Homily for Sunday, October 29, 2017.

The lessons:

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18

Psalm 1

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8

Matthew 22: 34-46

Laws, rules, commandments…if we try to be law-abiding citizens and faithful Christians, we may begin with the underlying sense that we just have to follow the rules, and then all shall be well. After all, there are only Ten Commandments, and they appear to cover every way humans tend to break the law. Sometimes it seems simple to tell ourselves we are good people because we do not steal or lie or covet our neighbor’s donkey. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells us there is more to it than following the rules if we wish to be faithful Christians.

In this episode, a Pharisee, a lawyer, asks Jesus this question, “to test him” we are told. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus’s answer includes the two connected commandments that he says cover all other laws and rules. When we follow these two, we need not worry about breaking any other rule or commandment given us by God: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest 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.”

In teaching us that we should love the Lord our God, Jesus directly asks us to love him, the incarnate God. Only by being fully present to God—in heart, soul, and mind, as the commandment says--can we truly demonstrate our love for the Lord. The prophet Isaiah explains how we may be able to meet this challenge: “Thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

Jesus tells us that in his person the kingdom of heaven has come near; in other words, the human notion of heaven as the faraway place where God dwells was upended when God appeared on earth and lived among humans. Jesus also repeatedly told his disciples, including those of us who wish to follow him in the 21st Century, that He is in us, as He is in God, and we are invited to dwell with him there. Is that not what the prophet Isaiah meant when he quoted God as saying, “I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit”?

As God promised, when our heart is in the right place, we make room for the Lord to dwell within us. Contrition and humility have to come from our hearts, and those things that rise from our hearts cannot be feigned. Our friends and acquaintances know when we are insincere with either apologies or modesty, so we should assume God will not be fooled. Maybe this is why Jesus’s expression of the Great Commandment includes the instruction to love God with, “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Theheart, the home of love and the place within us where we are most honest with ourselves, comes first in this hierarchy of importance. Thus, we join the Lord in God’s kingdom whenever our heart is in the right place.

And when our heart is in the right place, when we love our Lord with all the humility we can muster, then following the second great commandment should be less difficult: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The other lessons for today offer beautiful illustrations of what it requires of us to love our neighbors. In Leviticus, the first of the Old Testament books of law that God, through Moses, established for his people, we are told,

“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.”

Loving our neighbors as ourselves will inspire us to seek justice and fairness for all; we certainly know from the parable of the Good Samaritan that we cannot choose to love only those who believe like us or behave like us. Our neighbors in need of our love are all of our fellow humans, especially those who are poor or sick or unjustly treated.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes neighborly love in this way: “We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” In the aftermath of the recent hurricanes, we saw evidence of many neighbors reaching out in self-sacrificing ways to assist other victims of the storms, even those who were strangers to them, like nurses tenderly caring for their own children. We humans indeed have been blessed with a great capacity to love one another. God plants within each of us the “contrite and humble spirit” required so that we can know God dwells within us and empowers us to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we accept and share the gift of God’s merciful love, our heart is in the right place.

In Matthew 25, Jesus very clearly illustrates in a parable some of the things we must do to fulfill the second great commandment: “…for I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” In this story, when the righteous ones ask the Lord how and when they did these generous and loving things for him, he answers, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”

So, we return our meditation on love to the first of the great commandments. Jesus answered the Pharisee’s question by stating the two great commandments, the first one being “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” As God incarnate, Jesus simply asked us to love him. With dedication, humility, and contrition, we can tune our hearts fully to the Lord who dwells within us and loves us in return.

“And a second is like unto it.” Jesus leaves it to the Pharisee and to us to discover the connection between that first great commandment and the second one: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” With a contrite and humble heart, we are assured that God is present within us. When we fully believe that our love for God, our connection with God, empowers us to carry God’s love to those who need it, we will fulfill the second great commandment. The two great commandments do not involve either/or thinking. Instead, they call for both at once! In caring unselfishly for “the least of these,” we have recognized God’s presence in “the other,” and have shown our love for God by loving our neighbor. We love God best when we love our neighbor.

Today’s collect reminds us of the beautiful words St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at Corinth, describing the proper nature of our love for God and our neighbor: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…And now faith hope and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.”

We love God best when we love each other well.

AMEN.