Miller’s Musings: Alternative Reformation

While most of our congregations celebrated Reformation Sunday, I decided to look at the readings for Ordinary Time: this week includes Matthew 22:34-46 and a corresponding reading from Leviticus (19:1-2, 15-18). The two readings are connected by the inclusion of the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

When the Scribes and Pharisees test Jesus with a question about the greatest commandment, Jesus responds easily with a quote from their scriptures: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.” But he does not stop there: “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

As Matthew weaves his story of Jesus, the Pharisees appear as those whose religious practice appears to love God above all else. They study Torah, they pray, they follow the letter of the law. And yet, these religious leaders somehow fall short of God’s ideal for creation. How?

When Jesus elevates love of neighbor to the same level as love for God, he points out something that the Pharisees in this story seem to have forgotten. Jesus locates God among and within the created world. God is not only in the high places, in the Temple, or in the Torah, but God is in the neighbor. Thus, we cannot love God if we do not love our neighbor.

But what does love of neighbor look like? One example is in the parable of the Good Samaritan who shows neighbor love by caring for the injured stranger. In Leviticus, we have other examples: “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: I am the Lord.”

The greatest example of neighbor love, however, is in Christ Jesus, who gave his life for the salvation of the world. He who is the Lord of Creation willingly relinquished his power and suffered so that those who suffer the ills of the world might know hope. Jesus loved with a selfless love, with a love that put all others before himself.

St Paul emulates this love when he reminds the Thessalonians, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves”. God asks nothing less of us than that we give ourselves to our neighbors, and thereby we give ourselves to God.