The text of a sermon preached at St Nun’s Church, Pelynt, Cornwall on the Last Sunday after Trinity, 25th October.
The readings set were, Deuteronomy 341-12 1Thessalonians 21-8 Matthew 2234-end
Master, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
The Pharisees, says Matthew, are putting Jesus to the test by asking this question. They’ve noticed already that Jesus and his disciples are not as scrupulous about the little details of the Law as they might be. For them keeping the Law is all about observing every letter of the Law. Even the seemingly tiny things are important. Remembering to wash before eating (a point the Pharisees made), or keeping separate pots for milk and meat, are as important as not killing. They are all equally ways of failing to keep the Law. So here they are testing Jesus’ orthodoxy.
The question is a simple one with an answer that everyone should know,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets.
Jesus gives the right answer – the answer that the Pharisees would expect from an orthodox teacher. This has been the answer to this same question for decades, perhaps even centuries in Jewish teaching. They know it, we know it and Jesus knows it.
In Luke’s gospel this answer is followed by the question, And who is my neighbour? To which Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. But here it is Jesus who asks a follow up question.
We’ll come to that question in a moment. But first we need to think about what it means to love our neighbour. Because the problem with what the Law requires is not about knowing it, but doing it.
You know, I know, the Pharisees knew that they should love their neighbour, but that doesn’t make it an easy thing to do. It sounds simple but experience has taught us that it’s not that straightforward.
Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth century teacher, defined love like this,
to will the good of the other (velle bonum alicui)
It is not about feeling warmly towards someone, it’s not about tolerating them, or wishing them well, but about actively, materially orienting our will towards the flourishing of another person.
There is nothing sentimental about love. It is not something that comes and goes. It is a choice that we make, again and again, in the direction of someone else’s good.
But that is not possible if we are full of concern for our own well-being and primarily focussed on ourselves. We cannot love someone that we feel is beneath us. We need to make room in our heart for someone else’s well-being to matter as much as our own.
And making that room requires humility. Humility is making as much room in our heart for another as for ourselves.
And it is this that makes the keeping of the commandment so difficult for us. We try to go directly to loving our neighbour without first making room in our heart for them.
Humility and love go hand in hand. They belong together and are inseparable. There can be no true love without humility. Humility is about valuing others. And valuing others is a prerequisite for love.
So, now we come to question that Jesus asks the Pharisees to answer – though they are unable to do so,
What is your opinion about the Messiah? Whose son is he?
Well, that’s an easy question, David’s they answer. But the follow up is impossible for them to answer,
Then how is it that David, moved by the Spirit, calls him Lord, where he says: The Lord said to my Lord, take your seat at my right hand, till I have put your enemies under your feet? ‘If David calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?’
In these words from Psalm 110 David has acknowledged that a descendant of his, over whom, according to tradition, he could claim superiority as his Lord. He has made room in his heart for a descendant of his to be seen by him as his superior, his Lord.
The Pharisees still do not understand – and Jesus does not explain himself. They’ll need to reflect on it and work it out for themselves.
David has oriented his will to make room for the good of his descendant – his status as his Lord – to be a priority for him. It’s like John the Baptist saying,
the one who comes after me is more powerful than I, and I am not fit to carry his sandals (Mt 311).
John and David have done that essential work of humility; the Pharisees have not. And the good Samaritan clearly has room in his heart for the well-being of his neighbour.
And we see the same attitude in Jesus himself. Particularly when he washes his disciples’ feet at the last supper. He has made room in his heart to show his love for them by treating them as his superior. It is why Peter is so horrified at the prospect of Jesus washing his feet.
So the question for us today is, have I made room in my heart to think of others as people whose well-being matters as much as my own?
And the question matters because answering it is the prerequisite for being able to love our neighbour as ourselves, and the key is having an attitude of humility in our relationships with other people. And that is something we will always need to work on. We can ever be complacent about it, or take such an attitude for granted.
Because it is really not good enough to have a good intention to love our neighbour. We actually have to do it – because Jesus told us that it is the greatest of all the commandments.
