Sharp ears and keen listeners will have spotted that there’s a slight discrepancy between the Gospel reading and the Old Testament reading.
In the Old Testament we have the most foundational “creed” of the Jewish faith, what is today known as the “Shema” - “Shema Yisrael, Hashem eloichenu, Hashem echad” — “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!”, or,
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God – The Lord alone.”
And then Moses urges the people that they are to love the Lord their God with all their might, heart, and strength.
The words of Our Lord today also add what the “second greatest commandment ought to be” — to love our neighbours as ourselves. And here we have a wonderful example of how Jesus came to fulfil and not to abolish the Law. He upholds the first and greatest of the Commandments — the Law did not cease to be holy and an expression of the heart of God — and then he also completes it, shows us the right way to interpret it, the right way to live it.
Our Old Testament reading tells us two foundational things, without which none of the Law or the Prophets makes any sense whatsoever:
Some of you might have heard down the grapevine that I box; and I do quote a bit of pastoral work among professional and amateur boxers. I was having a conversation earlier this weekend with one of the local professional boxers — a bit of mentoring perhaps, and a bit of pastoration — where he remarked that now that the boxing club has a priest who sometimes shows up, more and more people are having open conversations about God. Faith is becoming something talked about, which he found very refreshing.
Because the fact is that most people are aware that there is “something” out there; there is a greater force than us. A homeless man in Budapest I once chatted with, said, when I asked, “Do you believe in God?” that “I do — when it rains.” An unexpected, but deeply honest and very interesting answer: many people will come to the realisation that there is a God when they come to encounter their own powerlessness, their own fragility, the finite nature of human existence in comparison to the incomprehensibly complex, yet so simply life-giving forces of nature. Very simple people recognise this, as well as highly intelligent people will come to this conclusion.
But while we can arrive to this realisation that there is “probably something out there”, and we might even go as far as saying it’s more a person and say “there is someone out there”, there remains a significant gap in knowledge between this and the very specific God of the Old and New Testaments, becoming incarnate in a specific person.
And well, what do we do about it? Without wanting to imply personal criticism, after all, they are often simply at an earlier stage at their journey, most of those who view the divine in this “perhaps there is something out there way”, either simply ignore it and for all intents and purposes live lives where this force beyond them does not matter; or they go searching themselves, and very often end up in some strange places. I’ve had the privilege of sometimes listening to the wildest theories from people, but they often came from a very very genuine search for God. They just did not know where to look, how to look.
And this is why God chose to reveal Himself. As finite human beings we would never be able to arrive at the fullness of the truth; and even if we did discover quite a lot on our own, we would still have no way to validate that we arrived at the right understanding. But God communicates Himself to us, so that our search for truth have a measuring stick, and so that where our own efforts to find Him fail, He would graciously come to us instead.
And this God says of Himself, that He is the one Israel is to serve, because he is God, and God alone, existing in unity. And the right response to Him is not living a life where for all intents and purposes God is out of the picture; but rather the opposite. God is the highest good, the only thing truly worth attaining; and therefore the right response is love, with the entirety of our being.
But well, how do you measure that? How do you demonstrate that love? Is it enough to simply observe laws in ever more meticulous detail, as the Pharisees did? And if we want to show our devotion to God, well, how do we best do it? What should be the priorities? Should it be about purity laws? Should it be about the way to offer sacrifices? Should it be about the social parts, regulating how to welcome aliens? Should it be about what foods to eat? What is it that matters to God? This lies behind the question of the scribe. “Which is the first commandment?” Which is the one that makes sense of it all? Which is the commandment that shows us the heart of God, and His priorities?
And so Jesus, who is the Divine Law Himself incarnate, answers the same way as He did before. Except, he adds something on top: “You must love your neighbour as yourself.”
The Apostles remind us that we cannot claim to love God if we do not love our neighbour. It is easier to demonstrate true love to those that we can touch, see, and hear. When we are able to love our neighbour as ourself, when we are able to make sacrifices for them, when we seek their good, and when we wish for them the highest good, that is, their salvation and union with God, it is only then that our claims that we love of God become credible. We have shown that we can love. We are capable of acting in a loving way towards men — and that lends weight and credibility to our love of God.
But it doesn’t only show us a demonstration of it. It also does two other things. First, it forms us: because while it is easier to show love to those whom we see, it is not easy. It doesn’t always come as second nature. Nor does our love for God comes naturally sometimes. So it requires effort, it requires work, it requires dying to ourselves. For this reason, Eastern Christians often call marriage “the strictest monastery” — we learn to love God by learning to love the other.
And finally, it also fulfils the end of God’s purpose in the world. The more we love God with all our heart and soul and might, the more we ought to be demonstrating the kind of love that He is, and the more we will desire the things that He desires. What God created us for is eternal happiness in Him, to enjoy His loving presence for eternity — this weekend, and throughout this month, this is particularly in our minds, as we pray for our departed loved ones. So if God created us for eternal happiness, and for unending love, and joy, then that is also how we ought to relate to others. Our lives should demonstrate that we want our neighbours’ salvation, their eternal happiness, that is, their union to God, through love.
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