Love is at the centre of it all
Ordinary Sunday 31: 5th November, 2006
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
I really love the last two lines of today's gospel: "And after that no one dared to ask Jesus any other question". He had said absolutely everything that had to be said. Today's gospel continues the exploration of the theme of discipleship. Last week, the gospel reading about Bartimaeus invited us to consider what was at stake. We were reminded that so very often it was people on the edges, marginal people, who responded more eagerly and openly to what was offered by God in Jesus Christ. Their hearts and minds and souls were moved to respond in faith, or in the search for faith.
Today's gospel takes this one stage further. It still relates to discipleship. If we want to, how best can we try to follow this Jesus? What sort of living? What sort of thinking? What sort of actions? What sort of believing? What it is that might shape everything? Another searcher, this time scholarly and at the centre of the religious establishment, is asking for direct and clear guidance. The scribe wants to know what Jesus considers to be absolutely central and pivotal in all that has been received.
The response is interesting. Out of the entire legal code that is recorded in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the Lord took two laws – one from each. Together, they may be summarised simply as 'love God and love neighbour.' It is very familiar to us but in that specific combination this was new teaching at the time. The scribe who had asked the question in the first place was certainly able to discern that this was a reasonable distillation of the whole of the legal framework. Love as the motivating force results in actions. Actions in themselves can be heartless, functional, and empty. It took two people well versed in the Scriptures to be able to have this conversation in the first place.
The question "Which is the first of all the commandments?" is a good one. It is not a trick or asked in hostility, as many were. It is a serious and worthy thing to ask of a teacher so renowned. The reply would have been noted, considered and reflected upon.
So the reply brought together two commandments, rather than the fairly obvious one. Some sort of statement about the sovereignty of God is to be expected. The first part of the response is from Dt: 6 and was part of our first lesson. This was part of the daily prayers of an observant person of the faith. It remains so. The Sh'ma is said or sung with great devotion: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone." (Dt 6:4) The second part is summoned up from Leviticus, where in amongst a whole series of community and social regulations relating to every conceivable aspect of human interaction it is stated: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord." (Lev 19:18)
It is in the coupling of these two that we have something very interesting and challenging presented. It is central to Christian teaching and the understanding of successive generations of Christian people about how they should attempt to shape their lives. The summary of the law in this form has had a central place in Anglican liturgy. 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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.' Jesus said: "This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself.' This then is part of our daily prayers offered here.
What we have here is a summary which is an instruction, a binding instruction, given by the Lord to those who would choose to follow in his Way. What holds the two disparate parts together is the verb. It is the same verb in the imperative form in each case: "You shall love". That is to be the defining characteristic of a Christian then. Love.
That must be an insight which causes us to pause and consider. And then to evaluate and re-assess. Is that what others see first in you or in me? In this city church, in this denomination? In the generality of Christians? To the degree that the answer to that question is yes, we are being faithful.
I know that in earlier generations it was said to be a good thing to be 'God fearing' and I know that the nuances of that included appropriate respect and honour. But the associations around 'loving' are very different. St John Chrysostom observes: "For it is a greater thing to love than to fear. To fear is the character of slaves; to love of children. Fear springs from coercion; love from liberty." What a beautiful quotation. The ability to love; and indeed the awareness of being loved. What a gift. What a clear sign. What a distinguishing characteristic to look for and to strive for.
As one commentator puts it:
Surely, if there is an unequivocal sign which characterises the one who is not far from the kingdom of God, then it is the capacity to love. Not just to be a good practising person, keeping all the observances and rules, but someone who loves, someone who is at the service of love under its two inseparable aspects of God and neighbour, acting in a way which acknowledges them both. For 'there is no commandment greater than these': suppress them and the whole moral edifice collapses. Glenstal Bible Missal
Love is full of surprises. It is unsatisfactory for those who would rather insist on things being cut and dried and neat. Love is, after all, not as orderly as rule keeping. Love is pleasurable, mutual and bursting with gratitude and thanks. It is full of little gestures, of small tokens and signs of the bigger truth. It lacks the earnest grimness that would be much more acceptable to those of every generation who would demand and seek the observance to the absolute letter, of all those other laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, impossible as that would be, and quite miss the spirit of them.
Jesus of Nazareth declares that the spirit of the law is love. St Paul found it impossible to satisfy himself that he could keep the Law in all its complexity and thus stand accounted righteous before God. He had tried. Instead, Paul would develop his teaching of the gift of loving, life-giving grace, freely offered and available to those who would respond in faith, hope and love. Today's gospel tells us that this love is the quality that we should be working on above all others in our lives, if we would be Christians.
That presents us with a challenge certainly. We have just been reminded that a person who keeps the rules and who is virtuous and good still may not have love in their hearts. The scribe in today's gospel quickly got that point when he noted that loving God and neighbour was far more important than going through the motions of particular outward observances or rituals. It is also actually potentially rather more difficult. It is what is inside that matters. It is the underlying attitude and approach. Again and again the Lord challenges his followers to try to get that right.
Some of the greatest and most inspiring of the saints have written and spoken of their relationship with God in the most passionate and intimate of ways. These can be men or women. They speak of God and respond to God as a lover does to the beloved. The underlying attitude and motivation is that intense and that wonderful. Equally, some of the most inspiring and dedicated of those who have reached out to the downtrodden or oppressed of fellow human beings have used the language of heart-felt passionate care and concern. We would more normally associate this with the articulation of those emotions felt and expressed between human partners of the closest kind. And some of our saints have known both the human and the divine loves.
Those of us who know the human love for another, can as well recognise the same integrity and intensely genuine reality when we bump into someone else speaking the language of love. As well, if you truly love another or truly have loved another it is possible, with a shock of recognition, to experience that also for God. And it is the experience of so many through the generations that the reverse is also true. The use of the one word for each is not a linguistic accident.
That was the point of the Lord's teaching in today's gospel. Love in all its swirling depths and graces and powerfulness is the same love: love for God, love for another human being, love for neighbour. Once experienced, life is not the same. Never experienced, life is infinitely diminished.
The Lord be with you.
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