10-23-17 - Love and Law

Another week, another test. For the past few Sundays our appointed Gospel passages have chronicled one long game of “gotcha” between Jesus and the religious leaders, them trying to catch him saying the wrong thing, and him neatly sidestepping their loaded questions. In last week’s test, he prevailed yet again – but it turns out that was only against one set of examiners, the Sadducees. This week we see the Pharisees get back in the game – and since they were legal specialists, they asked Jesus a question about the Law. Any religious teacher worth his salt should know his Torah.

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?”

Easy A. Jesus answers with the best known of all commandments:
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.”

No surprises here. This is indeed the most basic command, where Israel’s relationship with God begins. Jesus might have checked the box and moved on – but he wasn’t finished. He went on to cite a much less known commandment and put it on a par with the first: 

“And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

What’s this? An obscure half-verse from Leviticus is up there with loving God? Yes, Jesus says - “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

He isn’t making this up – he is quoting the Law as given by Moses. Nonetheless, in combining these two commandments Jesus presents a radical new way of seeing God and justice. It’s not enough to love God – we have to live that love by the way we love our neighbors and even ourselves.

We’ll unpack these different kinds of love throughout this week. Today let’s explore this linkage Jesus makes.
Do you associate loving yourself with loving God? Do you connect God and neighbor? 

Do you feel the most love for God, for your neighbor, or for yourself?
How might the way we love our neighbor increase our love for ourselves? 

How might the way we love ourselves – or not – connect to our ability to love God?

Sit with these questions in prayer today, as a kind of diagnostic on your "love life." Talk to God about it, notice where your energy increases.

It’s good to know where we excel in love and where we can grow, for in the realm of God, love is all and all is Love.