The Greatest Commandment
The Shema is one of the oldest and most beloved of all sayings in Hebrew scripture. It comes from the book of Deuteronomy… part of the Pentateuch and one of the books of Moses. It is something that every Orthodox Jew knows by heart. It seems natural that Jesus would begin here when he addressed the question put by one of the lawyers… a Pharisee… one skilled in Mosaic law. “Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) This was the passage that Jesus quoted to the lawyer in our text today. As a faithful Jew… and a Rabbi… a teacher… Jesus knew the scriptures and knew the key passages. He could not go wrong by returning to the very roots of Judaism and finding a response in the core passages from the books of Moses… the books this lawyer had studied.
But, let’s stop for a moment and consider exactly what was being said by faithful Jews whenever they cited this passage from scripture. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” “With all your heart.” In ancient times, the heart, lavav, was the center of a person… the core… the most important part of a human being. It was believed that the heart, and not the brain, was the seat of wisdom... and that a person’s will emanated from his or her heart. To give God your heart was to give to God the most essential part of you… your core … your essence… your will.
“You shall love the Lord your God will all your soul.” Nephesh is the Hebrew word for soul. Besides soul, it also means living being… life… self… person… desire… appetite… passion… in other words, the totality of what it means to be human… everything that makes a person a person. If the heart was the seat of wisdom, will, and a person’s center, their nephesh was everything else… everything that made them human… their desires … their passions… and life itself. To give God your soul was to give to God the totality of yourself… all that you cared about most and every passion of your life. To give both your heart and your soul was to give everything.
But the passage does not stop there. It continues: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your might.” Your might can also be interpreted to be “strength… or force… or abundance”… in other words, holding nothing back, but pushing toward God with all your effort and personal capacity. This is not a complacent giving of heart and soul. This is a forward-moving, active personal sacrifice… a self-emptying giving of all to God.
The second part of Jesus’ message to the lawyer came from another part of the Pentateuch… another book of Moses… the book of Leviticus. Leviticus 19, verse 18, reads “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” The word for love that is used here is ahav. Ahav is a passionate love. It is not the love of a parent for a child… but it is the love of a man for a woman… of a friend for an intimate companion… a consuming love that is both human and divine. Other forms of this word include “beloved” and “lover.” This is not an “I like you and you like me” kind of love… or a respectful “You’re my neighbor and I’ll feed your dogs when you’re gone” kind of love. It is a passionate… consuming… “You are the focus of my life” kind of love. To love your neighbor as yourself with this kind of love is to give of yourself to someone else as a lover gives to his or her beloved. The word for neighbor here translates to friend… companion… fellow… associate…or even fellow citizen… another person. And we already know from Jesus’ parable of “The Good Samaritan” who Jesus considers to be our neighbor.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” begs the question “How do you love yourself?” You see, this commandment does not originate from the love of a person who feels unworthy… unimportant… base…or unacceptable. It is not a love of a subordinate to someone superior. This is not the love of a slave for his or her master. This is not an “I’m a doormat, walk all over me if you want to” kind of love. No. This is a love between persons who consider themselves equal… equally good… equally healthy… equally powerful… and equally capable of making an independent decision to participate in a relationship. This love of which Jesus speaks is the conscious choice of a healthy… independent… passionate individual… a choice to give all of himself… all of herself… to another. And yet, like the love between an individual and his or her beloved, it is a love that does not expect reciprocity. It is a love that comes from the depths of one’s being… a love given because it is compelled from the desire to give. The question is, “Can we… how do we… give such a love to our neighbor… our fellow man?” What does it look like… this kind of love?
The Pharisee, a lawyer, asked a simple question, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" And Jesus gave a simple answer, quoting directly from the Hebrew scriptures. ”’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.’” Simple… direct… and from the word of God. And yet, when we examine it, we realize, once again, that the simple answer has depths that transform it from a casual, passive “Sure, I love you… just ask me” kind of love to the kind of love that is active… that constantly seeks expression… and that moves strongly toward God and toward our neighbor.
Now, it may be easy to give this kind of love to our family… our close friends, but how do we give this kind of active… pursuing… consuming love to strangers… or to those whom we believe have betrayed us… or to those who seek to harm us… or to those who are, perhaps, unlovable? How do we give this kind of love to others when to do so might jeopardize the health and safety of our loved ones… might risk our possessions… or even our very lives? How do we give this kind of love to others when we do not have this kind of love for ourselves… when we hate the person we are… the person we have become… when we believe that we are unworthy… unlovable… and without hope for the future? The answer is, obviously, that we can’t…not without help…help from a God who teaches us…nurtures us… loves us… and shapes us into the kind of people we should be. We cannot give this kind of love without a God who will help us to learn how to love ourselves … and to give this kind of active… consuming … passionate love to others.
But there is another dimension that we need to explore. It is easy to love a God who loves us… and blesses us with every good thing. But, how do we give an active… pursuing… consuming… passionate… and totally giving love to a God that we believe has abandoned us… or betrayed us… or caused us to question our faith? I am not going to be a pop psychologist here and throw out trite little quips like, “Let go and let God,” especially if there is, deep in your heart, a sense that God has torn your heart out of your body… stomped on it… and left it lying in the dust. I would ask you to examine the events that led to these feelings of betrayal or abandonment and ask yourself whether God was truly responsible… or whether the actions and decisions of human beings led to the events that triggered these feelings. Was it truly God who caused the pain… or was it the actions of another person… a human being… a frail… finite… fallible creature… susceptible to temptation … and evil… and sin?
Yes, there is evil in this world… and no, God does not always intervene. I wish that I could tell you why… but I cannot. The Apostle Paul tells us, in his letter to the Christians at Corinth, that “now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) I wait for that day. All I know now is what I read in scripture and it is the Word of God that tells me that God loves… that God is a God of love… that God is love. And I know that God is not capricious… one day a loving father and the next day a vengeful tyrant. It is that knowledge that persuades me to trust… even when all the evidence seems to contradict it. And it is in that knowledge that I take my first… very tentative… and faltering steps toward God… and I find that, like the Prodigal Son, I am met by a God who comes… no, who runs to meet me… to embrace me… and to welcome me back into the glorious depths of his love.
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'” Love your God with a love that comes from the core of you… from the essence of your being. Love your God with the totality of who you are… with all your passions… and all of your self. Love your God with all your might… with all the force… the strength… and the power you possess. Move toward God and you will discover that God is already moving toward you… walking beside you… waiting patiently for you. Give of yourself… and you will discover the Giver reaching out to you… emptying himself for you… and holding you in the palm of his hand.
This is the paradox of God’s love… that you cannot experience it until you let go… until you are ready to trust… until you believe… and yet… that love surrounds you every moment of every day… whether or not you do believe. The Jews in Jesus’ day were bound by the law… 613 commandments, to be exact, that they tried to follow each and every day in order to be faithful to God. 613 commandments that Jesus reduced to simply two: Love God and love your neighbor. If we could love God with a total consuming, active love and, if we could love our neighbor with the same passion that we love ourselves, we would not need the 613 commandments… for, as Jesus told the lawyer who questioned him, on these two simple commandments hang all the law and the prophets. This is agape love… the outpouring of the whole nature of a person in reverent devotion for another... for God… and for neighbor. If we had this love, everyone would know we were Christians… by our love. Amen.
Matthew 22:34-40