When I was a brand new seminary intern working in a congregation, I remember being at my first potluck lunch there.I stood off to the side of the fellowship hall and looked at all those people I didn’t know. I looked at them and wondered, would we like each other? Would we get along? Would they accept me, their new seminary intern? What had I gotten myself into?
Have you ever had a moment where an idea or belief just snapped into focus? When something you generally believed became clear and real? That’s what happened to me that day. It became absolutely clear to me. I did not have to like any of those people. But I did have to love them.
To like someone and to love someone are not necessarily the same thing. Love can and often is, personal and private. But love is also public and communal. This public and communal love is not necessarily based on personal relationships. It has to do with how we live together, in community. As a congregation, as a city, and as a nation.
The past few weeks, we have been thinking about the increasingly tense encounters between Jesus and the religious elites in the Temple during what we call Holy Week.1 This week’s Bible text is part of that exchange. Once again, the question posed to Jesus is not a good faith attempt to understand Jesus’ teaching. This is, as the text says, a test.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matt 22:34-40 NRSVue2
Jesus’ answer to the expert in the law is well known. It is so well know that sometimes we assume we know exactly what Jesus meant. Often it’s helpful to try to read with fresh eyes.
The first commandment to love God comes from Deuteronomy 6. The book of Deuteronomy contains what is presented as the last speech of Moses and it includes a retelling of the law. It is the last book of Torah and it also functions as the summing up and culmination of the five books (the Pentateuch). Chapter 6 begins by reinforcing the importance of keeping the commandments. It contains what is know as the “Shema”.3
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. (Deut 6:4-7 NRSVue)
The second part of Jesus’ reply comes from Leviticus 19. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Lev 19:18 NRSVue
Leviticus describes the legal and ritual laws that are part of the covenant with God. In chapter 19, “The series of community-oriented regulations in this following section ground the people’ social obligations in the holiness of God and the holiness of God’s people.”4
Jesus’ reply is grounded in the heart of their shared tradition, in the ancient and fundamental prayer, and the instructions that define the covenant with God.
We sometimes overlook what Jesus says at the end of his answer. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and Prophets.” These two commandments are the boundary markers. The function as the guardrails and guideposts for us. They form the container that holds everything else. All the Law, all the teachings of the prophets, all of it is rooted and grounded and connected to these two commandments. To love God will our entire selves,heart, soul, and mind. And to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Love of God, self and neighbor interconnected, each helping us love more fully. When Jesus (and Torah and the prophets) talk about love, they are not talking about a feeling. In the Bible, love is made known in actions. Love is not about liking each other. Love is about being sure that everyone is cared for. Love is about being sure each of us has what we need to survive and to thrive. I do not need to like you or even to know you to want you to have enough food to eat, a safe place to live and access to health care. I don’t need to like you to want you to have fair and equal treatment before the law and in the courts. As Cornel West has famously written, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Sometimes people try to define neighbor in such a way that lets them vote in their personal self interest. Jesus, Torah, the prophets all speak against that. It’s a book length project to fully write about that. But start with the Sermon on the Mount. Or the parable of the Good Samaritan. Read the gospels and notice all the times Jesus acts on behalf of the outcast, or those in need.
As much as we might want to pretend otherwise, our wellbeing it bound together with the wellbeing of others. Those others in our neighborhood and those others around the world.
Quite a while ago, I had the opportunity to talk with college students before an election. I suggested to them that as Christians, following Jesus means that we use our vote for the wellbeing of all. We don’t merely vote for what benefits us as individuals. We need to think about how our vote helps or harms our neighbor. As followers of Jesus, are we willing to vote for the wellbeing of our neighbor even if that is not in our immediate self interest. Sadly, these students were stunned by this idea. They had received plenty of “voting guides” at church but had never thought about voting in any other way than a self interested way.
We live in a big and complicated, and often contentious nation. In recent years efforts to make us fear each other seem to be more and more prominent. Fear and divisiveness is stoked even by people claiming to be Christian. It often feels that we, as a nation, have lost our way. But for Christians our way forward is not based in fear, or retaliation, or domination. Our way forward is not attempting to create a Christian nation. Our way forward is love. Loving God by listening to Jesus and doing our best to follow his teaching. Loving our neighbor, even if we don’t know them. Even if we have been told to fear them.
One of the ways we live out Jesus’ call to love is to use our vote for the common good, to vote for policies and candidates who will work for a more just and equitable society. I don’t mean we should only vote for Christians. Our vote should be used to elect people and vote for policies that benefits those most affected by injustice- economic, social, and structural. We don’t have to know our neighbors to care about their well being. We don’t even have to like them. But we always must love them.
- Holy Week is the week between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey- Palm Sunday, and Jesus’ arrest on [Good] Friday,his trial and crucifixion and his resurrection on [Easter] Sunday. You can look back at earlier posts to see some of what has gone on between Jesus and the religious elites. ↩︎
- The lectionary reading has six more verses.I had chosen to focus on the first half of the reading. Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”‘? “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. Matt 22:41-46 NRSVue ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shema ↩︎
- Footnote on Lev 19:1-37. Bryan Bibb in “Leviticus” in The Westminster Study Bible, NRSVue, Gen Ed, Emerson B. Powery, Westminster John Knox Press, 2024, page 172 ↩︎
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