You shall love your neighbor as yourself

 

 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.   Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."  

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, "What do you think about the Christ?  Whose Son is He?"  They said to Him, "The Son of David."  He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying:

    'The LORD said to my Lord,

    "Sit at My right hand,

    Till I make Your enemies Your footstool"'?

"If David then calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his Son?"  And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.

 

- Matthew 22:34–46 

 

In our current reading, Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem.  It is Holy Week, the final week of Christ's earthly life, and Jesus has been disputing with the religious leaders.  Yesterday we read that the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were with us seven brothers.  The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother.  Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?  For they all had her."  Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.  For in the resurrection they nether marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.  But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."  And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. 

 

 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.   Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."   My study Bible comments here that the Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures.  They debated about which one was central, so they are inviting Christ to provide His answer here.  Jesus provides the first and second commandments, which constitute a grand summary of the Law.  My study Bible suggests that although the lawyer came with malice to test Him, we know from St. Mark's gospel that this man is converted by Jesus' answer (Mark 12:28-34).  Moreover, my study Bible explains also that the second commandment given here by Jesus needs to be understood as it is written:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself, or perhaps more clearly, "as being yourself."  It notes that this commandment is frequently misinterpreted to read, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself," which doesn't match the true force of the statement.  We are not called to the standard of how we love ourselves as the way we must love others.  We are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, my study Bible teaches, as being created in God's image and likeness just as we are.  In patristic teaching, we're taught that we find our true self in loving our neighbor.  

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, "What do you think about the Christ?  Whose Son is He?"  They said to Him, "The Son of David."  He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying:  'The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool"'?  If David then calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his Son?"  And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.  My study Bible notes that Jesus asks this question in order to lead the Pharisees to the single logical conclusion; in effect, that He is God incarnate.  The expectation of the Pharisees is that the Messiah would be a mere human being, and so they reply that the Messiah would be a Son of David.  But David, as the king of Israel, could never, and would never address anyone using the title "Lord" except God.   But nonetheless, in Psalm 110:1, David addresses the Messiah as "Lord," indicating that the Messiah must be God.  The only possible conclusion, my study Bible comments, is that the Messiah is a descendant of David only according to the flesh, but is also truly divine -- sharing Lordship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Consequently the Pharisees cannot answer.  They recognize the implications and they are afraid to confess Jesus to be the Son of God. 

 

 Perhaps today is a good occasion to consider this second great commandment that Jesus gives.  It is ancillary but essential to the first.  The first, we recall, is "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."  The second is, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."   (These are from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.)  My study Bible goes to great pains to explain that this does not mean one must love one's neighbor as much as or in the same way one loves oneself.  (So often we are quite imperfect in the ways we love ourselves!)  But rather, my study Bible explains, we are to love our neighbor as if they are made of the same stuff that we are, of the same nature, created by God in the image and likeness of God.   So often our popular or modern notions of what constitutes "love" seem to evolve to include things that were not necessarily there in the Scripture for its intended hearers.  We have private notions of love that depend closely on what we feel belongs to us, or what we would long for in a mate or a friend or even a child.  But the kind of love that Christ always speaks about is a love that involves definite and particular actions that express compassion.  When this same passage is found in St. Luke's gospel, it is embellished and illustrated with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  The Samaritan in the story is a model of what it means to love a neighbor "as oneself," even if he's a Samaritan and the victim of robbers whom he helps and cares for is a Jew.  To love in that case was to act as a neighbor, to be a neighbor by doing what is needful and thereby expressing compassion.  When the people who've come out to see Jesus have been with Him into evening and have nothing to eat, He commands the disciples to feed them, and completes this act of compassion (extended from His first impulse to heal and teach); see Matthew 14:13-21.  He illustrates compassion when He speaks of Judgment, in His role as the true Shepherd who separates the sheep and the goats.  He tells those on His right hand, the favored ones, "I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me."  (See Matthew 25:31-46.)  These are all illustrations of acts of compassion, and let us keep in mind that it is not simply the specific action that we must fulfill by rote as if we are crossing items off a list to be within the rules of the law.  These are actions that are moved from the heart, from the inner life of a person, the soul.  They are ways in which we love others as if we recognize the same needs, the same substance as ourselves, in them.  They are not abstract, but rather couched within the substance of the first great commandment, a love of God with all one's heart, soul, and mind.   So often we find it is difficult to love people in the sense that we approve or love all the things they believe or do.  But we can nevertheless love by recognizing need and seeking to help fill that need, by having compassion and recognizing in the fulfillment of that need that they are of the same nature that we are, even when quite different in other ways.  There are all kinds of people we wouldn't necessarily want to live with or be with all the time, but we can still recognize the needs we would have in their place, and seek to help.  An act of compassion does not have to be purely material, either.  Sometimes people just need someone to smile at them, or to express a compassion through care in other ways, even simply to be acknowledged with a gaze.  There are myriad ways to express compassion.   It's not a competitive contest to see who can give the most, it's not checking off the box of counting up our good deeds, it's not about our image in the eyes of others.  None of that enters into what Jesus is telling us.  In fact, our act of compassion may quite often be something embarrassing to us, even frowned upon, such as befriending an unpopular person who's not of our nominal group.  Our Lord Himself set this example when He became sin and scandal out of love for us, put to death on the Cross.  Let us consider the meaning of Christ's love, as illustrated by His life and His work among us, and find the simple ways we can live it.