You can listen to this reflection here.
In this week’s gospel reading, we overhear a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who has asked him, “Which commandment is first of all?” His first reply is unsurprising; he quotes the Shema Yisrael and adds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Got it. Religious people know about loving God.
But then he adds an obscure half-verse from the book of Leviticus, and raises it to the same status as the first commandment: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” That was a game-changer.
This verse comes from Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Chapter 19 of Leviticus details a series of laws governing all sorts of human relationships, commercial, sexual, familial, occult – you name it. These six words barely stand out, yet Jesus elevates them to core commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in another gospel version of this story.
Jesus’ piercing intellect and knowledge of Scripture allowed him to strip away the thicket of words and hone in on the one commandment that enables us to keep all the others. If we could only love God with our whole being, and truly love our neighbors and ourselves, we would need no other commandments.
Why is it so hard to love our neighbors? For starters, there are too many of them. We’re overwhelmed, so we rank and sort them by all kinds of categories – how like us or not they are; how needy or resourced they are; how much or little we approve of how they conduct themselves. As soon as we start to rank and pick and choose, love is compromised. When Jesus was asked by another scribe, “Then who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling a story in which the neighbor who cared for a person in need turns out to be someone his questioner had defined out of his neighbor list.
We cannot control what our neighbors do – that can make them hard to love. In the fraught and fractured times in which we live, it is even harder to name someone as “neighbor” (let alone fellow Christian) who holds views and takes actions that we consider hateful and destructive to human life. But, as the sign that has appeared in front of many churches reads, “Jesus said, “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” We may have to find God’s love for some neighbors and borrow that until we can find our own. There’s a place to start. Everything gets easier when we love our neighbors.
This verse includes another challenge: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah – there’s a deeper reason we can find it hard to love our neighbors. It’s hard to love ourselves, especially if the world or family or an inner sense of shame or unworthiness tell us that’s ridiculous. But God says, “I love you, I made you, I delight in you.” Are we not to love what God loves? We may have to find God’s love for ourselves and borrow that until we can find our own. And when we love ourselves, with compassion and clarity about all that’s lovable in us and all that is not, we are better able to love our neighbors the same way.
Sigh! As my friend Peter says, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Maybe we make it harder than it has to be. Anything God calls us to, God equips us for. Maybe we can stop trying to do this loving on our own, and let God’s love flow through us – to ourselves, to our neighbors and back to God.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label Love your neighbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love your neighbor. Show all posts
5-9-22 - Separation Anxiety
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Nobody likes to be left, not even Jesus’ disciples. In our lectionary time travels through Eastertide, we’re back to the night Jesus was arrested, in that upper room where they have just had supper. He has washed their feet, said strange things about bread and wine, and predicted that one of them would betray him. Judas has just left to do that. Now he gives a lengthy farewell speech. Jesus has a lot to say to his followers before they go out into the Garden of Gethsemane.
He says something rather confusing about glorifying and being glorified, but the next part is painfully clear: "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'”
It makes me think of a child wailing, “Wanna come with! Wanna come with!” as his parents gently but firmly explain why he cannot join them for an evening out. “Where I am going, you cannot come.” But a parent usually adds, “I’ll be home later,” while here Jesus tells his disciples the worst: “I am with you only a little longer.” And soon he will be gone, gone, gone… and then mysteriously back, but not in the same way. Never again in the same way.
The movement of God is always forward, not back. The mystery of God is One in unity yet with Three distinct persons. And one of the mysteries we live with as followers of the risen and ascended Christ is being separate from him while mystically united with him. We claim his life lives in us through the Spirit, yet when we pray, it is to an Other distinct from us.
The disciples had to get used to Jesus’ absence. We have a different challenge: to become used to his presence, real though not embodied. For when Jesus made his final departure in bodily form, he promised that his Father would send his Spirit to be with his followers, that he would be with them through his Spirit.
Children learning to deal with separation from parents are often given a “transitional object,” a blanket or toy or stuffed animal that carries some of the presence of the parent and eases the separating process. Well, Christ-followers are given what we might call the ultimate in transitional objects, the Spirit of the Holy God to fill us, surround us, comfort us, empower us – and remind us that God will never leave us or forsake us.
Separation anxiety is real, and varies in intensity for each of us relative to our experiences in early childhood. But in the spiritual life, the Life we live in God’s realm, Jesus is always here, always present. And not only is he never leaving again; he wants us to come out and play with him.
Nobody likes to be left, not even Jesus’ disciples. In our lectionary time travels through Eastertide, we’re back to the night Jesus was arrested, in that upper room where they have just had supper. He has washed their feet, said strange things about bread and wine, and predicted that one of them would betray him. Judas has just left to do that. Now he gives a lengthy farewell speech. Jesus has a lot to say to his followers before they go out into the Garden of Gethsemane.
He says something rather confusing about glorifying and being glorified, but the next part is painfully clear: "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'”
It makes me think of a child wailing, “Wanna come with! Wanna come with!” as his parents gently but firmly explain why he cannot join them for an evening out. “Where I am going, you cannot come.” But a parent usually adds, “I’ll be home later,” while here Jesus tells his disciples the worst: “I am with you only a little longer.” And soon he will be gone, gone, gone… and then mysteriously back, but not in the same way. Never again in the same way.
The movement of God is always forward, not back. The mystery of God is One in unity yet with Three distinct persons. And one of the mysteries we live with as followers of the risen and ascended Christ is being separate from him while mystically united with him. We claim his life lives in us through the Spirit, yet when we pray, it is to an Other distinct from us.
The disciples had to get used to Jesus’ absence. We have a different challenge: to become used to his presence, real though not embodied. For when Jesus made his final departure in bodily form, he promised that his Father would send his Spirit to be with his followers, that he would be with them through his Spirit.
Children learning to deal with separation from parents are often given a “transitional object,” a blanket or toy or stuffed animal that carries some of the presence of the parent and eases the separating process. Well, Christ-followers are given what we might call the ultimate in transitional objects, the Spirit of the Holy God to fill us, surround us, comfort us, empower us – and remind us that God will never leave us or forsake us.
Separation anxiety is real, and varies in intensity for each of us relative to our experiences in early childhood. But in the spiritual life, the Life we live in God’s realm, Jesus is always here, always present. And not only is he never leaving again; he wants us to come out and play with him.
10-28-21 - Loving Our Neighbors - and Ourselves
You can listen to this reflection here.
In this week’s gospel reading, we overhear a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who has asked him, “Which commandment is first of all?” His first reply is unsurprising; he quotes the Shema Yisrael and adds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Got it. Religious people know about loving God.
But then he adds half an obscure verse from the book of Leviticus, and raises it to the same status as the Shema: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” That was a game-changer.
This verse comes from Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Chapter 19 of Leviticus details a series of laws governing all sorts of human relationships, commercial, sexual, familial, occult – you name it. These six words barely stand out, yet Jesus elevates them to core commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in another gospel version of this story.
Jesus’ piercing intellect and knowledge of Scripture allowed him to strip away the thicket of words and hone in on the one commandment that enables us to keep all the others. If we could only love God with our whole being, and truly love our neighbors and ourselves, we would need no other commandments.
Why is it so hard to love our neighbors? For starters, there are too many of them. We’re overwhelmed, and so we rank and sort them by all kinds of categories – how like us or not they are; how needy or resourced they are; how much or little we approve of how they conduct themselves. As soon as we start to rank and pick and choose, love is compromised. When Jesus was asked by another scribe, “Then who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling a story in which the neighbor who cared for a person in need turned out to be someone his questioner had defined out of his neighbor list.
And we cannot control what our neighbors do – that can make them hard to love. In the fraught and fractured times in which we live, it is even harder to name someone as “neighbor” (let alone fellow Christian) who holds views and takes actions that we consider hateful and destructive to human life. But, as the sign that has appeared on many lawns reads, “Jesus said, “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” We may have to find God’s love for some neighbors and borrow that until we can find our own. There’s a place to start. Everything gets easier when we love our neighbors.
But the verse includes another challenge: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah – there’s a deeper reason we can find it hard to love our neighbors. It’s hard to love ourselves, especially if the world or family or an inner sense of shame or unworthiness tell us that’s ridiculous. But God says, “I love you, I made you, I delight in you.” Are we not to love what God loves? We may have to find God’s love for ourselves and borrow that until we can find our own. And when we love ourselves, with compassion and clarity about all that’s lovable in us and all that is not, we are better able to love our neighbors the same way.
Sigh! As my friend Peter says, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Maybe we make it harder than it has to be. Anything God calls us to, God equips us for. Maybe we can stop trying to do this loving on our own, and let God’s love flow through us - to ourselves, to our neighbors and back to God.
In this week’s gospel reading, we overhear a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who has asked him, “Which commandment is first of all?” His first reply is unsurprising; he quotes the Shema Yisrael and adds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Got it. Religious people know about loving God.
But then he adds half an obscure verse from the book of Leviticus, and raises it to the same status as the Shema: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” That was a game-changer.
This verse comes from Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Chapter 19 of Leviticus details a series of laws governing all sorts of human relationships, commercial, sexual, familial, occult – you name it. These six words barely stand out, yet Jesus elevates them to core commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in another gospel version of this story.
Jesus’ piercing intellect and knowledge of Scripture allowed him to strip away the thicket of words and hone in on the one commandment that enables us to keep all the others. If we could only love God with our whole being, and truly love our neighbors and ourselves, we would need no other commandments.
Why is it so hard to love our neighbors? For starters, there are too many of them. We’re overwhelmed, and so we rank and sort them by all kinds of categories – how like us or not they are; how needy or resourced they are; how much or little we approve of how they conduct themselves. As soon as we start to rank and pick and choose, love is compromised. When Jesus was asked by another scribe, “Then who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling a story in which the neighbor who cared for a person in need turned out to be someone his questioner had defined out of his neighbor list.
And we cannot control what our neighbors do – that can make them hard to love. In the fraught and fractured times in which we live, it is even harder to name someone as “neighbor” (let alone fellow Christian) who holds views and takes actions that we consider hateful and destructive to human life. But, as the sign that has appeared on many lawns reads, “Jesus said, “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” We may have to find God’s love for some neighbors and borrow that until we can find our own. There’s a place to start. Everything gets easier when we love our neighbors.
But the verse includes another challenge: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah – there’s a deeper reason we can find it hard to love our neighbors. It’s hard to love ourselves, especially if the world or family or an inner sense of shame or unworthiness tell us that’s ridiculous. But God says, “I love you, I made you, I delight in you.” Are we not to love what God loves? We may have to find God’s love for ourselves and borrow that until we can find our own. And when we love ourselves, with compassion and clarity about all that’s lovable in us and all that is not, we are better able to love our neighbors the same way.
Sigh! As my friend Peter says, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Maybe we make it harder than it has to be. Anything God calls us to, God equips us for. Maybe we can stop trying to do this loving on our own, and let God’s love flow through us - to ourselves, to our neighbors and back to God.
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