October 25, 2020, Year A: Proper 25
The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle
Dallas, Texas
Allen M. Junek, Seminarian-in-Residence
+ In the name of the one holy and undivided Trinity. Amen.
So, here he is: Jesus as he’s so often portrayed. A wise sage on the mountain top, telling each of us to be nice to each other.
You know this is one of the downfalls of the lectionary, the table by which we choose the readings for each Sunday of the year: we don’t always get the whole story, just a piece of it.
Prior to this exchange, Jesus had just entered Jerusalem. It was the Tuesday, of what we would call Holy Week. The crowds that shouted “Hosanna” on Sunday, would be shouting “Crucify” by Friday. He had just purged the Temple with a whip made of his own hands, and was now being quizzed about authority, taxes, marriage, and now by a lawyer, the Law.
Which law is the greatest?
Just as in all the other cases, Jesus answers rightly. You are to love God, but it is not enough to just love God alone. It’s not that simple. “Love God,” Jesus says–the Source of all Goodness, Truth, and Beauty–”this is the first and greatest commandment.”
Wait.
Did you hear that? He said, “the first.”
Can you just imagine the collective inhale the scribes and teachers must’ve had when they heard this qualifier? Maybe this is actually a miracles story — the miracle of Jesus still being able to breathe when all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. You see, a first implies a second.
“And the second is like it, love your neighbor as your very self.”
These two commandments sound simple, yet sometimes I’m afraid that I’ve grown used to them. Let us never forget that they have teeth: they are tough and costly.
Today, in a country such as our own, to love our neighbor usually requires two things: (1) suspending our judgement and (2) a checkbook.
Do we want food on our plate and a roof over our head?
Do we want medical care and education without the threat crippling debt?
Do we want our children and grandchildren to be all that they can be?
“You shall want the same for your neighbor,” Jesus says.
“But who is my neighbor, Jesus?”
In Luke’s telling of this same story, we are launched into the parable of the Good Samaritan whereby we learn that our neighbors are not the ones who look, and live, and love, and pray as we do. I hope that isn’t new information: that we are all connected as one human family. The past 6 months should have made this abundantly clear.
At this point perhaps you’re saying “Well I know — we know — who our neighbors are, and we don’t need some seminarian coming in here to tell us what we already know!”
And you would be right. You don’t need me to remind you that your neighbor is that couple across the street with a political yard sign not of your choosing.
I’m not going to tell you that your neighbor is that person whom you care for deeply, who sees your life of faith, and is left to wonder why you don’t invite them into that life as well.
And I absolutely, positively would not dream of telling you that Jesus might very well say to us, “Love Donald Trump as you love yourself,” or “Love Joe Biden as you love yourself.”
Chances are that if you’ve been living above ground for the past year or so, one or both of these names sparked a near visceral reaction in you. I know it did for me.
And so, if I’m not here to tell you those things, then what I am here to tell you is, not whom to choose when you vote, but to pay attention. Pay attention to that reaction when you hear those names, because it will tell you something. That feeling in your gut, the tightening of your chest, that clenched fist, is what you’re leaving behind when you choose to follow Jesus. It is no longer just about you and those you choose to love.
The call to “love our neighbors” without specificity, is inspiring, but the call to apply it to our particular neighbors is pretty lackluster.
Instead of inquiring among ourselves about “finding solutions to homelessness” in general–which, don’t get me wrong, it has systemic dimensions as well — but what does the Great Commandment have to say about my responsibility to an unhoused person sleeping in my alley behind my house. What does it have to say about what I do in that moment for that individual, knowing that I am housed and they are not?
What does it say about my responsibility to maybe not call the police on someone if it runs the risk of costing that someone, with darker skin, their life?
What does it say about my individual, personal responsibility to support systemic change through mass decarceration in a time of global pandemic, remembering those in prison as if I were in prison with them?
But.
There’s always a but.
We fall short. I fall short. The truth is, we don’t comply… and perhaps we can’t. Perhaps we have yet to learn how to love our neighbor as ourselves. Perhaps we are not yet old enough to master the art of love.
That is one of the great frustrations and beauties of the Christian life: it’s always stretching us, goading us onward, saying to us that there is always more work to be done. These commandments, like the horizon, are always beckoning us deeper into God’s heart and just as we feel to be drawing near we catch a glimpse of just how much further we have to go.
I think the secret, the mark of holiness, is to want to obey these commandments, no matter how poorly we live them out. The secret is in our heart’s desiring. Do we really desire to love with all our hearts and souls and minds and to love our neighbor as ourselves? And if so, what changes would that require of us?
The answer may lie the word hang: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” This word is easy to overlook. It can mean a lot of different things, some innocent (like here) and some not so innocent. For example, this is the same word used in the Acts of the Apostles to describe the manner in which Jesus hung on the cross.
That shifts the whole meaning of the command to love God and one another, doesn’t it?
To love with all our hearts and souls and minds, is itself a sort of crucifixion. The first commandment is the vertical dimension (+) of our faith, between us and God. And the second is like it, the horizontal dimension (+) between us and the people God has made. It sets the pattern for a cruciform way of life. It means to die to ourselves. God asks no less.
As we prepare to renew our baptismal vows on the feast of All Saints, may we who have been united to Christ in his death through the waters of baptism ponder these things in our hearts:
Dare we desire to love more?
Dare we continue in this cruciform life?
Dare we pray, as in today’s collect, “make us love what you command?”
For he has but one, and that is love.
Amen.
