Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Click here for an audio of the sermon
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Click here for an audio of the sermon
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Click here for an audio of the sermon
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my sustainer and my comforter. Amen.
In his 2002 novel Kafka on the Shore, Japanese author Haruki Murakami writes,
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same
person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Murakami is writing in the context of a fantasy novel, but to my mind, he might just as well be writing about the experience – the storm – of the Easter journey.
And what an experience it is! Such a rich mystery with so many layers. It’s a lot to take in, and one hardly knows where to begin in processing and understanding all the pieces, let alone the fuller picture – including its meaning for us, and what we’re supposed to do with it.
There was Lent, for a start, where we saw Jesus preparing the disciples and himself for the great work of Holy Week, where his earthly ministry reached its culmination, the words of the prophets were fulfilled, and the hopes of Israel were (temporarily) seemingly dashed.
Then Easter morning dawned, with those holy sisters coming out to the tomb from Jerusalem, prepared to perform what they thought was going to be the final task of a failed, finished saga, only to discover that what had seemed to be the death of a dream was, in fact, merely the opening scene of its second, even more thrilling, act. Through all of it, we experienced a whirlwind of characters and events including
fasting; ominous warnings of betrayal (and the acts of the betrayers themselves); triumphant donkey rides; a night of fellowship and feasting followed by unbearable loneliness and anguish; mocking and abuse at the hands of soldiers; perversions of justice and the cowardice of religious and government leaders; state-sponsored murder and the silence of the tomb; and just when all seemed lost, the surprise and
disbelief of the Resurrection.
Little wonder, then, that over the following weeks the disciples – and we – might struggle to make sense of it all. Our hearts know one thing, our minds perceive another, while all around us rages a storm of events unprecedented in all of history, filling us with awe, sorrow, wonderment, and confusion.
And so it is that we find the disciples this morning, still uprooted, disheveled, and reeling from the experiences of such an emotional – and, indeed, traumatic – storm, back inside the Cenacle as they struggle to understand “all of the things that have taken place … in these days.” They aren’t holed up there because they don’t want to carry on proclaiming the Reign of God; rather, they’re simply unsure now
of how to do it.
Before, they had Jesus with them. They were active partners-in-ministry, boots-on-the-ground, drawn to the movement by their shared love of God and desire to serve. But now, things are different. The disciples are different. Like the speaker in Murakami’s book, they aren’t sure what has even happened, if it’s really over, or what they’re supposed to do about it. So, they gather and wait for a sign.
I suspect it’s what most of us would’ve done. In fact, it’s exactly what I have done during seasons of uncertainty and unsettledness. When we know that what has worked in the past – be it a job, a city, a relationship, an identity, even a religion – will no longer be useful to us on our journey because of some shift in the lived reality of our lives (but long before a vision of how to move forward becomes
clear) we often find ourselves returning to our own Cenacles – our places of previous divine encounter and nourishment – to shelter, reflect, contemplate, integrate, and await answers.
So then, it’s no surprise that Jesus, working out of his own experience of earthly Life, Death, and Resurrection, decides to pay the frightened and discouraged disciples a few visits, first with two of them on the road to Emmaus, and then with everyone gathered in the Cenacle – the place of their last happy supper together before everything (and everyone) was going to change forever – to offer comfort,
assurance, and understanding:
“Peace be with you,” he begins. He has come to replace their disquietude with calmness.“Why are you troubled? Look at me and see for yourselves. You know ghosts don’t have flesh and bones. It really is I, myself. You know me.” He has come to replace their fear and doubt with confidence and certainty.
“Have you anything to eat?” He has come to replace their feelings of loss with a sense of familiarity and communion through memories of the meals they shared. Then finally, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. I’d already told you that all these things were going to happen – it just all seemed abstract until now.” He has come to replace their confusion with the knowledge that God is still in charge, and has been this whole time, even if it hasn’t felt like it.
These reassurances are important because, for the disciples, the real work was just about to begin, though not quite yet. In the verse immediately following today’s Gospel reading, Jesus promises them they won’t have to take the next step until they’re ready – and that God will make them ready through the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Having visited and reassured them, Jesus knows they’ll still need a bit more time to process everything if they’re going to be his ‘body, hands, and feet on earth’ as so beautifully imagined by Saint Theresa of Avila.
There was a time (not very long ago) when I thought that fifty days of Easter was a little much. “Okay, I get it,” I thought. “Easter’s a big deal, but all these extra ‘alleluias’ in the Daily Office are starting to get really old.” Now I’m beginning to understand that, just as Jesus couldn’t expect the disciples to be ready to charge headlong out of Easter Sunday into Pentecost, neither are we able to fully recognize, appreciate, and integrate the Resurrection into our own lives without taking time to rest in it, have it remembered and re-explained to us over six more Sundays, and begin to form a vision of how we’re being invited to use our newfound insight and wisdom in proclaiming the Reign of God when the Holy Spirit draws us from our Cenacles at Pentecost.
We, like the disciples, have journeyed through the tempest of Holy Week and Easter – and, no doubt, many other storms as well – and are now gathered, discovering how we’ve been transformed and made new, and waiting for a sign of what to do next. It is now that Jesus reminds us of the mission we were born to undertake: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all.” And we’re just the people to do it, because we’re all “witnesses of these things.”
May peace and all that is good remain with us during this Eastertide, and always.
Amen.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Click here for an audio of the sermon
She was not young, nor was she a virgin. She was married with children. She was not poor but wealthy. She was not of the first century but of theAfterward [God] added: "I want to show you something of my power." Andimmediately the eyes of my soul were opened, and in a vision I beheld thefullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole of creation,that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the seaitself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceivenothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totallyindescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: "The world ispregnant with God!" Wherefore I understood how small is the whole ofcreation — that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss,the sea itself, and everything else — but the power of God fills it tooverflowing.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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One week ago, the seal of death was broken, and Mary Magdalene saw Jesus alive. That night, despite her good news, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors. Today, the disciples are again in the same room behind the same locked doors. The house has become their tomb. They have locked out Mary Magdalene’s message of resurrection. They left the empty tomb of Jesus and entered their own tombs of fear, doubt, and blindness. They separated themselves and their lives from the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.
Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, but the doors are locked. Resurrected life, it seems, did not come easily to them, nor does it to us.
I suspect we all know about locked doors. Sometimes it seems that God rolls back the stone and we follow behind locking the door. God declares forgiveness and we continue to live in condemnation of self or others. God defeats death but we still live as if it is the final word. God offers new life, but we live in the past. God declares we are loved, and we lock ourselves out of that love. Maybe our wounds are so deep it does not seem worth the risk to step outside. The locked doors of our lives are not so much about what is going on around us, but what is happening within us: fear, anger, guilt, hurt, grief, the refusal to change. The locks on the doors of our life are always locked from the inside. Every time we shut the doors of our life, our mind, or our heart we imprison ourselves. For every person, event, or idea we lock out, regardless of the reason, we lock ourselves in.
I believe, that’s what Thomas was struggling with when he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Jesus never accuses Thomas of doubting. That’s how we ‘ve translated and interpreted the Greek. Rather, Jesus, says, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” He could just have easily said that to the other disciples as well. One week after seeing Jesus’ hands and side they are still in the house behind locked doors.
Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not a question of intellectual assent or agreement. It’s not about evidence or proof. Belief is more about how we live than what we think. Resurrection is not just an event or an idea. It is a way of being and living. It is the lens through which we see the world, each other, and ourselves.
Resurrection is the gift of God’s life and love. Living resurrection, however, is difficult. It is neither quick nor magical. For most of us it is a process, something we grow into. Resurrection does not undo our past, fix our problems, or change the circumstances of our lives. It changes us, offers a way through our problems, and creates a future. Christ’s resurrected life inspires us with his spirit, invites us to unlock the doors, and sends us into the world. One week after Easter, is our life any different? Are we living in the freedom and joy of resurrection or behind locked doors? What doors have we locked? If you want to know what you believe, look at your life and how you live. Our beliefs guide our life, and our life reveals our beliefs.
The resurrection is not Jesus’ private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world filled with grace, with possibility, with newness. Resurrected people know that faith and life are messy. They ask hard questions rather than settling for easy answers. They don’t have to figure it all out before praying, feeding the hungry, forgiving another, or loving their neighbor. They trust that what God believes about them is more important than what they believe about God. They are willing to unlock doors even when they do not know what is on the other side. They believe even if they don’t understand. They may never see or touch Jesus, but they live trusting that they have been seen and touched by him.
Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Then Jesus turns to us and says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus is always entering the locked places of our lives. Unexpected, uninvited, and sometimes even unwanted, he steps into our closed lives, closed hearts, closed minds. Standing among us he offers peace and breathes new life into us. He doesn’t open the door for us, but he gives us all we need so that we might open our doors to a new life, a new creation, a new way of being. This is offered all the time.
Regardless of the circumstances, Jesus shows up embodying and offering peace and life. Life and peace are the resurrection reality that sets us free to unlock the doors of our lives and step outside into his life.
+Amen.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
“God is an intelligible space whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.
God is within all things but not enclosed.
Outside all things but not excluded.
Above all things but not aloof.
Below all things but not debased.
God is supremely one and all-inclusive.
God is therefore ‘All in All’”.
The word “liturgy” means “the work of the people”. Liturgy is the witness to and embodiment of the transcendence of the categories of past, present, and future into a “now”. When were God’s mighty acts? Yes. Liturgy exists within my participation, but is not contained by it; desires my presence but is not dependent on it. The Holy Spirit is the source and inspiration for our aliveness to Christ in our midst. We begin when we decide to look at what is. That is faithfulness. Mere nostalgia for the past is not faithful, nor is our work added to lives which we own and possess. In God’s sight, all of life is liturgy - we remember and live from the source and end of human life itself.
The Easter Vigil is the liturgy of all liturgies - nothing less than the very drama of creation being made alive in its proclamation in and among us. Darkness is its opening act as earth and sky and heavenly bodies join in. The joke among sacristans is that the six most complicated words in the Prayer Book are, “In the darkness, fire is kindled”. For those of us for whom this is an annual event, a part of our identities, we cannot imagine being anywhere else doing anything else this morning. But we can think of family members or friends who would be perplexed by this work.
In our increasingly secular culture, liturgy is odd work - weird, inconvenient, impractical, awkward, certainly uncomfortable at times. We do not claim to produce anything tangible, to be guaranteed to be entertained or even sufficiently distracted - we promise none of the markers of attractive ways to spend time and attention in our culture. We do believe that something unseen and mysterious is happening. We believe that we are touching the very source of God’ covenant faithfulness to us and for us. We began in darkness so that we might put our bodies into the dark night that precedes dawning, set ourselves first and fully in the embrace of the blackness of death and the grave and the womb of the world, unable to see, to move, set groping for a glimmer, a flicker of light. We gather to begin at the time before time when the universe has not yet, but is about to be, big-banged into existence. And as humans, we are most human, most aligned with our image-bearing vocation as creatures, when through our senses and hearts, imaginations and doubts, enter the great drama of our existence.
So the work is to be “remembered” into the story when we forget, when distractions lead us into detachment and isolation, by acting it out from darkness into light, from despondency into terror, and then to greet hope and joy.
The gospels are the first liturgies, written to instruct and train catechumens and form the faithful within their unique perspective and community. We would think that part of that instruction would be a firm grounding in the resurrection of Jesus by preserving appearances and sayings that assure the faithful that Christ is alive and in the midst of them. But Mark, who is already a bit odd and doing his own thing in his Gospel, gives us a different Easter morning than Matthew, Luke, and John.
The earliest and likely first ending of the gospel of Mark is 16:8:So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. The lectionary includes the shorter ending of verse 9: And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Likely some later scribe was copying along and got to verse 8, “... for they were afraid”, and thought, “well, that’s not a very Jesus-y way to end the gospel, now is it? I’ll fix that right up.” And thus an extra verse. There is an even longer ending of Mark that I will not get into - read it yourself if you dare and if you decide to follow it literally do it far away from me.
So after Jesus has cast out demons, healed, taught, multiplied loaves and fishes, calmed the storm, been crucified and buried - now, on Easter morning, when it is finally time to pour on the celebration and unleash the fireworks and glory and find some relief from the unrelenting conflict and struggle - Christ has conquered death and the grave! What do we get? So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Resist the temptation to say, “yes, but.” Before we get there (and there are six more Sundays yet to come), we enter an awful emptiness, the yawning chasm and chaos of the absence of a dead body that every expectation, every way of seeing reality assured these women would be present in this tomb as surely as the sun will rise. A dead body lying there on that slab just as they had left it on Friday afternoon. It is not there. An angel announces what has happened, what to do now, and they leave. The gospel ends there, ends with the fear hanging in the air. No appearance, no word of peace - just the ultimate cliffhanger.
This is classic Mark. He loves to leave teaching and parables unresolved, leaving questions unanswered/ He writes the gospel as a “fill in the blank” quiz as if to say, “and now what happens?” Write your response here in the margin. We are all part of the story, processing in real time. For this persecuted community, many exiled from home and family, excluded from the synagogues, hunted by Romans, the fireworks of glory and triumph are not where they are. And so for us as well. We may believe in resurrection - believe it to be the greatest news in the greatest story ever told - but that news does not, is not intended to, wipe away our grief and sorrow or make us forget our pain. We can have both. We can know that both are true. Even at the empty tomb there is fear and pain and grief yet to live. Sometimes we can’t get to the joy and celebration just yet. Some years, some periods of our lives, we are stopped cold in the awful dark emptiness, the terror and amazement, caught between the presence of death we expected and the presence of absence which bewilders us further.
Rather than hasten to words of peace and assurance, hasten to touch Jesus’ feet or gaze at his wounds, might there be liturgy in the space between death and glory, the nothingness, the absence, the darkness where dwells our deepest fears and trembling hopes? Those other moments will come. But these women, the disciples, and all of us, must receive them in our own time. If we rush past the dark emotions we may smile and act as if it is the dawning of new creation, but our hearts will still be in the tomb. Liturgy is language and sign and movement. It is also silence, absence, and stillness. We may not live in the tomb, but we must enter it. It is a necessary place, but it is not home. When we enter the tomb, enter the emptiness, we are in that place of coming undone and thus becoming the ones in whom the risen Christ dwells. The risen Christ can and will dwell even in our terror and darkness, he does not wait for our joyful assurance, our personal inner fireworks. Because he has conquered death by death, he can be present to my terror and take me with him through it.
Mark knows that we will want a more comforting ending, which is why he does not include one. He knows we will want him to finish the liturgy; tell us what it means, what to do. He does not. He leaves that up to us. He lets us proceed with what is next when we are ready. The impulse to fix the ending of Mark is understandable, but I’m glad it ends the way it does. Leave it as it is - at the end of verse 8. It may take a while, we may flee far in terror and amazement, too afraid to say anything to anyone. At the other end of our fleeing is home; the far country of fear becomes peace - Christ will not abandon us - we cannot outrun him. The center of life in the risen Christ is everywhere; his circumference is nowhere. This is just the end of the gospel, not the end of the story. The story continues until all things are made new. It has a perfect ending. We are the ending. Amen.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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The three readings tonight have three common themes: gathering, a common meal and remembrance. In the reading from the Book of Exodus, we hear instructions about gathering for the Passover meal. It ends with the injunction: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.” In the second reading from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians we hear how, on the night he was betrayed, Jesus gathered his disciples for a meal, offered his body and blood and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The reading from Saint Luke’s Gospel offers us one of the versions of what happened on that night when Jesus was betrayed. There was gathering and a common meal, and Jesus asking his disciples to continue to do so in remembrance of him.Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Click here for an audio of the sermon
In my prayer and preaching this Lent, I’ve been following the throughline of covenant. Our readings have told the story of God’s continual refinement of her covenant, which begins with Noah as the representative of the whole creation (very important that we recover that ecological understanding) and follows through God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, and then in the giving of the law through Moses on Mt. Sinai. At each point along the way, the people violate this sacred covenantal relationship with God. But rather than abandon them (us), God rejigs the covenant.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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I found today’s Gospel passage to be a challenging one to work with. It contains some of Jesus’ most well-known words — words that are beautiful, gentle, and hopeful. But, if you are like me, it’s hard to hear them afresh and anew, given how they’ve made a near ubiquitous appearance at every major sporting event in this country for at least as long as I’ve been alive, and are so often coopted by troubled and challenging theologies of salvation. While I don’t think one homily, especially one I’ve written, is going to be able to free this passage from its complicated cultural reception history, I hope we can even momentarily experience it for the breath of fresh, life-giving air it was intended to be.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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Growing up in a Catholic tradition which expected regular confession, generally monthly, starting at about the age of eight, I was introduced to the Ten Commandments not only in what were called catechism classes on Saturday mornings, but also through the practice of the so-called ‘examination of conscience’ which was to precede confession. The main tool in this practice of examining your life to see ways in which you might have fallen short or fallen into sin was usually through a list of questions based on the Ten Commandments. The list was extensive and at times rather creative. Under one or another of the commandments, all sorts of sins or peccadillos were listed. For example, under the commandment which directed that we do not take the name of the Lord in vain were questions such as: have I cursed or used the name of Jesus in anger or frustration? Or have I made fun of holy things, whether it be a passage of scripture or a liturgical peculiarity. There was a certain usefulness to this exercise, but I came to realize that perhaps these many questions are not the point of the Ten Commandments, and that my anguished personal scrutiny was perhaps like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, focusing as it did on the personal and interpersonal world and pretty much ignoring totally the social, political, economic, or cultural landscape. And really, how much unnecessary worry did I, at age eight, expend over whether I had indeed committed adultery?
But if the Ten Commandments are not primarily a guide to personal behavior—and I emphasize the word ‘primarily’—then what is their point? Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann offers one possibility. In a podcast posted[i] earlier this past week online and titled “Strategies for Staying Emancipated” Professor Brueggemann connects the Ten Commandments to the liberation of the Hebrews from generations of slavery in Egypt. God gives the commandments to the Hebrew people through Moses towards the end of their years of wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt and they mark the covenant and the beginning their life as a self-defining community. If I may quote:
“… the Ten Commandments are strategies for staying emancipated once you get away from Pharaoh. This new strategy, first of all, says you have to honor God—that’s the first three commandments—to the exclusion of every idol, every “ism” such as racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or the worship of stuff that is rare or precious or attractive or beautiful or empowering.
“The new strategy means in the Ten Commandments to take the neighbor with utmost seriousness. So, the last five commandments are all about the neighbor and treating neighbors with legitimacy and dignity and viability and especially disadvantaged neighbors--not to violate the neighbor for the sake of greed.
“And between these two commandments of honoring God and taking the neighbor seriously, at the center of the Ten Commandments, is Sabbath day. Keep Sabbath: take a break from the rat race of busyness and exhaustion and do not let Pharaoh define your life.”
In short, for Brueggemann the Ten Commandments are a survival plan for a recently liberated people. And long before serving for an individual’s examination of conscience, they are a social and communal document, a clarion call away from a mentality of enslavement toward survival and flourishing as a people, as a nation, as a human family, as God's children.
We could easily spend hours—or a lifetime—examining the way this plays out concretely in our shared existence. The demand to have no other God, no idol, but solely the God who liberates is a reminder that we are tempted to seek our security in what will never make for safety or for human thriving in the long run. As Brueggemann says, we are tempted to all sorts of isms. But only in understanding ourselves as journeying under the hand and eye of a liberating God will we find the security we yearn for. And by “we” I mean everyone. And the demand to treat our neighbor with integrity, to honor and preserve life and that which makes life sustainable, the demand to honor relationships and commitments, and the demand to not be enslaved by our desires are the very stuff that makes a healthy human society possible. As is the establishment of Sabbath rest that is not so much about worship as it is about refusing to be enslaved to the ethic of Pharaoh who demanded work 24/7 of his Hebrew conscripts.
All three elements, all three kinds of commandments, are necessary if this is to work. We need to be rooted and grounded in a liberating and loving God, in a transcendent vision and reality, if we're not to ignore our responsibilities to our neighbors and to ourselves. And to do this, we need time—Sabbath time—time to step back and see how this working out, time to catch our breath, and remembering that everyone else is a free person deserving of that same rest. Again, to quote Brueggemann: “These commands might be taken not as a series of rules, but as a proclamation in God's own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves."[ii] And we are all liberated slaves.
Yet another commentator notes that these very terse, very pointed commandments, these directives, need to be fleshed out. They're more like social policy statements than detailed action plans. Our task as human beings and as people of faith is to determine how we apply them to form societies or cultures where people can grow and flourish and where we can shape our own life within that container. There is a long history of case law or casuistry based on the Commandments. You have only to skim the next few chapters of Exodus to see example after example. And if we are awake, we are faced with its challenges daily. How do we apply the commandments in our own day? What, for example, does bearing false witness mean in a society such as ours where “truthiness” has become a substitute for truth and where fake news inundates us. What does stealing or killing or adultery mean in a society and a world where people are denied dignity, and the material means to live a dignified life, and respect for the integrity of commitments and relationships which are its foundation? And just what is coveting anyway? It has taken me a few decades to wrap my mind around that. I now understand it not as simply being attracted to someone or something but becoming fixated on it and obsessed by it, wanting it so bad that you’re willing to do almost anything to obtain it. Our commandment doesn’t resolve this dynamic for us, of course, but it may serve to warn us: “Watch out! You’re on shaky ground. This is not the path that leads to life, but to death.” And not only us but our culture with its emphasis on having, using, possessing no matter what the cost and no matter what the consequences. And just so with all the commandments.
We began this morning's Eucharist with a penitential order where we heard what is often called the Summary of the Law. They are the words of Jesus as reported in Saint Mark’s gospel, though they are not original with him: “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” How true it is that in the end all the commandments, all the advice, all the ethical guidelines, all the rules and goodwill come down to this: You shall love. You shall love God. You shall love your neighbor. As the rabbis would say, the rest is commentary and application.
And our work is cut out for us.
Amen.