Year A
Matthew 22:34-46
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Seek To Love
All I can say is I am very glad the religious leaders today are finally done with all their testing questions. We have spent the past several weeks listening as they publicly confront Jesus after he enters Jerusalem in order to discredit him. The question today of the greatest commandment follows questions concerning the legitimacy of paying taxes to Caesar and the resurrection. As in previous disputes, Jesus confounds the religious authorities with his superior biblical knowledge and irrefutable logic. When asked today which commandment is the greatest, Jesus quote’s Judaism’s most fundamental, ancient, and widely recited biblical passage, the Shema in the book of Deuteronomy. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Yet, unwilling to leave it simply at that, Jesus adds another scripture that is “like” the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Any expert in Jewish law would recognize immediately that the commandment to love their neighbor is followed in Leviticus by the divine claim, “I am the Lord.” The combination is powerful: acknowledging the Lord as God means loving the neighbor. Therefore, loving the Lord your God includes respecting the neighbors, and loving the neighbor means acknowledging the Lord as God. Jesus doesn’t give us two separate commandments here but combines them which provide us a summary of his mission and ministry and now ours. The aim of this commandment is to make God’s people holy, as God is holy.
Among the commandments that Moses gave to the people of Israel while they were in the wilderness, we find a portion in the text today from Leviticus which is known as the Levitical Dodecalogue and this portion is part of the Holiness Code of Leviticus, a book of laws. The aim of this Holiness Code is to make Israel a holy people, as God is holy, and the passage today gives numerous examples of the holy manner of life. These commands are not merely suggestions for our conduct or as tips on how to make friends and influence people, these are commands of God, teachings about how to have God’s abundant life. They give us direction as to how to walk in our daily lives according to God’s will and not our own.
These commandments emphasize over and over that they are the will of God and they direct the people of Israel to remember how they and now their neighbors as well, are made in the image of God. And because we love God, and because God has given us Jesus that we may have eternal life with God, we are to strive for holiness, and in overwhelming gratitude, we obey this merciful love guidance of our Lord. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Holiness and love together reflect this image. Is it any wonder then that the command to love the neighbor is considered by Jesus and the apostle Paul to be the sum of the commandments and the whole Holiness law?
In both Testaments, there is no way to mirror the holiness of God without benefiting the neighbor. In both, the way of life for one includes a way of life for all. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.” Based upon this knowledge, is it possible then to say we love God while we fail to provide protection and help for the most vulnerable in our society—children, the elderly, and the poor?
God’s way of life is the way of love and Jesus, who exemplified the perception of God’s spirit in others, or self-sacrifice on their behalf, also calls his followers to do the same. All this seems to make little impression on the religious authorities that day. Matthew reports no response from Jesus’ profound teaching, but he hardly gives them a chance before he decides to ask them a question” Whose son is the Messiah?” True to their tradition, they answered quickly, “David’s!” Their response led Jesus to quote Psalm 110:1 “the Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Jesus said this to show that even great King David looked to the Messiah as Lord of all.
Then, Jesus asks, how can the Messiah be both Lord and son of David at the same time? Raising the question of the Messiah’s identity: Is Messiah sent from God or born of the line of David? Is he David’s offspring or David’s Lord? They cannot answer. It is too dangerous to answer because the Messiah is both in the line of David and yet transcends his lineage. This put an end to their questions and they withdraw to plot another way to end this. Jesus goes on teaching and healing to invite them and to invite us to a new way of seeing things that the law and the prophets are to be understood in the light of love. Paul today gives us a model for the ministry of love we do to and for each other he says, we are to be gentle like a mother with a child.
16th-century French Catholic saint Francis de Sales said it well: “Nothing is so strong as gentleness.” We can bring about this gentleness by relying on God like a child does or by nurturing those we serve like a mother. Neurobiologists have determined that when one shows empathic care for another or shares one’s self with another our brains are rewarded with a good-feeling called oxytocin. This produces calming effects and has a positive impact on health. Gentleness is good for those we serve and good for us too. Sharing selves is what God did in Jesus Christ. Yet, to lead a life that is full of gentleness and holiness that is worthy of God may run us in an entirely different direction than the rest of the world, but as the saints have shown us, it will take us in a direction of contentment and joy.
It will give us that sense of going in the same direction as the will and purpose of God. To lead a live that is worthy of the God who called us will bring us to end with the saints into the kingdom of our God. This is important to remember as we try to live in a difficult world that continues to produce hardship for many people. Paul shows us that in the face of opposition, even in the face of evil, we can maintain and be true to the gospel. The gospel can be the true guiding light amid all the hard things that come our way. Helping us as we seek to be faithful, obedient servants of Christ, which means we must be willing to risk for Christ’s sake and what is more risky than loving God and neighbor.
Yet, Jesus tells us this is what it means to be a follower of his. You shall love, as I have loved you. To conclude this time of teaching in the synagogue before entering into his passion and death, Jesus will say, “When the Son of Man comes in this glory, and all the angels with him” those who fed, welcomed, clothed, and visited their neighbor did it also unto God. Those who did it not for neighbor did it not for God; for God and neighbor are one in love. You shall love Jesus says as totally as I love you because in the end, there is love, God’s love for us. It is on this love alone that we have salvation. May we seek through our joys and hardships to love God totally by loving our neighbor.