From the Lectionary for 29 October 2023 (Proper 25A)

Matthew 22:34-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, 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 neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

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"Matthew sets up this passage right at the beginning of Jesus’s teaching ministry. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). What follows are six antitheses explaining his fulfillment of the law, ending with: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:43-45a, 48). I believe that “perfect” — teleios in the Greek, having the sense of completion or meeting a goal — refers back to the fulfillment of the law spoken of in 5:17. The law is fulfilled in the perfection of God’s love that reaches out even to enemies. It is the only perfect kind of love that would empower a person to live into the kingdom of heaven by suffering the violence of one’s enemies.

"One further comment on love in Matthew’s Gospel. I believe it is the measure by which not just individuals but nations are judged. In five weeks we will conclude the Year of Matthew’s Gospel with the end of Jesus’s teaching in Matt 25:31-46. This passage is tragically misread in the context of seeing salvation as individuals going to heaven when they die. In that context, each person is judged by whether they acted in loving service to the least of Jesus’s family. I will argue ... that this is a colossal misreading that ignores what Jesus tells us the passage is about: a judging of the nations. It’s the nations which are sorted as sheep and goats based on whether their politics and economics address the needs of the Jesus’s most vulnerable brothers and sisters — our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. Nations which fail to do so will end up on the scrapheap of history like most others before. In short, the measure of whether a nation succeeds or not — the measure of fulfilling its systems of law — is love."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Opening Comments on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 25A (link in comments below)

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"What [Jesus] does here is he establishes once again a definitive and unbreakable answer forever: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all with all your strength. He's quoting here from the Book of Deuteronomy, possibly with a reference to the book of Joshua, [chapter] 22, where this is explained in similar terms, and then he's adding to that a commandment from the book of Leviticus, [chapter 19, about love of neighbour. And he's saying that they are similar, that's the key phrase. They cannot be separated: love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable. There is no such thing as loving God if you do not love your neighbour; in as far as you love your neighbour you love God.

"This is an anthropological revolution. Whereas in the previous two answers [in Matthew 22] he'd shown the complete lack of rivalry of God with any form of human worldliness, if you like, whether of power or of marital history, here he brings together God and the human to say that there will henceforth be no difference. In as far as you do it to God, you do it to your neighbour, in as far as you do it to your neighbour, you do it to God. Which he will then explicate more in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, but here he's setting for once and for all time the word that shall never pass away, that any form of dealing with God that does not adhere strictly to the consequences for humans is a fake form of dealing with God. You love God in as far as you love humans; if you say you love God but yet hate your brother you lie, as St John would say later.

"So this is the establishment, and it's an establishment not of something, if you like, that is simply a legal answer... What Jesus is doing is so much more than giving a legal answer; he's revealing the heart of God. The heart of God is passionate about the precarious, the weak, the outsider, the resident, the stranger, the person whom you might ignore. [God is] passionate in love for those people, and it's only as you learn, as I learn, as we learn as humans, to reach out constantly to ever-increasing, if you like, degrees of who is our neighbour that we achieve the heart of God, that we receive the heart of God in us and spread it to others. It's this longing that is at the heart of this, the love of God and of neighbour.

"It's interesting that both here and in Mark's Gospel Jesus just gives the answer: the love of God with love of neighbour. It's only in St. Luke that, if you like, the necessary question is put by the lawyer - which is, “Who is my neighbour?” - inviting Jesus to take it further, which he then does bringing out that it's not only the close neighbour, the insider, but it's the outsider neighbour whom you have to treat as well. In other words, the tendency of this is universal. Ultimately what Jesus is inducting us into is an understanding of being human, such that there should never be an outside other to us, never should be someone who dwells in shame, someone who dwells in precariousness, that God's project of love is towards all of those.

"There is nothing that can ever undo that teaching of God himself in God's temple as a human being saying it is only in as far as you love your neighbour as yourself that you love God. So let's rejoice! For me this Gospel is a matter of rejoicing, it's not so much a question of a legal answer, it's the definitive establishment on earth of an unbreakable principle. We're invited into this adventure of love of God and love of neighbour - how far can we take it?"

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 30 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxrcrbzS7mE)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper25a/]