In today’s Gospel a lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” He wasn’t asking for wise counsel, he was looking for a way to entrap Jesus and convict him with his own words. It was a land mine, waiting to explode.
Here’s the hidden agenda: The Jewish law contained six-hundred and thirteen commandments. Two-hundred and forty-eight were positive commandments: “You shall…” Three-hundred and sixty-five were negative commandments: “You shall not…”And, at least in Jesus’ day, all were considered to be equally binding. The lawyer was trying to get Jesus to single out one over all the others and, by so doing, commit an act of heresy.
With ease Jesus introduces utter simplicity into the tangle of laws and regulations that cluttered up Jewish theology. He reduces all the law to two commandments, “Love God”, and “Love neighbour.” As a matter of fact, Jesus makes the two commandments one – two sides of a single coin, if you wish. The one most basic commandment that sums up all the rest is expressed in the word “love”.
The Jewish idea of responsibility when it comes to who is to be loved goes like this. Everyone was to love God — that was compulsory. But everyone else was graded as to how much love they were to be given. There were those people to whom it was a responsibility to show love. Those on the outer circles of the community, like outcasts, sinners, tax collectors, Gentiles, Samaritans etc.– were to be loved less, and others were owed no love whatsoever. The Pharisees had established many laws to help people in their observance of this command. These laws told people whom they were to love, and whom they could ignore.
The late Henry Hamann said in his book on Matthew’s Gospel: “Jesus does not separate love for God from love for man, since the latter flows from the former, and since without the latter the former is impossible”.
“Love” is at the core of Christianity. “Love” does not address rules and commandments. `Love’ surges into life in the presence of, and as a response to, persons. The motivation of Christian behaviour was not to be law feared, but person loved: the person of God, the person of the neighbour. It was His love for the Father and His love for men and women that moved the Son of God to enter into our world and activate the work of salvation. Hopefully it will be our love of the Father and of the neighbour that will motivate all our thoughts and actions, forming them into expressions of Christian striving. The love of God and the love of our neighbour are inseparable. You cannot claim to love God if you don’t love your neighbour.
Before we go any further we need to understand what Jesus means here when he uses the word love. That little four letter word “love” is used in many contexts. I talk about loving my dog Tigger, loving Italian sausages, or loving my children and wife. When we use the word love like that we are expressing our affection and have warm feelings for whatever it is that we are loving. Because we associate the word “love” with affection it’s no wonder that we have difficulty loving those people who annoy us, those who have hurt us, and those who don’t deserve to be loved.
When the Bible talks about love it primarily means a love that keeps on loving, it means commitment. We may have warm feelings of gratitude to God when we consider all that he has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Jesus is demanding of us. It is stubborn, unwavering commitment. It follows then that to love one another, including our enemies, doesn’t mean we must feel affection for them, rather it means a commitment on our part to take their needs seriously, just as God committed himself to taking our needs seriously by sending His Son into this world.
This kind of love doesn’t come naturally. It is true that this kind of love comes from God, but putting it into practice is something we have to work on. Love – commitment – is a deliberate action of the will. To love means deliberately turning toward another person and their needs — to give away something of ourselves to someone else without thinking of what we will get in return. This kind of love/commitment is self-sacrificing. It is putting the other person first, whether it is God or our neighbour. In all honesty, it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that this kind of love is in short supply in our society.
Jesus came to pay for our lovelessness. He showed us what true love is. His love touched the dumb, the deaf, the diseased, and the disabled. His love wept and washed dirty feet. His love told of a shepherd searching for lost sheep, a father rushing out to embrace and kiss his lost son as he welcomed him home. His love turned the other cheek, and willingly walked that extra mile. His love carried a cross — and died upon it! Because of Jesus eternal life is yours in Christ. Forgiveness of sins is yours. The perfect Love of God is yours.
We no longer have to love; we get love. We don’t love in order to get to heaven; we love because heaven is already ours in Christ. We don’t love in order to win God’s favour; we love because we already have God’s favour in Christ. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but there’s actually a symbol of the Great Commandment we see around us every day. When I was a Catholic teacher it was the first lesson taught in September.
It’s the Cross. The vertical beam points us to God and reminds us that, first and foremost, we’re to love God with every fibre of our being. The horizontal beam reminds us that we live in community with each other and that the truest test of faith is our compassion and service to others in the name of Jesus Christ.
We don’t love so that God will love us; we love because God has loved us in Christ with the greatest love we will ever know, the crucified love of Jesus.
Jesus came to make us more loving. What form this loving takes is not important, but what is important is that it does take place. When you fail, remember Jesus still loves you, and let his love shine through you into the lives of the people around you.
-Dcn. Terry Murphy