When the Pharisees heard that he 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)
It’s important not to forget that this whole story is about God’s love for us. We may walk through the week with Jesus, remembering all of the things he said and did during the week. We are already anticipating Judas’ betrayal, the Last Supper, the Arrest, the Trial(s), the Scourging, the Crown of Thorns, and ultimately, the Crucifixion.
We also look at the Gospels and see their different stories. Some may say that these stories are contradictory, and that’s fine: we each see the things we see. I know plenty of Christians who pretty much ignore this whole thing, so I have no problems with non-believers being critical of us. Yes, the Gospel writers, although having some similarities (Jesus does, after all, end up dead in all of them), tell different stories. History doesn’t mean the same to them as it does to us. We look for facts and fail to see truth. They are poets, mystics, visionairies; we are stoics and scientists.
Somewhere in all of this is the love of God. This whole story is a stumbling-block, not just the cross on Friday: St. Paul had that much right. All of our theories of the Atonement, our understandings that end up making God look like a child-abuser, and our rebuttals of that, seem to leave out the idea that God is love. This story doesn’t have a lot of love in it: that’s because of us, not God.
I the midst of the week of preaching and teaching and making decisions that would ultimately end his life, someone asks Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment?” We know how that feels. We have all been in the midst of some terrible crisis, so distracted by our own worries and fears that we can hardly breathe, when suddenly, someone requests of us a meaningful statement, an act that takes us out of ourselves and into ultimate reality.
What is the greatest commandment? Jesus must have paused for a moment, remembering what he was about: to be the way God wants to be known in the world. What is the greatest commandment?
Keep all the commandments without veering one way or the other? No.
Keep Kosher? No.
Believe every word of the Bible? No.
Go to church every Sunday? No.
Tithe and pay your pastor well? No (Rats! That would have been a good one! But not a GREAT one).
No.
Love.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Everything else is dependent on these two.
All the commandments, all the parables, all the Psalms, all the history, all the prophets: everything hangs on love. Without love, everything else is bull. Everythings else is meaningless.
Love is the common denominator that links all of this together. We cannot understand God if we do not, at some point, consider the love of God for us and the loving of God by us.
If nothing else is said for the rest of the week, this lesson has to be understood, has to be taken into our hearts, has to be lived out.
Maybe what we need this week, rather than a theologian, rather than a preacher, is just the heart of a child.
Does It Matter 