When the Pharisees challenged Jesus to name a Greatest Commandment, Jesus advised us to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When loving the neighbor gets difficult, as it sometimes does, refocusing on loving God can make all the difference.
Vicar Emily Hagen
Reformation Sunday, Lect. 30 A
Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Psalm 1; Matthew 22:34-46
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
It’s a familiar refrain. Love God, and love your neighbor. Two commandments upon which hang all the law and the prophets. We speak them together almost as one commandment, which makes sense, because loving God well leads us into loving our neighbors—all of them.
But sometimes the familiarity makes us forget that just as loving your neighbor as yourself can feel countercultural now, it was also countercultural for the Roman society Jesus’s people lived under, and even in the time of the ancient Israelites. As we have heard recently, when Jesus speaks these words to the Pharisees, he is quoting Torah: combining the Greatest Commandment from Deuteronomy with a lesser law about caring for the neighbor from a section of Leviticus that we have heard read today. When God, through Moses, commanded the Israelites to love their neighbors—in order to become more holy, as God is holy—God also gave some specifics about how to do that: ones that we don’t hear about as often as we hear the commandment itself. These instructions defined a new identity for the ancient Israelites, and they are vital for us today. So for a moment, let’s seriously consider this version of loving our neighbor from Leviticus.
Torah includes a huge number of laws, and many of them are similar to other cultures’ law codes of the time. Many of the Israelites’ neighbors had laws for being honest in business dealings, administering justice, and the like. However, the command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” was unusual. Most societies expected that free people would be responsible to look out for their own interests and not need help from a neighbor… as many people still seem to believe today. But we know in reality life doesn’t often unfold that way. Life is not always fair, people do not always have access to choose what is in their best interest, and we are not all born into circumstances that offer us strong safety nets. In God’s command to Moses and the Israelites, there is an awareness that caring for one another well does more than keep us safe and functioning as individuals. This practice makes communities stronger. It draws us closer to one another and, it would seem, closer to God’s way of holiness.
Fortunately, most of the instructions for loving the neighbor in Leviticus are fairly clear… but they do set the bar high.
We read here that loving our neighbor means being honest with one another and tending to justice—refusing to be partial toward the wealthy because of their wealth and influence, or even toward the poor in ways that would cause injustice. But in reading this, let’s keep in mind that God’s version of justice, in Leviticus and elsewhere, is a restoring justice that makes sure needs are met, especially the needs of the most vulnerable. The same chapter instructs landowners to leave the gleanings of the harvest to feed the poor.
The next instruction particularly hits home in our historical moment. We know what it means to refuse to stand idly by when the life of our neighbor is at stake. We know what it costs. And we have also seen the beautiful things that become possible when we stand together in support of our vulnerable neighbors.
But this coming week in particular, we might benefit most from leaning into the last few instructions in today’s Scripture.
We heard that loving the neighbor means refusing to hate, and it means letting go of our desire to take vengeance or bear a grudge. Once in a while, we can all benefit from reminders to address those tendencies in our personal relationships. Tending to our feelings of anger and resentment is an ongoing practice. But these laws in Leviticus are also concerned with how we all act as a community. When we bear a grudge by harboring bias or prejudice… we stop loving our neighbor. When we blame a whole group for the actions of a few… when we cry out for punishment instead of justice… we stop loving our neighbor. And when we allow scapegoating or dehumanizing language to turn our compassion into indifference or even hate… then we stop loving our neighbor. And in the past months, many of us have felt our compassion being tested or watched our loved ones and our communities be drawn into these divisive narratives. And we know how difficult those conversations can be.
In a moment like ours, with elections looming and emotions running high, reaching out to others with reminders about kindness and being open-minded might seem a little daunting. But hold on to this: the final instruction to “reprove our neighbor” when they are in the wrong, else we incur guilt ourselves, isn’t necessarily commanding us to confront our political opponents and prove them wrong for the sake of the community’s collective righteousness, as satisfying as that might feel. And certainly, as we have just heard, standing up for those who are being treated wrongly is the loving thing to do. But this last instruction about reproving our neighbor is not about that. This one is actually about our own hearts. These words invite us to talk out our disagreements with others not to fix them, but to seek reconciliation—to shut down our own tendency to incur guilt by silently harboring resentment against them in our own hearts. It would seem that loving the neighbor is something that needs to be done both outwardly and inwardly.
We know that none of these tasks are easy.
But on top of that, perhaps you noticed that in Leviticus, the end goal of following these rules and loving the neighbor is to help us to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. Like me, you might be asking: we need to love our neighbors in all of these challenging ways so well that we actually become holy… like God is holy? That sounds impossible.
And it would be… if we were the ones expected to achieve it.
Good news on that front is on the way from Jesus in our Gospel text… along with a little nod to Martin Luther on this Reformation Sunday. Just maybe, like me, when you hear Jesus name the twofold Greatest Commandment, you tend to focus on the second half—“love your neighbor”—and miss out on the incredible gift of the first half: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is where the transformation of holiness begins—not in showing perfect love for the neighbor, but in our connection with God, the source of both love and holiness.
But what might this look like?
When we love God, as the Greatest Commandment invites, we direct our lives toward God. As we heard last week, we spend time reading and contemplating scripture. We connect with God through prayer. We worship God together and carry our worship out into the world, to love and serve as Christ. These practices help us to abide in God’s presence and experience our own love for God. When we express our love in these ways, we notice God’s holiness, and we are drawn toward it. God’s presence in our lives transforms us—not through our work, but through God’s, as Luther would remind us. Spending time with God helps us to notice that this is already happening.
Part of the beauty of Jesus’ twofold Greatest Commandment lies in the connection between its two parts. The transformation of being made more holy that happens in our lives because of the love we share with God shows up in the ways we live out our faith. Holiness is not about being perfect, and it is not a question of our loving God “enough,” as if there were any way to measureq “enough” love. Instead, it’s a lifelong process of reconnecting with the Triune God whose love for us is endless. When loving others feels exhausting, and it sometimes does, it is God’s love for us inspiring our love for God that leads us to love our neighbors well and gives us strength to persevere, even in challenging times.
When we live this way… loving God, and loving our neighbors… then, as our Psalm proclaims, we begin to delight in the law of the Lord, because we see how it leads us into love. We and our communities become like trees planted by streams of water…and bear fruit in due season…and prosper. Together, we build a society that can weather storms, not be blown away like chaff in the wind. These are the results of loving God so much that we can’t help loving one another with a love that is bigger than we are: a love that comes not from us, but from God… a love that changes us and can change everything.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
