[Deut. 10:12-21 / 1 Cor 1:4-9 / Matthew 22:34-46]
“On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” That’s a pretty strong statement. It says that everything in God’s revelation to mankind up to that point – all of the Old Testament – literally "hangs" from these two commandments: love God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself.
So if you ask what is God’s will for you in any situation, the answer always comes down to this: love. Love is always the will of God for you. In everything you do, in everything you say, in everything you think, in everything you are, His will for you is that you love Him with all you’ve got and that you love your neighbor as yourself.
And the fact that the two commandments hold together is vital. You see, we’re always tempted to delude ourselves about our love for God. We like to THINK we love him, and too often its just a mind game. Jesus gives you the concrete way to check your love of God: he says it shows up exactly in how you love your neighbor. That’s why He said: “And a second is like it.” Jesus fuses together the two commandments as a single golden truth.
The Apostles got that and clearly expressed it. Remember how St. John would write: “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must love his brother also.” 1 John 4:20,21
So the proof of the love you have for God is not found in ooey-gooey feelings of tenderness and such toward whatever you imagine God to be. No, the proof of love for God is precisely in how you treat your neighbor – and of course Jesus pushes that a tad further, above all in how you treat your enemies. How do you treat the person who is unkind, cruel, vicious, and hate-filled toward you? How do you react to them? That shows you up close and personal whether or not you really love God.
Which, to be honest, leaves us in a world of hurt. Because this total love that is God’s will for our lives – this love for God that discloses its presence by the way we serve and bless and pray for others and especially those who are most difficult for us – is not how we live, is not how we are. Not one of you in this room can endure the “all” – love the Lord your God, says Jesus, with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. In other words, with no room left over inside of you for anything other than love. That your whole life BE love. That’s the will of God and that’s not how you live. Me either.
The result is that we do untold damage to ourselves; we poison our very lives with the bitterness and hatred and anger and malice of Satan. And even as people who are baptized, in whom God has begun a new work and planted a heart that loves, we see that this love is so weak, so fragmentary, so fragile. We know what God expects of us – total love – but there’s not a person in this room who comes close.
Well, that’s not exactly true. In fact, it is not true at all. There IS a person here for whom it was and is so. We stood and sang to Him as He spoke to us in His words. Shortly we will greet Him as He comes to us in His body and blood. I speak of Him in whose name we gather: Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Because if there’s one thing you need to know about Jesus, it is this: in Him the two commandments meet as one. That’s why He asked that odd question: “What about the Christ? Whose son is he?” And when they say “David’s!” He sets before them a miracle to ponder: “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord?” How can David’s son – his heir, descended from his body – be at the same time David’s master and Lord?
You know the answer. Because David’s Son is at one and the same time the Eternal Son of the Father: God the Word come into our flesh, woven in the Woman’s womb, made our brother, our neighbor.
He is the unity of the two commandments. He is a human being and yet He is very God of very God. Both at the same time. And He came among us to love us, and that in Him humanity might give total love to God. Again to John’s epistle: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:9-11)
The God whom you are to love with your all shows up among us as your neighbor, and He’s loving you as He loves Himself. He loves you all the way to the nails running through his hands and feet and the spear piercing His side. His blood pouring out to give you life in His blood. He loves you all the way through the abandonment and the loneliness. He loves you all the way to sharing your tomb and sanctifying your graves. He loves us all the way through to the stone flung away and the grave robbed of its prey. He loves you with a total love that has no fractions in it. And that’s how He as a true man rendered to the Father total love.
Death can’t and couldn’t hold down a love like that. That kind of love is stronger than death. And He feeds that love into you now with His body and blood, giving you forgiveness and promising you – no, guaranteeing to you with the pledge of that body and blood – that such love will be yours forever. It’s the future you’re headed towards in Him.
And now He gives that future to you and me to live in more and more as our own. He gives it to us and says: Child, you have been loved totally, completely, without measure or limit. I have made you my own in Baptism. I have fed you with the bread of life. Let that love live now in you, shape you, mold you - the love that loves the neighbor, and especially the enemy - and you will be changed from one degree of glory to another. My glory shines the brightest on the Cross where I go on loving those who hate me and seek my destruction, giving them forgiveness and life. Join me in now in such a life that never ends, because nothing is stronger than that love. Come, child! It’s yours. My gift to you. LIVE in it! GROW in it! One day, as you abide in me and I in you, your life too will be nothing but love. And that will be eternal life. Amen.
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