Theological Truth: Love God. Love neighbor. Everything else is commentary.
Let me be clear…
I don’t know what it’s like to be pushed off my family’s land.
I don’t know what it’s like to live with the traumatized memory of centuries of persecution.
I don’t know what it’s like to be hated because of my religion or ethnicity.
I don’t know what it’s like to need a safe room in my house or a bomb shelter in my basement.
I don’t know what it’s like to witness unspeakable violence perpetrated against my family.
I don’t know what that’s like, so I can’t presume to know how I would respond or how I would want to respond.
But I do know that when things are as deeply entrenched and as emotionally raw as things are here AND in the Holy Land, we need to go back to the basics. It helps to remember the big picture and return to the foundations of our faith. That’s exactly what Jesus does.
In today’s gospel, we hear more of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem and the escalating conflict with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the scribes and the elders. In the tension of this moment, Jesus goes back to the basics. When asked which commandment is the greatest, he goes to the answer every Jewish child would give. He goes to the most foundational of Hebrew scriptures, from Exodus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” In Matthew’s telling, Jesus (for once!) answers a question directly rather than with another question. And then he does them even one better. He gives them a second answer, also from the Hebrew scriptures, this time from Leviticus, one that is like the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In the midst of rising tension, Jesus rests in biblical basics. With the community fracturing, Jesus recalls the common ground of love. So given the situation in Israel and Gaza, in our world and in our country, as hatred spreads, violence escalates, confusion reigns, compassion fades, and options appear limited to either “us or them” or “this side or that side,” we too need to go back to the basics. When our ability for creative and faithful problem-solving is threatened by dualistic, pick-a-side thinking (which our social media-addicted culture perpetuates and exacerbates), like Jesus we need to return to foundational truths. For us, that means going back to our baptisms.
At the beginning of each baptism, the candidate (or their parents and godparents if the person is a child), having made three renunciations of the forces of evil that destroy life, then make these three affirmations: “We turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our savior. We put our whole trust in his grace and love. And we promise to follow and obey him as our Lord.” (BCP, p. 302-3) Turning to Jesus, placing our whole trust in his grace and following his way of Love is the foundation of our faith. Love of God, love of neighbor.
So, while we may not know exactly what to do (and don’t we all wish we could do something?!), we can remember where to turn. We turn to the way of God’s love made known in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The way is simple, but it’s not easy. It’s free, but it costs us everything.
After all, what does it even mean to love God with all of our hearts and souls and minds? What does it look like to love our neighbors as ourselves? To love God with the entirety of our being means loving God above all things. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is “like unto it,” because to love God means loving what God loves, and that’s all of our neighbors all over the world. Remember John 3:16: “For God so loved the world.” The next verse is like unto it, but unfortunately not quoted as often: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the whole world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) To love God is to will and want and work for our neighbor’s well-being.
When Jesus is asked in Luke’s gospel for clarification (in other words, justification for a more workable and palatable definition), Jesus tells the story of the Samaritan who alone shows compassion, even to his enemy and at great personal risk. His point is for us to go and do likewise. Simple, but not easy. But not impossible either.
Author Rachel Held Evans repeats a story from her sister about a nurse at a field hospital in Mosul, Iraq. “After dressing the wounds of toddlers in the children’s ward,” the nurse “wasn’t sure she could do the same for the ISIS fighters in the enemy combatant ward…[but] the nurse did it anyway, tending to the ISIS fighters with as much care as she tended the children they had injured, cleaning their wounds, changing their bed pans, and holding their hands as they died.” (Inspired, p. 156) Her sister reflected, “To walk from a ward of innocent victims to a ward full of the perpetrators and show equal love and service is not humanly possible. It’s divine. It’s the gospel.”
The situation between Israel and Gaza is heart-breaking. The violence and trauma suffered by both Jews and Palestinians is unimaginable. When wondering about our role in such a situation, it helps to go back to the two great commandments: Love God, love neighbor. If people ask whose side you are on, tell them you are on the side of Love. If forced to make a choice, choose compassion. That’s more than a clever way to avoid discomfort. It’s definitely not a way to win any friends. But it will ground us on the path we promised to follow—to put our whole trust in God’s grace and love.
For the past several weeks we’ve been singing a stanza of a hymn as the “offerings of our lives and labors” are placed on the altar:
With gratitude and humble trust we bring our best to thee
To serve thy cause and share thy love with all humanity.
I had originally understood the words in the context of our material offerings, but this week has opened my eyes to the importance and relevance of this as a helpful prayer in light of recent events and the demands of Love.
O thou who gavest thyself in Jesus Christ thy Son,
Help us to give ourselves each day until life’s work is done.
In times like these, it’s important to return to the foundation of loving God and loving our neighbors. It’s essential to remember our job isn’t to save the world, our job is to love the world.
Help us, Lord, to give ourselves each day until this work is done.
— Fr. AJ Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost, October 29, 2023
Readings: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Psalm 1; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46
