PROPER XXV - A- 20 - Lev. 19.1-2, 15-18, 1 Thess 2.1-8, Matt. 22. 34-46
I have been fortunate enough
to travel to the
Near the wall and to the west are a series of alcoves, some of which house libraries containing ancient texts. I discovered them quite by accident as I walked around the sacred site.
Rabbinical students and local elders gather there on a daily basis to debate the various writings and commentaries on scripture by ancient rabbis. As I observed, some participants become quite animated as they argue against their counterpart’s point of view.
In the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the scriptures and often debated about which one was central. In today’s gospel reading from Matthew, a lawyer, who is also a Pharisee, asks Jesus in order to test him, which one of the commandments was the greatest.
The answer he received was both a touch of the familiar and the new. The Pharisee simply wanted to engage Jesus in a debate about which of the 613 commandments of the law were “great” and which were of lesser consequence. It was not an uncommon topic among the rabbis of the day.
Jesus responds by quoting Deut. 6.5 and Lev. 19.18. Both of which are familiar to us, as we all learned in our catechism class they constitute the Summary of the Law, as Christ says, “on these two hang all the law and the prophets.”
Every Jew knew and recited the first one on a daily basis. It is called the “Shema,” for the first word in Hebrew is “hear.” Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one…The second one, however, the love of neighbor, was and still is often misunderstood. In his response, Jesus creates a new understanding of love of neighbor as an expression of love of God.
The second commandment, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” means to love your neighbor “as being yourself,” not as some interpret as saying “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” That is to destroy the force of the statement. How much we love ourselves is not the standard by which Christ is calling us to love others.
Think about it, some people do not love themselves, and there are others who love themselves to the exclusion of all. Then, there are those people in the world who by their words and actions we find most difficult to say that we “love” them. Could it mean that there are those who find us just as difficult to love as well?
Perhaps, but does that mean God does not love them or us? Certainly not. God loves us all in spite of ourselves. God’s love for all mankind was manifested on the cross. If that were not true, none of us would be able to obtain the promise of life eternal, which is ours through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, as being created in God’s image and likeness just as we are. As we heard Jesus in last week’s gospel telling those who came to test him with the question about taxes, that we bear the image of God, and therefore we are to render ourselves unto God, for we belong to Him.
Some of the early church fathers taught, that we find our true self in loving our neighbor. The greatest commandment, therefore, is really two: love God and love one another. Everything else depends upon these two. For as Jesus commanded in another place, “love one another as I have loved you.”
Christ is speaking of divine love, the love God has for each of us, and not what often passes as “love” in the world as we know it. Remember the scene on the beach following the resurrection where Christ draws Peter aside and asks him “do you love me more than these”? Jesus was referring to the other disciples.
Peter responded that he did, but in his response he used the Greek word for brotherly love, “philia.” However, Christ was asking him using the Greek word for divine love, “agape.” In other words, Christ was asking Peter “do you love me, as I love you?"
God is love, as
We cannot know it or begin to understand it, much less put it into action, unless we know Christ. To love as God loves us means we are to look past the human flaws we all possess and see in the face of friend and stranger the divine image we all bare.
The Jews of Jesus’ day thought they knew what the commandment to love their neighbor meant. However, their understanding was limited to their fellow Jews. St. Luke has given us the story of the “Good Samaritan” that demonstrates their flawed thinking.
Many today as well think they know what the commandment means, but in practice limit their “love” to those they choose to give it to the exclusion of others.
Jesus, however, expands the meaning to include all, Gentiles and Jews alike. If we are to follow Him, we must learn to love as Christ loves us. God gives us the gift of grace to love as He loves.
However, in order to do so, we must learn to sacrifice our own self-interests, our pride and prejudices and our frail human understanding of what love is in exchange for the divine love we are called in Christ to put into practice in loving our neighbor as our self.
With that said, let us pray that God will fill the space we create in our hearts by sacrificing those very things with the gifts of Faith, Hope, and Love, so that we may live into the new life which we have been called in this world, and obtain the promise of eternal life in the next, by loving what God commands. AMEN+
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