October 25: 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.
It is so interesting to me that Jesus’ beautiful words about loving God and loving neighbor being the greatest commandments came as a response to the Pharisees’ efforts to trip him up. When they ask him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” he doesn’t blink an eye, but responds immediately that it has to do with love. Jesus cuts to the core truth of what is most important, and that is love.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all remember this? That if in the course of our everyday lives, the focus should be love? But there’s so much competing for our attention, right? All of us, no matter who we are, are distracted by a million things on a day to day basis. We have bills to pay, and laundry to do, and meals to prepare, and emails to write. I know I am frequently preoccupied by all the things I need to remember to do.
But Jesus says to me, and says to all of us, that we need to love. How in the world do we do this, when we are so busy? How in the world do we keep the focus on loving God and loving each other?
I think the answer, in a nutshell, is through prayer. Because in and of ourselves we do not have the grace or the strength to consistently love. It is only when we rely on God’s transformative power working through and in us are we capable of truly loving. When we soak up God’s love for us through prayer, we are then enabled to do a better job loving each other. And I think that spending time in prayer is one of the best ways we have to show God our love!