Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
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“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. Amen.”
These words of Jesus as recorded in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, so familiar to us in the Bible, the Lectionary, and – of course – the Book of Common Prayer, summarize not only the commandments, but the entirety of Jesus’ instructions to all who follow in the Way: past, present, and still to come.
Indeed, if we were to lose every part of the Gospel save for this single passage, we would still be able to live as followers of Jesus. That’s because there honestly isn’t anything more that needs to be said about Jesus’ teaching. We exist solely to love, because we were created completely out of love. And not only to love, but to love with our entire incarnational being: our hearts, our souls, and our minds.
There are, of course, other parts of the Gospel that could similarly stand on their own – the Sermon on the Mount, for example. But what those other sections have in common is that, at their cores, they are simply expositions of the greatest commandment proclaimed in today’s reading.
Jesus makes this declaration in response to a question craftily posed by a lawyer (or scribe) representing an assembly of the Pharisees. The question isn’t asked as a sincere request for teaching, but for the sake of trying to trap Jesus, to trick him in to tripping up, as it were, and making a response that could be construed as blasphemous or, better yet, dumbfounding Jesus and making it impossible for him to offer any answer at all, thereby utterly discrediting him and bolstering the Pharisees’ own image and agenda.
It’s a bold move, considering that, in this chapter of Matthew, Jesus happens to be right in the middle of a hot streak of shutting down various opponents. A few verses back, he had brilliantly avoided both blasphemy and tax-evasion by declaring “Repay to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar and to God what belongs to God” when questioned whether it is lawful to pay the census tax. A little later, the Sadducees had a go at him, posing a seemingly impossible – and, frankly, ridiculous – question about marriage in an attempt to use Jesus to demonstrate their perceived notion of the fallacy of the resurrection of the dead. Instead, he proceeds to put their lack of understanding of both the Scriptures and the power of God on full blast, astonishing the crowds by his teaching. Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees would have done well to follow the time-tested maxim of trial attorneys: Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
Of course, they really thought that they did know the answers. At least, they knew the answers as they related to their understanding of the Law as heard in the reading from Leviticus. In all three exchanges – the question about paying taxes, the resurrection of the dead, and the greatest commandment – influential groups attempted to use their self-serving interpretations of the Law for the purpose of manipulating public opinion, discrediting an opponent, and bolstering their own influence and grips on power. And it should have worked. After all, these were the most highly educated religious elites in Jerusalem, whereas Jesus was, at best, a charismatic, but almost certainly illiterate and impoverished, upstart preacher from way out in the boondocks – and, for that matter, only one of many such preachers who were active in first-century Palestine.
But while the cards must have seemed hopelessly stacked against Jesus in the eyes of the Sadducees and Pharisees with all their learning, prestige, and power, he had something they lacked; Jesus had understanding of the simplest, yet most profound, Truth: that the entirety of the Law of God is the Love of God, and that all services rendered in the name of God – whether preaching, teaching, praying, parenting, studying, engaging in daily labor, or performing acts of mercy, charity, and justice – must be carried out in absolute love of God and those beloved of God, which is everyone.
Anything we try to do apart from God’s love is destined to fail. The Pharisees’ lawyer demonstrates this by putting Jesus to the test according to an interpretation of the Law designed to serve the love of earthly power rather than the divine Love of God. In other words, sin. But we can hardly demonize him for it. After all, we all do it. In my own life – both before and after entering the monastery – I have continually struggled to model my actions, thoughts, approach to relationships, ideas, perceptions, and attitudes according to the Love of God as revealed in the life and example of Jesus of Nazareth. Fortunately, even when I’m at my most self-serving, the Spirit manages to nudge me back on track (even if only briefly), usually by the example of someone else: Another monk observed pausing to hold open a door for someone carrying a box; a world-wearied guest seen taking time away from the rat race to focus on God for a few days rather than on work, school, or the general stresses of life.
The reason these things are such effective reminders of God’s love is that it’s all the same love. We all share one love with God and with each other. When we see it happening in someone else, it immediately looks and feels familiar (or, at least, irresistibly desirable). It sparks a reaction in the deepest parts of ourselves. Just as we all breathe the same air, so too are we all sustained and nourished by the one Spirit of God moving and stirring within us. It’s only when we decide to strike out on our own, away from God and against other people – those we know and those who will remain unknown to us until the heavenly banquet – that we struggle to experience that holy breath, that love of God. And we can never separate ourselves from other people without separating ourselves from God. But it is always a self-imposed exile; God never cuts us off. And by God’s grace, we always have the possibility of coming to our senses, and choosing to draw in air, sometimes consciously, at other times involuntarily through desperate, spastic gasping. If we choose otherwise then, deprived spiritually and physically of the life-giving love that fills every being and corner of Creation, we will perish.
Our own time is no different than the one in which Jesus and the first followers lived. Powerful rulers, institutions, and ideological forces still seek to feed their own passions for power and idolatrous wealth. And the methods have hardly changed, either: namely, attempting to blind people to the love of God present within all of us with deception, lies, fear-mongering, violence, and bigotry. Yet, in the midst of a culture fixated on division and death, Jesus assures us that we always have the option – and, indeed, the duty – to choose the Law of Love; in doing so, we fulfill not only the Law, but also our own shared and wonderfully interwoven destiny with God and one another.
May peace and all that is good be with each of us and those we love today and always. Amen.
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