Homily
for Sunday, October 29, 2017. Good
Shepherd and Graves Chapel
The
lessons:
Leviticus
19: 1-2, 15-18
Psalm
1
1
Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew
22: 34-46
Laws, rules, commandments…if we try to be law-abiding
citizens and faithful Christians, we may begin with the underlying sense that
we just have to follow the rules, and then all shall be well. After all, there
are only Ten Commandments, and they appear to cover every way humans tend to break
the law. Sometimes it seems simple to tell ourselves we are good people because
we do not steal or lie or covet our neighbor’s donkey. In today’s gospel lesson,
Jesus tells us there is more to it than following the rules if we wish to be
faithful Christians.
In this episode, a Pharisee, a lawyer, asks Jesus this
question, “to test him” we are told. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is
the greatest?” Jesus’s answer includes the two connected commandments that he
says cover all other laws and rules. When we follow these two, we need not
worry about breaking any other rule or commandment given us by God: “‘You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your mind.’ This is the first and greatest 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.”
In teaching us that we should love the Lord our God,
Jesus directly asks us to love him, the incarnate God. Only by being fully
present to God—in heart, soul, and mind, as the commandment says--can we truly demonstrate
our love for the Lord. The prophet Isaiah explains how we may be able to meet
this challenge: “Thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose
name is Holy, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has
a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive
the heart of the contrite.’”
Jesus tells us that in his person the kingdom of heaven
has come near; in other words, the human notion of heaven as the faraway place
where God dwells was upended when God appeared on earth and lived among humans.
Jesus also repeatedly told his disciples, including those of us who wish to
follow him in the 21st Century, that He is in us, as He is
in God, and we are invited to dwell with him there. Is that not what the
prophet Isaiah meant when he quoted God as saying, “I dwell in the high and holy
place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit”?
As God promised, when our heart is in the right place, we
make room for the Lord to dwell within us. Contrition and humility have to come
from our hearts, and those things that rise from our hearts cannot be feigned. Our
friends and acquaintances know when we are insincere with either apologies or
modesty, so we should assume God will not be fooled. Maybe this is why Jesus’s
expression of the Great Commandment includes the instruction to love God with,
“all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The heart,
the home of love and the place within us where we are most honest with
ourselves, comes first in this hierarchy of importance. Thus, we join the Lord
in God’s kingdom whenever our heart is in the right place.
And when our heart is in the right place, when we love
our Lord with all the humility we can muster, then following the second great
commandment should be less difficult: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The
other lessons for today offer beautiful illustrations of what it requires of us
to love our neighbors. In Leviticus, the first of the Old Testament books of
law that God, through Moses, established for his people, we are told,
“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial
to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.”
Loving our neighbors as
ourselves will inspire us to seek justice and fairness for all; we certainly
know from the parable of the Good Samaritan that we cannot choose to love only
those who believe like us or behave like us. Our neighbors in need of our love are
all of our fellow humans, especially those who are poor or sick or unjustly
treated.
In
his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes neighborly love in this way:
“We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” In the aftermath of the recent hurricanes, we
saw evidence of many neighbors reaching out in self-sacrificing ways to assist
other victims of the storms, even those who were strangers to them, like nurses
tenderly caring for their own children. We humans indeed have been blessed with
a great capacity to love one another. God plants within each of us the
“contrite and humble spirit” required so that we can know God dwells within us
and empowers us to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we accept and share
the gift of God’s merciful love, our heart is in the right place.
In
Matthew 25, Jesus very clearly illustrates in a parable some of the things we
must do to fulfill the second great commandment: “…for I was hungry, and you
gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick
and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” In this story,
when the righteous ones ask the Lord how and when they did these generous and
loving things for him, he answers, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the
least of these, you did it to me.”
So, we return our meditation on love to the first of the
great commandments. Jesus answered the Pharisee’s question by stating the two
great commandments, the first one being “You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” As God incarnate, Jesus simply asked us to
love him. With dedication, humility, and contrition, we can tune our hearts fully
to the Lord who dwells within us and loves us in return.
“And a second is like unto it.” Jesus leaves it to the Pharisee and to us to
discover the connection between that first great commandment and the second
one: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” With a contrite and humble heart, we are
assured that God is present within us. When we fully believe that our love for
God, our connection with God, empowers us to carry God’s love to those who need
it, we will fulfill the second great commandment. The two great commandments do
not involve either/or thinking. Instead, they call for both at once! In caring
unselfishly for “the least of these,” we have recognized God’s presence in “the
other,” and have shown our love for God by loving our neighbor. We love God best when we love our neighbor.
Today’s collect reminds
us of the beautiful words St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at
Corinth, describing the proper nature of our love for God and our neighbor: “Love
is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does
not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…And
now faith hope and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.”
We love God best when we
love each other well.
AMEN.
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