No half measures

 ‘…All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’. (Matthew 22:40)

Matthew 22:34-40 (Year A: Advent-5)

The next time you read the Bible cover to cover you might like to use a yellow marker and mark over the word ‘all’ (assuming you are reading the Bible in English). You will run out of yellow marker. You will be surprised at how often this word ‘All’ crops up from start to finish:

-       In all wisdom

-       With all your heart

-       All the people of Israel

-       That all may be one

-       Christ in all

-       All

-       All

-       & All.

John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement within Anglicanism spoke of four important ‘Alls’:

1. All people need to be saved.

2. All people can be saved.

3. All people can know they are saved.

4. All people can be saved to the uttermost.

It can be said that the ultimate goal of history, of our own personal lives and of our communities is pretty straightforward when all is said and done. It is simply that God may be all in all.

But how?

The response by Jesus to some hostile questioning shows all that we need in order to be all (whole or holy):

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (verse 37)

Oddly enough sometimes we don’t stop and ponder what the meaning of the phrase ‘all your mind’ actually means. It doesn’t mean suspending our God-given human reason to question and deepen our understanding and commitment.  To ‘heart’, ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ could be added ‘body’. In short, we are called to love with all our being – every bit of it.

But to love God – who is all – with all our being means something very concrete, here and now. It means

Love your neighbour as yourself. (verse 39)

In other words we can only know if our love for God is sincere and meaningful if it is expressed in love for our ‘neighbour’ in the here and now in this place, in these circumstances and in this situation. To love is act based on a desire for what is truly good for our neighbour and for ourselves (we realise our own good through loving).  It could actually lead to such heroic deeds as giving up our seat on a bus to someone in particular need (provided that we are not pregnant or infirm). Then it might involve staying faithful to a commitment or an appointment when this dearly costs.  It might even lead ultimately to giving our life. Not such a rare thing in some parts of the world for people of faith.

In responding to the questioner Jesus brings together two foundation commandments from the Old Testament:

• ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5)
• ‘…love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18)

So, there is nothing new at one level – Jesus is merely quoting Jewish scripture.  At another level something new is happening. He is bringing two commandments together and directly linking them by means of a ‘new commandment’ which combines both. It is the hallmark of real Christianity which would follow much later as the Jesus movement within Judaism evolved into a gathering (ekklesia) of disciples a growing number of which would be gentiles.

The symbol, power and truth of the Cross is at the centre of Christian loving as revealed in Jesus Christ.  The cross has two beams:

• a horizontal one that indicates love for one another (the two thieves on each side of Jesus, for example, as well as the onlooking crowd including immediate family.
• a vertical one that indicates God’s love for us and our love for God.

Now the vertical beam cannot stand without the horizontal one and the horizontal one cannot hold without the support of the vertical one. So it is with one and the same love that has been given to us.

God is loved in and through our neighbour. But, we love our neighbour for himself or herself and not as an instrument to please and love God. That is the way God wants it. After all God who is in all, loves all wants us to love all with our all.

And that’s not all:

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (verse 40)

In one swoop Jesus reduces the 613 commandments of the ‘Old Law’ into two commandments not so much by abolishing them as by rooting then in the essential. His listeners were left speechless.

How we could simplify our lives and our laws and our canon laws and our rules of community if we took to hear the simple truth that underlying ‘all the law’ and the scriptures is the commandment to love God with our all and to do so sincerely by loving the person next to us now.

Very simple. Too simple in fact.

Love is the one thing you cannot overdo. If we risk everything for love we can liberate ourselves from false/dead religion together with 600 regulations and be conquered by that Love which has loved us from all eternity in the first place.

And that’s all for now.