We are created by and for love
Proper 25A | Matthew 22:34-46
Can you imagine what that must feel like? Standing in the portico of the holiest site on earth. Among the most devoted people of faith in the world.
And knowing some of them want you dead.
Of course, this isn’t a Mission Impossible movie. There is no action scene to get us out of it.
We’re just standing there. Feeling the pressure of thousands of eyes and ears waiting for something to happen. To be said.
And they’ve all taken a turn at us. Temple leaders, scribes, the Pharisees’ disciples, and Sadducees have all tried to trip up Jesus. To trap him in heresy. Into convicting himself. Into signing his own death warrant.
Or…
Humiliation. Hypocrisy. Taking himself off the board. By saying God won’t provide.
Imagine standing there through this and then seeing the Pharisees crowd together. And the Pharisees: these are the most dangerous opponents because they’re also the most sincere. And from them, a lawyer, offers the question at the heart of everything.
And in response, Jesus says “Love.”
It is the right answer.
Love God. From the Sh’ma, the most important prayer for Judeans. A prayer everyone there would say twice a day every day of their lives.
Love God. With all your heart.
And…
Jesus keeps talking.
He already said the right answer. He pulls something else from Leviticus and puts it with it.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Linking the two. Making everyone surrounding them hear that the great command of loving God has a partner in faith and Law—a partner that exists in the world. And that is loving people, other people, the people who aren’t owed love because we are required to but simply by proximity to us. Love them as much as we love ourselves.
Upon that hangs all the Law and Prophets. For Jesus, our entire faith hangs from love.
And he says this, in front of thousands, to a person trying to kill him.
The Most True Statement
I know that the Great Commandment is a genuinely perfect distillation of tradition, theology, and practice. That Jesus manages to totally deconstruct tradition to find within tradition the most true statement of all time.
And I know how much we want that to be at the heart of our lives too. It is gorgeous theology. And so elegantly crafted. At a moment of intense challenge. This teaching is incredible!
And I think it is that last part—that it takes place at a moment of intense challenge—that we are most likely to let slip away.
That Jesus is standing alone, standing up to their hatred. And saying that we are commanded by God to love. Love God, yes. And the person next to you.
This command isn’t just ridiculously hard. But the picture of Jesus saying it while surrounded by people not living it—that is stunning.
A Return to the Question of Authority
Jesus has humiliated the leaders seeking to humiliate him. And discredited those seeking to discredit him. Not because these are good things. But for those thousands of people there. That they might see the truth.
Jesus doesn’t condemn the Law. He shows how beautiful it really is.
He doesn’t condemn the Temple. He shows how beautiful it could be.
But then he keeps going. David. He asks them about the Messiah, lineage, and lordship. He asks them about the relationship and proximity and grace. And they are stumped. Heck, reading it, we’re stumped.
But the scripture itself bears the truth.
“The Lord (Yhwh) said to my Lord (Adonai)…”
Jesus draws the nature of God and humanity together. And he draws our authority together.
Not just in his own words, but in Scripture.
All of this is us. With God.
And I think that has been the story the whole time. From the moment Jesus showed up before John the Baptist and submitted to baptism. It isn’t just Order. And it isn’t just some cosmic prophecy.
It was in the very fabric of the faith the whole time. And Jesus is pointing to it and showing the world what it has been missing.
That God’s love and our love are the building blocks of creation. And everything comes from that.
Love.
This is why Presiding Bishop Michael Curry talks so much about love. Why people made bingo cards for when he preaches and put “love” as the free space in the middle. He’s gonna talk about it!
And it is why he reminds us (and the whole world!) that God is love. Because it also means that if it isn’t about love, then it isn’t God.
Now, there’s a lot that goes into love. And we’re constantly trying to figure out what the most loving thing to do is. Is it loving to let someone suffer? Or is it loving to indulge them in ways that may lead to future suffering?
But this is the brilliance of the Great Commandment that Jesus offers us. Because all that we do hangs from it. It isn’t it.
Love is the love. These things we do are only ever love-adjacent. Love is the governing and binding agent behind our lives. Love makes us us!
We reflect the love of God.
With or without us, God still loves.
How much we respond in kind, sharing in love. Offering love. Freeing others with love. All of that is our living into our relationship with God.
Because our world is an ecosystem. And just as the water evaporates and returns as rain and plants produce the oxygen from the carbon dioxide we exhale, our social beings interconnect with other social beings. We love our neighbors and the love of our neighbors brings more love back.
This is one divine creation wrapped in love and fueled by love.
And just as we can poison our waterways or choke ourselves by increasing the carbon in our atmosphere, our ecosystem can be poisoned by things that aren’t love.
So we seek to return our ecosystem to thriving. Because love is relational. Faith is relational. God is relational.
Love isn’t a thing we can do. It is what we’re made to be. Because love is what God is. And when we live into that sacred calling, being love with God and with those next to us, we are ordering creation as God dreams it.
Everything else ranks below this. How we see each other, the rules we follow or impose, the certainty we desire to believe. All of it ranks below our ordering in creation as incarnate love.
We are blessed to love. To share God’s love with abandon. With grace and hope and joy. Everywhere—it’s all God’s after all.
May we see that it is all created to be a reflection of that divine, perfect, beautiful love.