© 2023 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here.
If you were to ask a Roman Catholic priest what is the most important thing about being a Christian, what do you think he would say? If you were to ask a Southern Baptist preacher or an elder in the Church of Christ the same question, what answer would you expect to get? If you asked a Unitarian Universalist minister which of the Seven Principles that unite the diverse members of their denomination is most important, do you think they could name just one? If you asked an atheist what is the key to living a good life, do you think you could accept their answer for yourself? What about you—what do you think is the most important thing for you to do to be faithful to God, to your family and friends, to the world, and to the life you have been given?
In today’s gospel lesson, a religious leader, one of the experts in the Jewish law, came to Jesus and asked him that same question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Matthew records this event as one of a series of challenges to Jesus’ authority—tests by the religious authorities who were trying to trap Jesus with his own words. Matthew presents this episode as if it were yet another attempt to catch Jesus in a mistake, but I think the gospel writer might be overplaying his hand. In Mark’s version of the same story, the man who asks this question does so genuinely, and, if you think about it, there’s no real way for Jesus to give an answer that would alienate his followers.
Instead, I like to think that this lawyer really wanted to know what Jesus thought. I like to hear in his voice a tone of respect when he calls Jesus, “Teacher.” After all, don’t we learn more from other people—especially our opponents—when we give them the benefit of the doubt? Whatever his motive, this man asks a good question, and I want to hear the answer. I want to know what Jesus really thinks is most important—not because he might say something controversial but because, in a world in which so many people have different opinions about what really matters, I think Jesus’ opinion is worth listening to.
And what is Jesus’ response? “‘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.” We’re familiar with that answer. If you’ve been to the 7:30 service, you’ve heard those words. We say them every Sunday near the beginning of the liturgy. That’s how central they are to our understanding of what matters most. But I wonder whether we hear those words the way that Jesus intended them.
All my life, I’ve heard Jesus’ reply as if it comes in two distinct packets—first the part about loving God and then the bit about loving our neighbor. And I’ve always heard a qualitative distinction between the two. That’s a product of the English words “greatest” and “first.” Those words imply a singular object. They anticipate an answer with unique and unrivaled priority. Because of that, I’ve always understood Jesus to say something like, “The absolute most important commandment is to love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind. And a close second—not quite as important as the first but almost—is to love your neighbor as yourself.”
I think many Christians feel that way—that loving God comes first and then what’s left over goes to loving our neighbors. And I suspect that there are plenty of atheists (and Episcopalians) who would say that that’s what’s wrong with contemporary Christianity—that people who call themselves Christians spend too much time and energy getting people to believe what they believe and not enough helping those in need. But I don’t think that either of those perspectives is what Jesus had in mind.
As is often the case, some of the nuance gets lost in translation. Most English versions, including the one we use in worship, give weight to Semitic influences and use the superlative “greatest” in both the lawyer’s question and in Jesus’ response even though there is no superlative in the original text. That’s why we hear, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” But other versions prefer a simpler reading of the text and, instead, translate it without adding the superlative: “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Some scholars go a step further and note that, because the definite article is also missing, it might be better to hear the lawyer’s question as something like, “What sort of commandment in the law is really important?”
Now that’s a question I find helpful for my own faith—not an attempt to narrow it down to one or even two commandments but a question about the nature of the law itself. What really matters? And, if we allow ourselves to hear the lawyer’s question in that way, Jesus’ response becomes much more significant. Instead of a providing two separate answers—Commandments 1A and 1B—Jesus names a unifying principle that undergirds all that is important in the law. One part of what matters most is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second part is just like the first—without any distinction—and that’s to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, which together function like a single peg, hang all the law and the teaching of the prophets.
In one sense, that isn’t all that surprising. We know from reading the gospel that you can’t love God and forget about your neighbor. Earlier in Matthew, when the rich man came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him to keep the commandments, including loving his neighbor as himself. When the man acknowledged that he had kept them all since his youth but still felt like something was missing, Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor. Why? Because Jesus knew that a rich man who ignores the needs of his neighbors isn’t really keeping the commandments at all. How can we claim to love God if we do not love the ones whom God has made?
But, if these two commandments are actually two sides of the same coin—two halves of the same principle—can we recognize that the opposite claim is also true? Just as we acknowledge that you can’t love God without loving your neighbor, can we also say that it is impossible to love our neighbor without also loving God? I think so.
To love our neighbor is to love God because our neighbor is made in the image of God. Whether we acknowledge it or not, when we love another human being, we are loving the one in whose image they have been made. And, when that becomes the motivation for our love, when we learn to love others simply because they, too, share in the divine image, we learn to love others as God loves them. And that, in turn, teaches us about the nature of God’s love.
The desert mystic Evagrius Ponticus wrote that the work of love is to recognize that all people are made in God’s image and to love them as nearly as we love God regardless of how much they may seem to be unlike God (Praktikos 89). We don’t love our neighbors as ourselves because we like them or agree with them but because they are as precious to God as we are. And who teaches us how to love others like that? Jesus. Remember who it is that Jesus identifies as our neighbor? Not the member of our own clan or tribe or family. Not the one who deserves our love or who loves us first. But the person with whom we have nothing in common except our human nature—the very nature that God has taken upon Godself in order to redeem us all.
This is a place where that kind of love is put into action. At St. Paul’s, we not only recognize that we can’t love God without loving our neighbors, but this is also a place where we believe that loving other people teaches us how to love God. That is why I am proud to be the Rector of this church. Everything we do inside these walls equips us for the work we do beyond these walls, and our commitment to loving others in the community inevitably teaches us about God and God’s love. One doesn’t come before the other because they always go hand in hand.
When you make a financial commitment to this church, that is what you are giving yourself to—to a church that believes you don’t have to pick one or the other—loving God or loving your neighbor. At St. Paul’s, we believe that those two commandments are inseparable sides of the same truth. We love God by loving our neighbors, and we love our neighbors by loving God. When we make that love the first priority in our lives, we not only support a congregation that does a lot of good in the world, but we teach ourselves what it means to belong to a God who loves us and the whole world without limit. Nothing is more important than that.