“…On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt 22:40)
(Year A: The Fifth Sunday before Advent, 25th
October, 2020)
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
READINGS (COI & paired as between the
Gospel and the Old Testament readings)
See, also, Mark 12:28-37 and Luke 10:25-28
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This Sunday the clocks go back an hour. It
also happens to be ‘Bible Sunday’ in many of the churches stemming from the
Reformation. Most of what we hear and pray in church is directly taken from the
sacred scriptures consisting of at least 66 books written by more than 66
authors at different times and in different contexts over a period of many
centuries. Holding them together is the
agreed Canon or index of books which, it was agreed by Christians in the early
centuries, is divinely inspired and, therefore forms part of the Word of God.
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 which sprung up from within Anglicanism spoke of four important ‘All’s’:
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’. (Mark and Luke refer, in addition, to ‘all
your strength’). 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)
Who is my neighbour? My neighbour is the
person who is next to me at this moment in time. Being ‘next to me’ can surely
include someone who is with us on zoom, skype or Whatsapp.
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
to 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 deeds as not
buying more than we need at any one time. 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 one who questioned,
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 heart 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/ and 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.
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