When Jesus is tested by a skeptic in the crowd who asks him to name the greatest commandment in his peoples’ tradition, he answers outside the box – in a way that not only honours his tradition but has the potential to transform all traditions around the world and across the ages.
OPENING IN COMMUNION WITH THE ANCIENTS
Psalm 1
From “Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness”, Nan C. Merrill, Continuum Publishers, 2002
Blessed are those
who walk hand in hand
with goodness,
who stand beside virtue,
who sit in the seat of truth:
For their delight is in the Spirit of Love,
and in Love’s heart they dwell,
day and night.
They are like trees planted by
streams of water,
that yield fruit in due season,
and their leaves flourish;
And in all they do, they give life.
The unloving are not so;
they are like dandelions which
the wind blows away.
Turning from the Heart of Love
they will know suffering and pain.
They will be isolated from wisdom;
for Love knows the way of truth.
SCRIPTURE
Matthew 22:34-46
The Pharisees, Jewish religious authorities associated with local synagogues, take a turn trying to trip Jesus up in public after the unsuccessful attempt of the Sadducees, religious authorities associated with the Temple in Jerusalem.
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus 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.”
TED’S REFLECTIONS
AS THE PENDULUM SWINGS
Duck! The pendulum is swinging back and coming right at us! I am talking about the pendulum swing in the church’s role as the guardian of morality.
My impression of the church and of Christians when I was growing up was that morality was a big issue. Don’t smoke; don’t drink; don’t go to movies; don’t mess with sex except in a very limited range of circumstances and only then if absolutely necessary. Or as one wag put it, as if speaking as a church youth leader: “Avoid sex altogether because it might lead to dancing.” Perhaps you could sum up the church’s repressive approach to morality in that earlier era this way: Just don’t have fun!
Well, the 60’s swatted the pendulum so hard it swung in the other direction towards freedom and even license. I wonder if the momentum of that heavyweight punch is losing its energy these days so that the pendulum is starting to swing back in the other direction. As good as it was to fight back against the repressive emphasis in the church’s approach to morality, I also wonder if it is a good thing that the pendulum is starting to swing back. Maybe it is important for the church to recover its role in promoting the moral fibre of society and its members. But with an entirely different core energy.
I wouldn’t call Jesus a libertarian but he certainly taught and modeled a quite different approach to morality than was the norm in the culture of his day. Grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Israel of Jesus’ times was noted for its strong moral emphasis with a definitely negative, legalistic flavour. Moses, the iconic founder of Israel as a nation, was a Law Giver – widely revered as one of the first and greatest law givers in all the world’s history. Moses is especially remembered as the one who authored – or at least transcribed – the 10 Commandments. And what a gift, not only to the Hebrew people as they established themselves as a nation, but also to humanity in general in our common search for a stable and humane way to live together righteously, peaceably, and justly.
Now, except for a couple of exceptions, the 10 Commandments are a series of “don’ts”, aren’t they? Or, to put it in the more traditional language many of us grew up with, a series of “Thou Shalt Nots!” Perhaps it is easier to describe what behaviours to avoid than what behaviours to embrace. And maybe the threat of punishment or public shaming implicit in any moral framework based in law helps to keep people in line. But, for good or for ill, the moral tradition in Jesus’ time and culture carried a pretty strong negative punch.
So when the Pharisees took their turn to publically engage Jesus within the hearing of the crowds flocking around him, they asked him a seemingly innocent question about the Commandments as an opening to a debate they hoped would eventually lead him to say something outrageous. Anything critical he might say about the core principles of their nation and Moses, their revered founder, would certainly turn the people against him. Maybe even give the authorities grounds to arrest him for treason or blasphemy.
But instead of falling into their trap, Jesus answers with a different iconic saying of Moses, not from the 10 Commandments: ’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This quote from Moses is part of a larger passage from Deuteronomy that Israel calls the Shema, based on a key Hebrew word in the original passage. Jesus goes on then to add a second part to his answer, this time quoting Moses from the book of Leviticus: ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ he adds. Then he concludes his answer to the Pharisees’ question this way: ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ Here is the heart and soul of our tradition in a nutshell, Jesus seems to be telling them, in these two core statements from Moses, whom he demonstrates that he reveres as much as they do.
Notice in particular two things about Jesus’ choice as the greatest commandments in Hebrew tradition. First, that they are positive: You shall, rather than you shall not. And, secondly, that what you shall do above all else is love: Love God, self, and neighbour. How could his opponents possibly argue against that? And what a rediscovery it is in our times as we seek to re-establish spiritually-based groups such as a church as the moral conscience of nations and peoples. If Jesus was on to something, then all the moral laws and ethical principles that guide our individual behaviour and our societal arrangements come down to this: Love. If we are living from a core energy of love then we will naturally fulfill any law or commandment any group can carve in any handy stone. It is no longer about avoiding certain behaviours at our peril, it is about allowing love to inform everything we do.
Augustine of Hippo – St. Augustine as he is more widely remembered these days – was an interesting and complex fellow. I take issue with a few things that he said and did but, in my estimation, he got a few things very right indeed. And here is one of his pronouncements handed down through the ages translated and paraphrased along the way: “Love, and do anything you please.” I don’t think Augustine was promoting permissiveness. Instead, I think he had grasped what Jesus was getting at in the story of his public wrangle with the religious authorities of his day. Love is the essence of all and any commandment and moral code. Every specific “law” is only an attempt to describe the kind of behaviour that love will produce. Or, from the “shalt not” side, the kind of harmful behaviour a lack of love could lead to. Perhaps such weighty pronouncements can be helpful in molding our behaviour outwardly until we learn to express those patterns of behaviour naturally from the inside out.
Then when we love – beyond the clichéd versions of love so prevalent in modern culture – we no longer need moral codes to control our behaviour. Authentic love will naturally fulfill any moral code we can legislate. Or, as our opening psalm put it quite simply and directly: “Love knows the way of truth.”
The 60’s were onto something. Make love not war. And the Beatles nailed it in those days when they wrote and sang: “All you need is love”. The various rebellions and movements of the 60’s certainly jarred us out of the kind of repressive morality that the church had been preaching up to then. The innocents and the prophets of the 60’s also awakened us to systemic sin and has led to a slightly different and very welcome emphasis by the church on corporate ethical responsibility as well as individual morality.
For the well-being of individuals, families, societies, and the planet, we need groups rooted in a spiritual perspective to step forward as the moral and ethical conscience in our very troubled times. As the moral pendulum swings back towards us, let us hope the core energy that moves it – and us – is love.
For Further Reflection:
- 1. What is love?
- Can you think of a contemporary example of advice rooted in love?
- Does the church have a role in moral and ethical matters?
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
‘From the song, “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give My Self To You”
by Bob Dylan, from his CD, “Rough and Rowdy Ways”, Columbia Records, 2020
If I had the wings of a snow-white dove
I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of love –
A love so real, a love so true,
I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you.
CONCLUDING CHARGE AND BLESSING
Let us not waste our energies striving to keep the Commandments –
or, indeed, to rebel against them.
Let us simply strive to love
in every moment,
in every situation,
in every encounter along our way.
For then righteousness, justice, and peace
will settle in
and spread around us,
and all shall be well.
Peace to you.
Amen
