Everything Else Is Commentary

'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.”'

--Matthew 22: 34-40

If I were to ask y’all which Amendment to the US Constitution is the greatest, what might your answer be? Maybe the first: freedom speech, of the press, of the right to practice whatever religion you want – even if it’s none at all? Or the 13th: the abolition of slavery? In this part of the country the 19th – suffrage for women – might be the popular choice. Based on many of the bumper stickers I see, though, I have a feeling the 2nd would probably win out. As heated as that debate might get, so too have been the arguments amongst rabbis through the centuries about the commandments of Torah.

On the Tuesday of the last week of his life, Jesus was asked by a lawyer – Oh those lawyers! – which of the commandments was the greatest. This wasn’t an unusual request. There are, after all, 613 Commandments in the Torah – that’s a lot more than 10 – and those debates about which was the most important were commonplace.

The Talmud—which is a kind of companion and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures and laws – includes a story about a Gentile who approaches a well-known rabbi named Hillel, who died just six years before Jesus was born. The Gentile asks him to recite the whole of Torah—the whole of the Law—while standing on one foot.  He expects the rabbi to dismiss him or call him crazy for making such a request, but Rabbi Hillel puts one foot behind him and says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.  That is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it.” 

An artist's depiction of Rabbi Hillel the Elder.

When Jesus is asked a similar question, he actually gives two answers. He first quotes the Shema, the ancient Jewish declaration of the oneness of God – which is found in Deuteronomy 6: 5: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Jesus adds mind to the list. The Shema is THE foundational statement of the Jewish faith because it asserts that God and God alone is the supreme power and the only one worthy of our praise and worship. Our Jewish siblings to this day open all prayer with the Shema and mount it on doorposts in containers called mezuzots and on their arms and heads in boxes called tefillin or phylacteries.

This would’ve been enough for the lawyer, but Jesus does one better. He adds the second half of Leviticus 19: 18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” -  calling it the second commandment. For those of you who know your list of 10 Commandments – and I’m sure you do – you’re no doubt saying to yourselves, that’s not the 2nd Commandment; it’s “You will not make nor worship any graven image.” Connecting these two passages from two different texts of the Torah is a brilliant move from Jesus. Do you see what he does here? He explicitly connects love of God with love of neighbor. You cannot have one without the other.

If you know your Synoptic Gospels – and I’m sure you do – you may recall that in Luke’s version of this encounter, the lawyer responds by asking, “Who, then, is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer is, of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the oxymoronic story in which the exemplar of neighborly love is one of those traitors to the faith and heritage of the Jewish people because they had intermingled and married foreigners during the takeover of their land by the Assyrians centuries before. So let that sink in.

The implications for this text on our lives right here and now are pretty significant. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor, it seems so obvious and simple that it’s kind of a Christian cliché; after all, at our 7:30 Rite I Eucharist we recite this exact quote, this Summary of the Law, by Jesus each week – albeit in 16th century English. But what does it really mean and look like for us now? Were not the people shot at a bowling alley in Maine this week not neighbors of the man who gunned them down? Are not Israelis and Palestinians – Jews, Muslims and Christians alike – not neighbors of one another? What do we even mean when we talk about loving God and loving our neighbor in the midst of such madness, especially when those in positions to actually do something about it shrug their shoulders, quote their favorite amendment, and insist Jesus himself wouldn’t or couldn't do anything?  

This is one of those moments when I feel compelled to complain about the English language and its limitations. We only have one word for love, and we use it all the time – “I love my spouse. I love my dog. I love the Bills. I love lamp.” The Greek language, the language in which the Gospels were written, has seven words for love. The one, perhaps, with which the majority of us are familiar, is agape, which doesn’t have a clean, direct English equivalent. Agape frequently implies cherishing with reverence, rather than affection. It’s a higher love than, say, eros, which is romantic in nature. It’s agape that Jesus uses; in fact, it’s always the word Jesus uses when he talks about love. It’s the kind of love that sees the imago dei – the image of God - in another human being and connects it back to the Shema, to the acknowledgment and love of God That kind of love is deeper than feeling, deeper than words. It is active and alive, and anything but passive and quiet. The love Jesus talks about is the kind of love that is inspired, that takes to the streets, that cries out with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord?!” and then looks for ways to help. Even when our neighbors don’t love us, this is how we act in reply, with love rooted in non-violent resistance. But what do we do when we cannot do the first part – love our neighbor – because we can’t even do the second part – love ourselves? 

The truth is that we cannot love God or our neighbors without first loving ourselves because to love ourselves is to love the imago dei that stars back at us in the mirror. Sadly, for those who have been caught in cycles of abuse – mental, emotional, and physical – loving oneself can be extremely difficult, if not impossible. We humans are relational creatures, and we cannot dig deep down inside ourselves to find love if someone isn’t out there mirroring it back to us. Too often we hear the stories: mass shooters who are ostracized, mocked, abused, or lonely, and feel they have no other recourse but violence. Even in the Holy Land, Palestinian terrorists like Hamas or Islamic Jihad attack Israeli citizens because the Israeli government maintains an apartheid state upon Palestinian citizens. Hurt people hurt people, it’s been said many times. But healed people also heal people.

Agape love is a love that passes human understanding and is the only thing that can heal a disparaging world. Many times, I’ve heard folks read this Gospel or hear a sermon preached on it and say, “It really is that simple, just love one another. Wow!” But it’s not simple. Love isn’t simple – none of the seven Greek words for love are! Love as deep, as broad, as high, as passing thought and fantasy as agape love takes effort, sweat, tears, and more than a little pain. 

This is what the cross shows us, love in the midst of suffering and death. The cross is where heaven and earth meet…and so is this altar, the Holy Table, where love is poured out, where we feel it in our hands and taste it on our lips. This love is food and drink for our journey into a chaotic and crazed world where neighbors don’t even know each other, let alone love each other. 

But we know love, don’t we? Because at this Table the love of God is mirrored to us in Bread and Wine, so that we can mirror it to our neighbor. We know healing comes not from pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and trying to go it alone, but rather from love found in Communion - the kind we receive at the Table and the kind made up of people; a body of folks who are just as wounded but also just as hungry for that kind of love. We need that kind of love that is known is the sharing of broken bread and the mending of broken hearts. Nothing else can heal this world but that kind of love for God, for neighbor, and for ourselves. Everything else is commentary