October 25th
From the comfort of the 21st century we might be tempted to think that Jesus was popular all the time with all the people. All that healing and feeding surely won friends. This wasn’t actually the case.
But Jesus did not make a lot of friends with the two major religious parties of the day. The Pharisees and the Sadducees. Just before today's gospel reading, Jesus has outfoxed the Sadducees on the question of paying tax. The Pharisees now think they will have a turn and try to trap Jesus. No wonder the master gets a bit weary of it all.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” the Pharisees ask.
Jesus responds 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
So let's unpack it, take it out of its gentle pastel coloured wrapping paper and begin to explore what the Master has really given to us.
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
We get a lot today about just love God and do as you please and it will all be tickety boo.
What actually comes from the Masters lips and from the tablet of stone from Mt. Horeb is something much more demanding. ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’So all that you feel, all that you pray and all that you think must be an act of love towards God. It is why we examine our hearts, our words and our lives on a regular basis. It is particularly pertinent in the rural area in which we are privileged to live. People know that we are christian. They know we are Anglican. And consciously or subconsciously we are judged. We are ambassadors for Him and what we say and how we behave does matter for the building up of God’s kingdom. But dig a little deeper friends.
Think forward to Christmass.
God completely infuses humanity with his divinity. This mucky human debris of ours is impregnated and subsumed by God himself. So that all that we are, all that we have, all that we speak, all that we feel, all of our life can be His activity, Him living in us and acting through us. Now that is good news and it is worth dancing about and celebrating.
This is the first and greatest commandment says Jesus. Get this one right chaps and everything else will fall into place. The next little bit is about loving our neighbour and neighbour includes everyone who we encounter or communicate with in any way whatsoever. Here I want to refer to something I wrote for the Spectator and our local community newsletters.
I was prattling on about the call of Matthew and I wrote “The Master saw something in Matthew that we of course can’t. Not now in the 20th century. When Jesus sits down at the tax collectors highly polished large oak desk, he doesn’t see a tax collector, smartly coiffured with a Gucci suit. He sees Matthew for who he truly is. Now if we had eyes to see”.
Part of the trick is to see the other as God sees them. Not what they do, or where they were born or what language they speak. But how does God see the person that stands before you. What does the Master see there?Do I see someone who behaves rather oddly, different to me and makes me fearful and uncomfortable. Someone to avoid. Or do I see someone who has an addiction and needs my compassion and demands my help. First impressions do count, but they are not everything and the real joy in discovering a person comes much later over an extended period of time. The real person needs to be discerned with gentle conversations, a compassionate heart and comfortable silences.
And the last little bit.“To love your neighbour as yourself” and I refer back to my little article on the call of Matthew.Jesus sees Matthew for who he truly is and Matthew gets this. With joyous exhilaration, Matthew understands that he is being approached for no other reason than he is wanted for he really is. Not who he pretends to be, not who he would like to be, but just himself. Nothing more, nothing less.This business of loving ourselves means that we must see ourselves as God sees us. He looks straight through us and thinks “You know what .. I did a great job when I created you. You are one of my finest achievements.”
God has always known this about us. In the beginning God created us. He looked at us, and behold… what he saw and what he continues to see is really,… Really good! In his eyes, we have always been this way and we always will be.