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.

 

What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?

 

 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 22:41-46 

 

In yesterday's reading, we read Jesus' explanation to His disciples of the parable of the Sower:   "Therefore hear the parable of the sower:  When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.  This is he who received seed by the wayside.  But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while.  For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.  Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.  But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces:  some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

 

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.  Our readings of this week prepare us for Ascension Day, otherwise known as the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord, which is celebrated tomorrow in the West, and one week from tomorrow in the Eastern Churches, generally speaking.  It is dependent upon the date of Easter, as Christ's Ascension took place forty days after His Resurrection.  Today's reading jumps to Matthew chapter 22, when Jesus is in the Temple in Jerusalem, engaged in disputing with the religious leadership.  Here, my study Bible explains, Christ asks this particular question, quoting from Psalm 110, to lead the Pharisees to the only logical conclusion:  that He is God incarnate.  They believed the Messiah to be a mere man, and therefore reply that the Messiah would be a Son of David.  But David, as king of Israel, could not and would not address anyone was "Lord" except God.  But in Psalm 110:1 (from which Jesus quotes here) David refers to the Messiah as "Lord."  So, therefore, the Messiah must be God.  The only possible conclusion is that the Messiah is a descendant of David only according to the flesh, but is also truly divine, sharing His Lordship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Therefore the first reference to the LORD applies to God the Father, and the term my Lord refers to Christ.  The Pharisees, my study Bible says, do not answer because they realize the implications and are afraid to confess Jesus to be the Son of God.  

From our present day vantage point, we might be tempted to think that what Jesus points out about the psalm is scandalous to the Pharisees.  But the scandal is in suggesting that He Himself is this figure.  At the time of Christ, there existed literature from within the Second Temple period (560 BC - 70 AD) in which these terms from Scripture had been explored as to why there would be different words or references, implying different persons, but which all clearly applied to God.  So the idea that the concept of God could include more than one divine Person already existed within Jewish religious scholarship.  But perhaps there is nowhere but in this passage (see also Mark 12:35-37, Luke 20:41-44) where this concept is expressed so elegantly.  This is Christ's way, and it is one reason why it is to the Scriptures we turn for inspiration:  there is nowhere one can find eloquence which is both simple and profound at the same time to the extent that we have in the words of Jesus -- nowhere else where concepts of such depth and complexity are given to us in language so succinct, so evocative, and yet precisely to the point.  This is one reason why we continue to turn to Christ and to the Gospels.  As St. Peter said on behalf of the rest of the disciples (and the rest of us believers and faithful), "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (see John 6:66-69).  It is here that, through the Scripture of the Old Testament, and specifically in this particular reference, this psalm of King David, Jesus elegantly presents us with the mystery of who He is, both God and man, human and divine.  He will also refer to Himself by the title "Son of Man" which is found in the apocalyptic literature of Daniel 7:13 to refer to "one like the Son of Man" who is suggested in context as another divine Person, and who appears together with the Ancient of Days.  But here, Jesus, a physical human descendant of King David (Matthew 1:1-17), is also "my Lord" to David.  This is the root and heart of what is called Christology, our understanding of just who Jesus Christ is, and it informs all of our understanding about what He does in the world and His mission to us.   As noted above, soon we are celebrating the Feast of the Lord's Ascension, which comes forty days after His Resurrection.  And all of this is essential to our understanding of what the Ascension means, how in both His humanity and divinity, Jesus ascends to His place in heaven "at the right hand of the Father" (Creed; see also Acts 7:55–56; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 8:1; Hebrews 10:11-15).   We look to this understanding of who Christ is in order to have a better understanding of ourselves and what He might ask of us.  For His work goes on in the world, and in us as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The LORD said to my Lord

 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 22:41-46

Yesterday we read Jesus' explanation the the disciples of the parable of the Sower:  "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.  This is he who received seed by the wayside.  But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while.  For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.  Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.  But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces:  some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

 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.   Today's reading again prepares us for the Feast of Ascension (tomorrow, May 21st in the West and in the Armenian Apostolic Church; one week later, May 28th, for most Eastern Churches).  This dialogue in Matthew's Gospel takes place in the temple in Jerusalem as Jesus debates with the leadership during His final week on earth.  It occurs just before He gives His final public sermon, which would be a grand critique of the ways of the scribes and Pharisees, and laments over Jerusalem (Matthew 23).   In the context of the question Jesus asks the Pharisees, we should understand that all along the theme of their questioning to Him has been to ascertain His authority to do the things He does, and they have repeatedly asked for a sign of proof of His identity.  Here my study bible comments that Christ asks His question to lead the Pharisees to the only logical conclusion:  that He is God incarnate.  It notes that they supposed the Messiah to be a mere man, and therefore reply that the Messiah would be a Son of David.  David, as king of Israel, could not and would not address anyone as "Lord" except God.  But in Psalm 110:1, which Jesus quotes here in order to establish the ground for His question to the Pharisees, David refers to the Messiah as "Lord."  Therefore the Messiah must be God.  One's only possible conclusion is that the Messiah is a descendant of David in earthly terms, but also truly divine, sharing Lordship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  The Pharisees do not answer, as they clearly realize the implications of the Scripture, and are afraid to confess Jesus is Son of God.

Why is Jesus' identity so important?  Why is it the crucial question the Pharisees keep insisting is not answered?  Certainly His authority is related to this question, or at least the leadership in the temple sees it that way.  By this time in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus has cleansed the temple, He has preached throughout all the lands of the Jews (and especially in the temple and in synagogues), He has gathered disciples, sent them out on successful apostolic missions,  and "great multitudes" come to hear Him speak.  Moreover, He is now generally perceived as an enemy of those who are officially the guardians of the faith:  the elders, chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, Saduccees.  He openly criticizes the practices of the leadership, and particularly the Pharisees.  They already plot to destroy Him.  If He is the Messiah, then they are refusing the leadership of the Messiah.  But if He is not, then all that He does lacks real authority that they must recognize.  When Jesus cites witnesses to His identity (and therefore authority), He names four in John's Gospel (John 5:30-47):  the Baptist, the works He does, the Father, and the Scriptures.   All of these things are the "witnesses" who give testimony to Christ's identity.  Interestingly, Jesus claims that He does not receive honor from men.  And the first thing He says is that if He bears witness of Himself, His witness is not true.   So what is left, then?  Over and over again, Jesus emphasizes a dedication to God the Father.  He cites this dedication in John the Baptist, whom He calls "the burning and shining lamp," in whose light they were willing to rejoice for a time.  It is this dedication to God the Father which makes John the Baptist that burning and shining lamp, this devotion that makes John a true witness, and gave him his light.  It is that dedication which Christ proclaims is His own true authority and identity, and which He says makes His testimony and word true in His ministry.  It is also that dedication which He says is missing in the leaders, and makes them false and unable to tell the truth or to recognize His doctrine, for they do not truly love the Father.  Moreover, Christ repeatedly tells His own disciples that to cultivate this love and to grow in it is their own assurance that they are "the light of the world" and the "salt of the earth" (see this reading).  It is our growth in this love which enables us to be true and just persons.  In the verses just before today's reading in chapter 22, Jesus responds to another question about the greatest commandment by saying that the first and greatest of all is "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."  (The second is like it, to love neighbor as oneself; and it is upon these two which hang all the Law and the Prophets.)  See 22:34-40.  Above all, at every opening, Jesus affirms that He and the Father are inseparable, for He has come not to serve Himself but the Father.  He follows the will of the Father in all things, and it is this that gives His ministry its truth, value, and worth.  It is only this that conveys real authority -- for even His authority is given from the Father.   In tomorrow's reading, for the Ascension, Jesus states:  "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."  He does not proclaim that He seizes His authority, but rather it has been given to Him.  The only One who could do so is God the Father.  Let us understand that for Jesus, it is the Father who conveys all truth and worth and authority.  But He asks us to follow Him in the same devotion.  If we, like John the Baptist, and as the first great commandment states, learn to rely on this love and trust in its growth in us, then we also rest in the same place.  We may face life with the capacity to shine God's light into the world, to learn discernment, to live a righteous life, if we value that truth and that love above all else, even to the point of suffering and sacrificing what is worldly for that love.  Let us trust in the source of His authority, and follow Christ's lead in doing as He did, and putting this love first in our hearts.