What rules do you follow? I don’t mean the rules set by your city, state, or national government, but rather the rules you set for yourself.
Sometimes we’re not even aware of them. We may have rules about how much we want to save, about how long we stay on a visit with family or friends, or about when we pour ourselves an adult beverage. But we almost always do have some rules – formal or informal, conscious or unconscious – that we follow.
What are some of yours?
I ask this because the rules we follow are likely to reveal what’s important to us. And I think that’s what’s going on here. Jesus is revealing a lot about himself – and the God whose kingdom he proclaims – by answering this question about commandments.
“Given how many commandments there are – more than 600,” the scribe asks, “which do you think is most important?” Jesus answers him, but he doesn’t give just one, but two. First, love God – as we heard read from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy a few moments ago. And second, love your neighbor as yourself, as is recorded in Leviticus 19:18, the more priestly-oriented of the law texts.
From the way Jesus links them together, it seems that he means that these two laws can’t really be separated, that they can’t really be understood apart from each other. You can’t love God, in other words, apart from loving each other.
The scribe extends the meaning of loving God with one’s mind to loving God with what one’s mind does – how one’s mind views the neighbor and acts upon those views.
How and what do we think of our neighbors?
How and what do we think of our neighbors who disagree with us – when it comes to politics, or Covid or Timber Shores?
How do we experience Jesus “showing up” in the midst of our conflicts and our us-groups and them-groups? Or do we attempt to sequester our faith life from the more fractious engagements in which we find ourselves?
Perhaps in pursuing these questions, we are not far from the Kingdom of God.
Because just as loving our neighbors is part of loving God, how—and what—we think about our neighbors will shape our relationship with God as well.
And bringing our thoughts to the love of God and neighbor into greater conformity shapes how we live as followers of Jesus with our neighbors.
We can’t ignore the connection Jesus makes here when he insists that the only way to love God is to love each other.
It is as if Jesus is doing so from the perspective of God, whom he calls Father. Any parent knows that the thing you hope most for your children is that they love each other. In Jesus, we are introduced to a God whose love in abundant and wide and everlasting and – perhaps more than anything else – parental.
As my mom said to me just a few weeks ago, a parent is only as happy as her or his least happy child. So also with God. And so God says that the best way to love God is to love each other. The best way to honor God is to honor each other. And the best way to be in relationship with God is to be in relationship with each other. Why? Because God loves us with the love of a parent, wanting only and always the very best for all of God’s children. When we realize this we are, indeed, not far from the kin-dom of God.
Prayer: Dear God, help us to see in the people all around us your beloved children, our beloved brothers and sisters. And let us love them as you have loved us and in this way return your love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.