchant for doing unexpected things for that, because that sermon itself wasn't particularly special. But that's also a dangerous claim to make, because when it was over, one of the pastors said to me:

"Sister, you are a PREACHER. Don't ever shy away from that."

My first reaction was "aw, thanks!"

A split second later, I realized what she had really said, my eyes got wide, and I thought "oh dear--I'm a WHAT?"

See, I knew quite a while ago that preaching was something that I could do. Public speaking doesn't phase me after eight years of speech competitions and organizational leadership roles. It's physically possible and not overwhelmingly terrifying.

The question was always whether I should. Is this what God would have me do with my time and brain power and emotional energy? Or should I be focused somewhere else?

So, I messed with the seminary's requirements for my degree program and took this preaching class. I had a strange feeling that by the end of the semester, I would have some idea whether I should be doing this on a regular basis or not. (Those unexplainable gut feelings lead me to make some of the most insane decisions I could ever think of, but I usually wind up following them anyway.)

And so it begins. At some point (but not until this summer) I have to make a choice between my current program (seminary plus social work) and the regular seminary program. I have to decide where the energy and brain power and time will go.

And if preaching is to be a part of this call, then so be it.

"You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord."

You see, this is one of those moments when I am incredibly thankful for my complete inability to see where this is going. College-student-Sarah would have been absolutely terrified by what I'm doing right now, and high-school-Sarah would have thought that I was simply insane. But all of this makes so much sense in retrospect that I can't imagine myself doing anything else, even though I really, really want to some days.

And so, I wait. I continue to wait, and ask, and wait some more.

God, where do I go from here?