The Rev. Kathleen Walker a priest at St. John’s in Tallahassee, Florida, gives us some examples: "...if you are driving a car, [the law says that] you are required to put on your directional signal to indicate that you are turning a corner. If you want to interrupt a conversation, you should say, 'Excuse me.' You tell your kids to put away their toys when they are finished playing. That way they will know where they are the next time they want them."
Easy right? Yet, these basic rules, these basic courtesies, are constantly violated.
In Jesus’ day, the commandments by
which early members of the Jewish community lived were directions from God
handed down to Moses about how to live in the world and in community. Jewish rabbis
and scholars preached and wrote commentary on these basics that taught and reinforced
their beliefs as followers of God and members of God's covenant people.
One day, Jesus was asked by some
religious leaders, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus quotes the words contained in the books of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy. He says, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And then Jesus adds a second
instruction: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That was a very
straightforward and familiar statement… Jesus was quoting something that every Jew knew as part of their daily
prayer called the Shema, a tradition that continues to this very day.
What Jesus said to the scribe sounds
pretty simple. Love God above all
things, with every fiber of our being. This is something that all the Jews
around Jesus, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the desert monastic
Essenes, and all the others could agree on. Still, it can seemto us like a high bar
to clear, doesn’t it?
When I hear Jesus talk about the
First and Great Commandment, sometimes I think of the line from the film A
League of Their Own, when Coach Jimmy Dugan (played by Tom Hanks) says to
his best player Dottie Hinson, played by Geena Davis, who is about to quit and
go home with her husband who just returned from World War 2, saying that
playing baseball just got too hard.
He says, “It's supposed to be
hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it
great.”
Navigating this requires trust.
Jesus reminds us that when God is fully trusted, there cannot be any room for
second-guessing. When there seems to be no explanation for occurrences in life,
those are the moments to let your faith sustain you and lean on God for support
and strength, instead of turning away from God.
If you love God with all your being, then Jesus says, then “love your neighbor as yourself.” In the Gospel of Mark, the scribe agrees with
Jesus and understands the requirements. The rub comes when in our time, just as
much as in Jesus’ time, we are pitted against each other; when faith is recast
as nothing more than my property and my right to do as I please for myself alone and filtered
through the bull horn of grievance, anger, and violence.
The Covid pandemic has created
great tension in the United States. It has brought out the best in us and also the
worst. It has at times pitted neighbor against neighbor and relatives against
each other. We hear news accounts of people fighting each other in restaurants,
on airplanes, and in other public spaces over mask-wearing and vaccinations. In the midst of this, what does it mean to love your neighbor as ourselves? What would Jesus say at this moment?
Perhaps a good place to start is
by being less judgmental about “us versus them.” Not every ethical or moral
question can be reduced to party-politics or ideological conflict. Instead of
physical altercations, what would it look like to embrace our neighbor so that
dialogue can happen instead of accusation? In so much of Jesus’ lesson such as his
parable of the Good Samaritan (which, in the Gospel of Luke, is told by Jesus
to illustrate what “loving our neighbor as ourselves” really means) how we care
for our ill, scared, or uncertain neighbors is a sure sign of God’s power and
love in the present moment. Christians are called to do all that we can to love
everyone, not just those who agree with us. Love means striving for unity and
moving towards becoming Beloved Community.
Think of what would happen in our
culture and relationships if love took the lead. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry
has written a wonderful book called Love Is the Way. Bishop Curry has
said consistently, “If it’s not about love, then it’s not about God.” There is
no compromise on this commandment. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor.
When we love God completely, we are
going to hear and answer the call to love our neighbors also. We will be
accepting of people who look different from us and those whose lifestyles are
not the same. Love calls us to overcome or resistance to courageous
conversations that could lead to greater understanding of differing opinions and
teach s to love each other in the ways God describes.
Bishop Nicholas Knisely of Rhode
Island points
out that love, as Jesus describes it, is an active verb. It’s decidedly
different than “liking” or “holding in awe” or “respecting.” Love is, in fact,
something you do with another person. Love is not merely a
thing or an idea.
It’s Halloween, so I can’t resist
a reference from one of my favorite stories and myths of our time, Harry
Potter. At the end of the saga,
“… when it is clear … that Harry must die, that in the end he will
walk into Voldemort’s presence and lay down his life for his friends—for all
his friends, not only Ron, Hermione, and Neville, but all the students at
Hogwarts and all their families and all the wizards and Muggles in the world.
He will die in order that others may live. There is no vainglory in what he
does, no posturing, no sense of histrionics. Dumbledore has told him often enough:
he loves. It is the reason he can defeat the evil Lord Voldemort, who lacks the
power to understand love and who laughs at Harry because he knows it motivates
him. It is the reason Harry can walk calmly and deliberately into the maw of
death and lay down his life. [The author J.K. Rowling] understands the
connection between friendship and love, the mystery at the heart of the gospel.”
[Love,
Death, and Friendship in the Harry Potter Novels by John Killinger Copyright
2008 Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University]
The Good News from Jesus is that
this kind of love is achievable for all of us. When we daily choose to love God
with our whole being and to love the people God gives us every day, also with
our whole being, we discover that is possible to love others so much that
polarization ends, and the healing of world is happening. The love was made
manifest in Jesus’ life, passion, death, and resurrection is available and made
real as we live as Jesus’ followers, friends, and apprentices. We will
sometimes—maybe many times—fall short, but God’s overflowing love gives us the
grace and power to turn around and love all the more through the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, Love God with all our
heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Love our neighbors as ourselves.
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