Homily for 6 September 2015--15th Sunday after Pentecost: "Which Commandment is the Greatest? Love."

Which Commandment is the Greatest?  Love.

Homily for the 15^th Sunday after Pentecost (6 September 2015, 5 September 2010)

2 Corinthians 4:6-15                         Matthew 22:35-46

 

Today’s reading from the Gospel according to St Matthew tells about the scholar of the Jewish Law who tried to test Jesus by asking, “Rabbi, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”

We have to wonder about this question and the motivation behind it.

Why would this scholar or anyone want to test Jesus?

Did he want to find out if Jesus really knew the Law?

Did he want to see if Jesus will give the answer that the experts in the Law would agree with?

Did he want to see if Jesus would say something wrong?

At any rate, we can be sure that if he was “testing” Jesus, it wasn’t just out of curiosity or the innocent wish to have a discussion.

Asking “which commandment is the greatest” implies that some commandments are not so important as others.

Maybe this fellow was expecting to hear about the importance of proper offering of sacrifices or about the right way to fast or about money or property or ritual purity—all of which are covered in the Law.

Maybe he was fishing for an excuse to slack off one some things if Jesus said something else was more important.  We can imagine him thinking, “What a relief!  Not working on the Sabbath is more important than welcoming strangers or paying my tithes.”

Maybe, just maybe, he was actually trying to find out what was important in his life.

Of course, people are still asking these same questions two thousand years later.  Now, they can’t talk in person with Jesus as the scholar of the Law did, so often they ask their priest.

And, again, sometimes it’s a test—they want to find out if Father really knows the Bible or the Liturgy or Church teaching or our Tradition.

Sometimes people ask questions in the hope of getting an answer that will make them happy—or at least not guilty.

Sometimes they want to catch a priest saying something “wrong” so they can report him to the bishop or ignore him or gossip about him.  (Actually, that’s the opposite order.  They would rather talk about him—“Do you know what Father said?”—or ignore him—“We know better, so we don’t have to pay any attention to him—than call the bishop to complain, knowing that the bishop probably wouldn’t listen to them anyway.)

Sometimes people ask about commandments or the Bible or Church teaching because they want easy answers.  They want the priest to tell them, “Just do A, B, and C and you’ll be OK with God and you’ll go to heaven.”

And sometimes they want to hear an answer that lets them think that they are already doing everything right.

But the answer Jesus gave to the scholar’s question—which is the answer Jesus gives to all of our questions—upsets all expectations.  It destroys legalistic, simplistic, rule-oriented, what’s-the-minimum-I-need-to-do thinking.  It destroys it completely.

Jesus almost says that individual commandments are important because, if you keep these two basic general commandments, you will naturally keep all the rest of them.

Here they are:  “Love God completely, totally; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

These two simple commandments are actually more difficult to keep than a whole list of specific do’s and don’t’s.  They require us always to be aware, to be thinking about how our actions and thoughts and feelings reflect our relationship with God and with other people.

This is because God loves each one of us as a person, not as a unit or an abstraction, so relationships with God and with other people cannot be reduced to abstract rules.  Real life is messy and unpredictable, as we all know, and only love can handle that messiness and unpredictability.  Rules and laws can’t handle it.  Only God’s love and mercy are flexible enough to deal with human life (after all, God created it!)—and our love and mercy have to be based on God’s (because God created us in God’s image and likeness).

If we always act out of complete love for God and if always love other people as we love ourselves—or as if they were ourselves—then we can’t go wrong.  Laws and rules can provide guidelines, but they cannot take the place of the mercy and love of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom we give thanks and praise and glory now and ever and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.