(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text: Matthew 22: 34-40

³⁴When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, ³⁵and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” ³⁷He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

This passage is familiar to all of us.  Maybe it’s too familiar.  Maybe we’re good at reciting it and not that great at living it.  But all that Jesus was—the annunciation, the birth, the teaching, the welcoming, the healing, the miracles, the calling, even the turning of the tables—all of it came down to this.  THIS was the message that Jesus was trying to impart to us.  Oh, it’s not that it’s more important than everything else that Scripture holds, everything else that Jesus taught.  It’s that it IS everything else, all wrapped up into these words—love God and love neighbor.  It is the story of our faith.

This passage tells of the last in a series of encounters that Jesus had with the Pharisees and the Sadducees over the issue and challenge of Jesus’ authority, over the question of who Jesus was.  In the context of the Gospel by the writer known as Matthew, this is Jesus’ final encounter with those who saw it as their role to protect the tradition of the first century Jewish religion.  After this, the Gospel moves into the judgment of Jesus and then on toward the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.  In a way, this was Jesus’ final answer, his way of summing it all up for us before the judgment began.

The lawyer who stepped forward could be considered an expert on the Torah, the professional theologian and the resident authority on all things of the faith tradition.  And his purpose was to test Jesus, to trap him into giving an answer that would finally prove that Jesus was not who he had made himself out to be.  For the writer of Matthew, this was a test of the kingdoms pitted against each other—the Kingdom of God against the powers that were in play on earth.

The rabbis had counted a total of 613 commandments in the Torah, the “Law”.  (I’m sure you have all of those memorized and follow them to the letter!—or not!) And even though it was acceptable for rabbis to give summaries of the Law itself, the view was that each one of these commandments held equal value with all the others.  By asking Jesus which law was the greatest, the lawyer was setting a trap.  If Jesus singled out any one law above the other, it would be like dismissing the other 612.  It would be a violation of the Law of Torah.  It would be the final blow.

But Jesus, in true Jesus fashion has an answer that they were not expecting.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  The first commandment that Jesus cites is part of what is known in Judaism as the Shema, the central prayer of the Jewish faith.  It would be hard to refute.  Found in the 6^th chapter of Deuteronomy, the commandment that Jesus gives is part of what is found in a mezuzah, the holy parchment affixed to the doorframes of Jewish homes.  From the Tanakh translation, which is a traditional Hebrew translation, the prayer goes like this:

“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.  Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.  Impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.  Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

It declares not only the belief in the One and Only God but also calls us to a deep and abiding relationship with God.  We are called to love God with our whole heart, a pure and absolute devotion to God as our one and only maker and redeemer.  We are called to love God with our souls, to long for a passionate and engaged love for the One who nurtures and sustains us.  We are called to love God with our minds, not a blind and uninformed faith but one that questions, and learns, and grows into what God envisions us to be.  And we are called to love God with all our strength, every fiber of our being, a full and engaged life lived in the name of Christ our Lord.

But then Jesus comes back and tells us that we “shall love our neighbor as ourself.” (Found in Leviticus 19:18) In essence, it seems that Jesus was asked for one commandment and responded with two.  But the writer of Matthew’s Gospel depicts the second as “like” the first.  The Greek word for this does not mean merely similar; it means, rather, that is of equal importance and inseparable from the first, linked and dependent upon each other.  The great command to love God has as its inseparable counterpart the command to love neighbor.   One cannot understand true and abiding love without a loving relationship with God.  But one cannot realize that relationship with God without loving one’s brothers and sisters and realizing that we are all children of God.  From this standpoint, our mutual and shared humanity becomes part of our relationship with God, as we are swept into the coming of the Kingdom of God for all of Creation.  We are called to love our neighbor as deeply as we love ourselves, to meet our neighbor’s needs as readily as we meet our own, and to seek to understand our neighbor’s dreams and passions just as we vie for what we believe.  We are called to love our neighbor because we love God.  The two commandments are intrinsically intertwined, inescapably linked to one another.  They become reflections of each other in true Trinitarian mutual relationship.  They are of one essence and being.  Our love and compassion for others gives visibility to our love and compassion of God. 

Jesus did not just invent this “greatest commandment”.  It was a way of talking about all of the commandments that were known (including those “Top 10” that politicians seem so intent on placing in every school room).  In fact, if you look at the Ten Commandments, they are neatly summarized in the Great Commandment.  The truth is that none of them are a list of “do’s and don’ts”.  They are this—this greatest commandment, summarized into Jesus’ final message.  It’s not a set of rules; it’s a way of being, to live a life loving God and neighbor.

So, here we are, coming so near to the gates of Jerusalem, so near to the end.  We Christians walk this Lenten journey with Jesus.  We probably walk it with only a modicum of the attention it is due because, after all, we know how it all turns out.  We know that in a matter of days, we’ll go to church and bask in the perfume of Easter lilies and go on with our lives.  But the truth is that living this Greatest Commandment means more than just paying attention, more than just remembering.  Loving God is about entering this Holy Walk and loving God so much that you can’t walk away.  And loving neighbor means that we are called to love the Pontius Pilates and the callous townspeople and the corrupt court and the disciples who stayed and the disciples who fled.  Loving our neighbor means that we love the thieves on the cross, both the penitent and the impenitent, as ourselves.  Because they are us—all of them.  They are the times that we choose to ignore our neighbor or make excuses for our action or try to justify something that is not just.  They are the times that we bear the cross to die to what we should not be. 

John 14:15 reminds us that Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  Keep here is not just “obey”.  It means more to watch over them, to preserve them, to guard them, to become them.  So, as we begin to turn toward the gate to enter Jerusalem, breathe out…breathe out the excuses, breathe out walking through this as history or a distant memory that is not yours.  Breathe out want to avoid the grief and the gore and the despair because it is uncomfortable.  Breathe out thinking that the walk is not yours because Jesus did it for you.  (OK, at the risk of being thrown off the team, I’m not really a substitutionary atonement kind of gal.  Jesus invited us into being with God through Christ.  Jesus invited us to this walk—all of it.  We must experience a death, of sorts, a dying and letting go of what was so that we might live.) And breathe in remembrance—the remembrance that is love.  Breathe in this commandment to love God and love neighbor, two inextricably linked parts that if you keep, if you preserve, if you become, you will know resurrection—not only Jesus’ but also yours.  You will know how to begin to practice resurrection.

Love God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself…love enough to walk this Way of the Cross. 

Humanly speaking, we could interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways.  Jesus knows only one possibility:  simple surrender and obedience.  He does not want it to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

OK, a little bit of housekeeping…we are nearly to Holy Week.  I’m doing something just a little bit different this year.  Beginning Monday, these posts will be a walk through Holy Week via the Stations of the Cross.  The Via Dolorosa marks the path Jesus traveled as he carried the cross from the place he was sentenced to the place of his resurrection.  Through the years, 14 Stations developed as early pilgrims honored places where events were likely to have taken place.  Many of these stations are only a guess since the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day was almost completely destroyed by the Roman armies in 70 AD.  But since the majority of Christians throughout the world could not journey to Jerusalem to walk the Via Dolorosa, the Stations became a spiritual tool that would give them an opportunity for a “mini-pilgrimage”.  It became a way for every Christian to enter that Holy Walk, the “Way of the Cross”, the way that takes us through the sorrows and despair of Holy Week that we, too, might emerge victorious in the glory of the Resurrection.  I hope this will be as meaningful to you as it is for me.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli