In this section of Matthew, we have borne witness to the battle between the religious powers and Jesus. First, Jesus told them a set of three parables. He told the parable of the man with two sons, followed by the parable of the wicked tenants, and finally the parable of the wedding banquet. Each one layering criticism upon the Pharisees and Sadducees, and chief priests and scribes. By the time he is finished they have heard the message loud and clear. How do they respond? “So then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him.”
They pose a set of three questions to him, meant to trick him into incriminating himself. The first question we discussed last week – is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? – which he handled quite well.
The second question was a complicated word problem about a woman who married and survived each of seven brothers, and the problem is whose wife will she be in the afterlife. In the first two questions they pose to him, Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t allow the authorities to set the terms of discussion because he knows that God’s truth doesn’t fit into their narrow terms.
In response to these first two questions, Jesus does not give them a direct answer. He reframes the question. A marvelous skill that we should all practice. Many ugly and fruitless arguments could probably be avoided if we did what Jesus did.
So then they come at him with their third question – the magic of threes. Which commandment is the greatest?
We should know that they are not just talking about the 10 commandments here. Christians have elevated these ten that Moses brought down from the mountain because they seem to be such an elegant summary of God’s law. But when it came to the law, Israel had much more to be concerned with than just ten. There were 613 laws written down in the scriptures. They are in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, primarily. 613. And they were all deemed essential.
Given what we have already seen, given the way he has handled the first two, we would expect him to skillfully sidestep this question. To reframe it in some way, as he has done before. Like, “Why would you even ask which one is the greatest? Is there anything that comes from God that is not perfect?” I mean, that’s what I would have suggested. If Jesus asked me.
But he didn’t. He didn’t ask me, and he didn’t do what he had done before. Jesus answered their question this time – clearly and concisely. And in doing so he gave the world one of the most beautiful and memorable verses in all the scriptures.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it.
What did he do here? Well he answered their question simply and directly. But then again, he didn’t. He didn’t choose one particular ordinance. He didn’t argue the case for one specific rule – out of all the rules governing family life, community life, farming, diet, dress, worship, and so on. He went back to something so simple that it was one of the first thing every child of Israel learned. Something so basic it hardly seemed mentioning. Love God.
And then, ignoring their specific request for only one, he went on to slip in another, which, he says, is just like it: love your neighbor as yourself.
And just like that, he makes these three things inseparable: Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Everything else hangs on this one thing.
And you know what? I am so glad that, this time, he just answered their question.
Because when he answers their question, he says to us that the basic things are the greatest things. And the most basic thing about God is love.
Which is really good news. I love to be loved. And loving others is great. And it’s simple. Easy, right?
Sure, loving people is easy – except when it’s hard. And when it’s hard, let us count the ways.
Sometimes it is hard to love people because they are just too distant, because we don’t actually know them, we know very little about them. People who are too far away from our lives can become just a blur, a sea of insignificant shadows.
Think about all the billions of people who live on the other side of the world, who seem so different. Suspect. Dangerous. Often because we fail to recognize them as real human beings.
In the words of the extraordinary writer, Annie Dillard, “There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself – in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love – and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.”
And actually, there are a few hundred million more people in China now.
To love the people who seem like unspecific masses of humanity to us is a challenge to our faith. On most days, we may simply feel indifferent about what happens to them. But it is a particular problem for Christians to feel indifferent about a people’s suffering.
It is a particular challenge at this time when we consider the Palestinian people. Perhaps it is because we don’t personally know any Palestinian people. And it is so easy to paint them all with the broad brush of terrorism, so they are not human beings who give birth to children, whom they love and cherish. They are not people who fight against illness, from the common cold to cancer. They are not people who have hopes for their lives and the lives of their children. Because we just can’t see them well enough to know these things.
Sometimes loving people is hard because they are just too distant. But that is not all.
Sometimes it is hard to love people because they are too close. And we are stuck with them, and we have to deal with them in all their humanness. This is a more “in your face” kind of challenge.
When I was a high school student I worked at the local A&P grocery store. I was a cashier. There were all kinds of people who came through the line and depending on my mood, I liked them well enough – or not at all.
At the age of 17, I didn’t think I had any bigotry. I thought I was a pretty loving, tolerant person. I liked or disliked people purely on the basis of their individual personal qualities. But working at the A&P, I discovered something about myself.
There were quite a few men who would come in the store who were from another country. A different culture. I did not know any of them by name. But I started to dislike them with some intensity.
I disliked the way they spoke English. They all managed to communicate well enough, I had no trouble understanding them, but I didn’t like the brokenness of it.
I didn’t like the fact that they always wanted to pay by check, no matter how small the purchase. And they never seemed to have a pen to fill out their check. And instead of asking for a pen they asked me for a pencil. And I knew, even at the age of 17, you didn’t write a check with a pencil.
These are reprehensible feelings I had, I kind of knew it even then. And most shameful of all, I disliked the way they smelled. Because they lived in small apartments without good ventilation, and so they tended to smell like the food they cooked. I know now that I would have enjoyed eating the food they cooked. But back then I knew nothing.
And so with this particular cohort of human beings, I discovered my bigotry. And I can remember having the realization: I would like these people just fine, from a distance. But when it came to sharing space with them, my resentment blossomed.
And that is a challenge that we are confronted with today as our community grows more and more diverse, as we are faced with sharing space with others who seem different.
Whether it is because they are too close or because they are too distant, the failure to love is really about our failure to see their humanity, to recognize them as brothers and sisters, beloved children of God. Each one made in God’s image.
The greatest commandment, the greatest teaching, we hear Jesus say, is this one thing: Love the Lord with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. These two are alike. They speak to the completeness of love.
Holding these two things together, loving God and loving the neighbor, is actually a hard thing to do. Yet this is a form of faith and life Jesus calls us to. And being able to hold this together is so very important for the church, for it will prevent us from worshiping a distorted image of God.
Loving God and loving neighbor are two sides of a coin; they are the warp and the weft of a woven cloth. Jesus says not that they are number one and number two, but here is one and “here is a second that is like the first.” They must be held together. Jesus wants the Pharisees and Sadducees and Chief Priests and lawyers – and all the people – to see that.
Love God and all God’s family. Because, as we read in Genesis, God put a piece of God’s self in every human being. The image of God in each one of us. To love God is to love one another.
We began this short series as a follow-up to our series on spiritual transformation in Christ. In other words, we have received new life in Christ by virtue of our baptism. We are transformed. Different, somehow. But we all know that our baptism is not the be-all and end-all of our faith. It is merely the beginning of this journey.
During these three weeks we have looked at a few ways we encounter pressure from the world, tests that may make it harder for us to live this life in Christ we have chosen. In this world that is broken by fear and hate, prejudice and greed. This final encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees gets to the heart of it. God asks us to do this one thing: choose love. Love for God, love for the neighbor, love for yourself.
Choose love, even if it makes other people mad. Choose love, even when it is against conventional wisdom. Choose love, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard – that’s when it really makes a difference.
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