October 29, 2023: Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22:34-46
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, 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.”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.
Who among us has not watched the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza without feelings of sadness and horror? It is painful to hear about the violence each warring side has perpetrated upon the other. As awful as the situation there is, it is just one example among many of hatred-fueled wars in this world.
Jesus’ proclamation that we are to love God with all our hearts and also love our neighbor as ourselves seems like an impossible goal in the midst of such hatred. Sylvia Dutchevici, founder of the Critical Therapy Center, says, “We are taught to hate the enemy – meaning anyone different than us – which leaves little room for vulnerability and an exploration of hate through empathic discourse and understanding.”
But how about fostering love, not hatred, in our own personal lives? How do we do that?
Perhaps the ability to love our neighbor, the second greatest commandment according to Jesus, flows from loving God with “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37). To love God wholly and completely means to put God first in our lives, and seek to align our hearts, our spirits and our words with Love. To do so requires humility and poverty of spirit, and the willingness to ask God to teach us, over and over and over again, how to love. Learning how to love is a lifelong journey.
As we look to Love to inform all of who we are, there is less room for fear – fear of the other, fear of those who are different than us, fear of those who threaten our sense of identity. Our hearts become softer and we are thus enabled to see the common thread of humanity that binds us together. “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” (Jill Jackson, 1955).