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…one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [from Matthew’s Gospel 22:34-40]
Everything is here, according to Jesus. Everything.
Sadducees, lawyers and cynics have come to entrap Jesus in theology or the law, and find themselves stumbling at his feet. Their cryptic inquisition about taxes, marriage and authority is met by Jesus, slicing their Gordian knot in two. They are not seeking wisdom, or hope, but merely the life-denying gossip which avoids justice and cripples our imagination.
As their attacks dissipate, Jesus draws their – and our – attention to the gospel’s crux. Love God and love our neighbour. That’s it. All the law, and all the prophets are here.
Jesus consistently reminds us that loving God immediately leads us to those around us. Our protestations of faith and our worship mean nothing, if there is no echo of this in how we care for our community.
Like the lawyers seeking to trap Jesus, we twist interpretations and definitions, in order to justify ourselves. “Which particular neighbour did you have in mind, Jesus?” we ask in our most innocent voice, hoping for the one who mows our nature strip each week, and not the one with the leaf blower.
We decide that all that is asked of us is to tolerate our neighbour, and our responsibility diminishes almost immediately. Tolerance at is best is permissive, and at its worst is indifferent. The benign smile, the occasional wave, and we fulfil all the tepid righteousness we have defined.
More deliberately and more dangerously, we assert that we will decide who our neighbours are and the manner in which they qualify. This enables us to exclude those we have no intention of serving, and our neighbours become simply the people we choose to like, and who like us. In so doing we become card-carrying members of the cynics’ association.
The rancorous debate in our nation about immigration is the most recent – and recurring – stanza in this decline. Other iterations have included Aboriginal people, people who are same sex-attracted, Muslims, Jews and refugees.
Hannah Arendt identified disconnection as integral to societal breakdown. When someone, perhaps a leader, then nominates a particular group as responsible for our woes, real or imagined, we are on the way to disaster.
Tolerance declines into sufferance. Sufferance becomes discomfort. Discomfort become disconnection and blame. A simple question: when we discover that immigrants are not to blame, who will the populists accuse then?
Thus, Jesus. Love God, love neighbour.
Love creates; creates hope, justice, healing, forgiveness, community. Love imagines new relationships, and older ones restored. Love invites, embraces and reshapes community around all who have found their place. Love does not simply tolerate, but transforms, as mercy is articulated by forgiveness and restoration to new relationship.
Love reimagines our neighbourhood, shaped not by geography, or our politics, or our faith, but by our humanity, all of which is in the image of God.
Everything is here.
