Just a word...Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time...October 29, 2023
Last week, Jesus flummoxed the Sadducees with their “legitimacy of paying taxes to Caesar” issue, and now it is the Pharisees who want to challenge and attempt to trap Jesus by asking him to choose the greatest among some 600 laws. Surely each of the questioners had their favorite law and stood ready to pounce on whatever choice Jesus might make.
Jesus doesn’t take the bait, choosing instead to respond with the great Hebrew prayer, The Shema. Every Jew is obliged to pray the Shema each morning and night, as a reminder to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind. Jesus doesn’t stop at naming one great commandment, but adds another from the Jewish Code of Holiness, that of loving one’s neighbor as oneself. All the other commandments, and laws, hang on these two, and like a door that will be out of balance if one of the hinges is missing, one’s life will be mis-aligned if both these commandments are not followed.
The union of these two great commandments is part of our rich heritage from the Jewish people, as well as one of the puzzles of our lives; how do we love the God we cannot see? How do we love the neighbor we might not like? The good news is that it can done...and it doesn’t involve having a law degree or a doctorate in metaphysics. It is through our experience that we can come to love God, and our neighbor.
While we cannot force an experience of God, we can ask for it, and as Jesus promised, ask and it will be given to you. ASK...and then listen. Just by asking, you begin to lay the groundwork for the eventuality of love. Besides asking, ACT! If you want to love God, love God’s image: love the men and women who inhabit your everyday life. To love them calls not for law books, but for imagination. It means developing eyes and ears that are skilled at catching glimpses of God in the human faces that surround us.
Okay, but what of those faces that do not surround us, those faces that are far away. It seems that the question of “who is this neighbor whom I should love as myself?” becomes especially challenging in the times in which we live. Does Jesus really mean we have to love everyone? Even the one whose every word makes our blood boil? The one who lives so differently from us? The one who doesn’t look like us? The one who stands against all we hold dear? Even them?
Perhaps Jesus’ words in today’s gospel are raising the bar for calling ourselves Christians...maybe it’s time to ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and enlarge our hearts to become vulnerable, that we might truly love others as ourselves, and then endeavor to act accordingly.