Disciples Love - Matt 22: 34-46

Jesus is in the midst of being diss-ed in this passage. In a heated theological debate with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the main two groups of religious leaders during this period, Jesus has already been asked the question about taxation and is now being grilled about what the greatest of all of the 613 commandments found in the Hebrew Scriptures is the most important. All of these questions are for one purpose – to discredit Jesus’ teaching and growing status in the Jewish community.

But the attempts failed. For all they really proved was that Jesus was a devout, orthodox Jew. This public trial was an act of desperation that backfired. For Jesus’ vast and intimate knowledge of the scriptures was nothing short of moving. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus quoted two laws. One came from the Schema, also known as the Schema Israel, the crux of what the Israelites believe. It was, and still is, recited two times a day, as the centerpiece of morning and evening prayer, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the lord is one. And you shall love the lord your God, with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He adds a second piece of scripture, “You shall love your neighbor, as yourself.” Or as one of my professors translated this verse, “you shall love your neighbor who is like you.” While others, including some religious leaders used this law to limit whom they interacted with and showed love towards, Jesus blew this law wide open, saying that we are to love all. Even our enemies. That everyone is like us, even those whom we think are radically different. For they are God’s.

These were the critical commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures, but they are also the driving force behind Jesus’ life and ministry. This is why all of the other laws exist, to give us perimeters to better love God and love our neighbor. For we cannot love God without loving God’s children, and we cannot love God’s children, without realizing that they are first and foremost, God’s.

Of course Jesus’ knowledge and application of scripture didn’t silence his critics, as they went on to ask him about David’s linage and relationship to the Messiah. But this is true of our own critics even today, isn’t it? That when someone is seeking to trip you up, they will keep asking difficult, or seemingly impossible, questions not for the sake of wanting a genuine answer, but to see you fail. What Jesus is being faced with is different then apologetics, different from making a case about what he believes; he knows that those questioning him are trying to set a trap, not only for him, but also for each other. The Pharisee asking Jesus which law is the greatest was trying to outwit Jesus, while simultaneously showing that he was smarter then those who are overhearing the question and answer, mainly the Sadducees.

This was antithetical to what Jesus had been teaching about loving God and loving your neighbor. It was not so much about what you knew or how well you knew it, but living a life that was marked by love towards others and God. This passage comes within a week’s time frame when Jesus would choose to love others to the point of giving his life on the cross, and yet those whom he interacted with still didn’t get it. But Jesus was able to take this moment of one-up-manship and insincere questions and transform it into a moment of grace and critical teaching. He was able to remind those questioning him about the nature of what love is – even to the point of answering cynical questions.

But this still leaves us with two questions – what does it look like to love God with the totality of your being, and what does it look like to love our neighbors. For while we can hypothesize about what these two commandments mean, perhaps even more important for us as disciples is what they look like in action. Two of the most disturbing comments I’ve heard about American Christians over the past few years were 1.) Christians do not know what they believe which results in 2.) Christians not being able to put their beliefs into action.

If we too take these two commandments to not only be the greatest commandments upon which Jesus commissions us, but also the marks of our faith, then what does it look like to live them out in a way that others can recognize and use to identify us as Christians. This is not to say that we should not be able to tell others in an intelligible way what we believe, but we should be able to live it out in a way that does not need a lengthy explanation.

Because God is so vast and mysterious, our human nature wants to qualify God into our own terms. As a result we try to identify with God based on certain relationships that we have or understand – God as parent, God as ruler, God as creator, the list goes on and on. One of the common bumper sticker slogans is that God is love. But how do we show love to love? Throughout history, Christians from mystics, to scholars, and even modern day worship signers have explained loving God with erotic terms – but do we really know this vast and sometimes elusive God with the same intimacy that we know a human lover with? And further, can we love God with more passion then erotic love? How do we love God?

Recently in Bible Study we looked at trusting God through three different books, one of which was The Five Love Languages of God. The author, Gary Chapman, poses the following thought – that God is big enough to love each of us in different ways and God is diverse enough to receive the love we extend to the Holy in our own unique ways. What a simple yet radical thought – the love that we show to God does not need to look the same for each of us because God created us to be different. Some of us speak of God’s goodness and give praise unto God, some sing, others dance. Still others bring all of their gifts to God in dedication or spend quality time with God in prayer and devotion. Part of knowing how we as individuals can best love God is to identify how we experience God’s love to us best. When do you feel that God is closest to you and how can you use that experience to show reciprocate love to God?

Because God has created each of us, we belong to God, regardless of whether we recognize that or not. So how do we love our neighbor, especially when by this definition everyone we meet and even those we don’t meet are our neighbors. Does it mean doing good things for others? Acts of charity or justice? More and more I have been convicted that loving our neighbor means paying attention to them. How often do we walk down the street and ignore people, or ask people how they are, only to really wish for a senescent answer? What if loving our neighbor means giving them the attention they deserve simply because they are a child of God? And after we pay attention to them, and are in relationship with them, then we can ask them the more intimate question of what they need and how we can best love them. For just as God is diverse enough to be loved in different ways, so are people. But because people are more then one united being, they often cannot receive all of the different types of love we show them equally, as God does, even if they come from an authentic place. This is to say, how we best love people is not necessarily what they need or how they interpret or receive love best. But everyone wants to be respected enough to not be ignored or pushed aside, so this can be a common starting place.

Jesus did not say that the commands that he lived by were easy to follow, but as his disciples we have picked up his yoke and carry it. And part of carrying that yoke is knowing what Jesus taught but also knowing ourselves well enough o be able to identify how we can best live out these teachings – how do we best love God and love our neighbor. These are not questions with easy answers, for they require time of deep introspection. But when we can live out of our most authentic understanding of these verses for ourselves, we will be people who put our beliefs into actions in meaningful ways.