Lesson: Matthew 22:34-46

Jesus has just “silenced the Sadducees,” and so the Pharisees decide to take him on. They send a lawyer to test him. As you might expect, the lawyer chooses to test Jesus on a point of legal interpretation. In my experience, legal interpretation isn’t just for lawyers. In fact, it seems to come naturally to people, starting at a very early age. Take the rule, “You may not watch TV until your homework is done.” I have seen virtually every word of that rule subjected to intense scrutiny. Is “you” a singular or a plural pronoun? If you are finished with your homework, may you watch TV, even though your sister is still working on hers at the dining room table, a mere eight feet away? Does “homework” mean only the homework due tomorrow, or 2 or 3 days from now? If you’re supposed to finish a novel in three weeks, how much of that is your “homework” tonight? Does it count as “watching” if you didn’t get to choose the program? And perhaps most important, is there a penalty for watching TV before your homework is done?

And so the Pharisee lawyer asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers: The greatest and first, from Deuteronomy, is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and might.” The second, which he says is like it, is from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then, Jesus challenges the lawyer to re-interpret the whole body of Jewish law. “On these two commandments,” he says, “hang all the law and the prophets.”

Now, Jesus’ words are clear enough. The Reformer, John Knox, is said to have declared, “The Word of God is plain in itself.” With all due respect to John Knox, especially given this coming Sunday is Reformation Sunday, when it comes to both Scripture and the law, I tend to agree with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who said, “The notion that because the words of a statute are plain, its meaning is also plain, is merely pernicious oversimplification.”

When we hear the command to love, what many of us experience is something like, “I know I should love.” But we can’t just decide to love, and we can’t even be persuaded to love with the best, most convincing arguments. Sure, it’s easy enough to love someone who is just naturally lovable. But the problem is that none of us is lovable all the time. And some people, it seems, aren’t ever very lovable. Certainly, we can attempt to treat all people fairly. We can treat people with justice, because as Cornell West put it, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” But Jesus quoted Leviticus, not Micah; he used the word “love,” not “justice.”

On the Sunday before All Saints, it’s helpful for me to remember that many of the heroes of our faith figured out that it’s by allowing ourselves the experience of being deeply and completely and unconditionally loved by God that we are empowered to love others. People like Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr. realized that if God deems someone lovable, including ourselves, then who are we to disagree? Who are we to presume that someone who is worthy of God’s love is not worthy of our love?

It’s also helpful for me to remember a quotation – I don’t know the original source and it’s practically a meme at this point but it’s absolutely true: “People are hard to hate up close. Move closer.”

This past summer, protesters showed up at a church in San Francisco that I often attend when I’m not preaching elsewhere. After posing as visitors and disrupting Bible study before worship, the protesters grouped together outside and began shouting random homophobic epithets with an amplified mic at the people gathering for worship. I was there, and it felt menacing, especially because confrontations in our country too often turn violent. It felt like a violation; a disruption of what should have been preparation for worship. The pastor was on vacation, but the associate pastor handled the situation with grace.

A few weeks later, the pastor met with some of the protestors. She was able to tell them that while she trusted that they came to protest because they love Jesus, they weren’t communicating the love of Jesus to the congregation. They frightened people. She listened to their stories, and it became apparent why they had such a black-and-white, heaven-and-hell based theology. She didn’t agree with it, but she understood why it felt safer to them. She hoped they understood her congregation a bit better, as well. She probably didn’t change their minds. But she communicated the love of Jesus to them. She moved closer.

It’s by allowing ourselves the experience of being deeply and completely and unconditionally loved by God that we are empowered to love others. And then, move closer.