“Love Your Neighbor As Yourself”

Matthew 22:34-40

October 29, 2023

[Jesus] said to [the Pharisee], “‘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.’  (Matthew 22:37-39, NRSV)

A little background on Reformation Sunday (from Brittanica.com)…

According to legend, on October 31, 1517–506 years ago–Martin Luther, who was German and a Catholic priest and professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenburg, nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, a call to reform in the Roman Catholic Church, in the form of 95 theses.

These 95 theses were not necessarily set-in-stone revisions that Luther had come to, but rather, as this Brittanica website put it, “were tentative opinions, about some of which Luther had not [fully] decided.” They were “propositions for debate concerned [to a large degree] with the question of indulgences.”

So, what were Indulgences? “In Roman Catholicism, the remission of temporal punishment for a sin after the sin has been forgiven through the sacrament of penance. The theology of indulgences is based on the concept that, even though the sin and its eternal punishment are forgiven through penance, divine justice demands that the sinner pay for the crime either in this life or in purgatory. The first indulgences were intended to shorten times of penance by substituting periods of fasting, private prayers, almsgiving, and monetary payments that were to be used for religious purposes.” “After the 12th century they were more widely used, and abuses became common as indulgences were put up for sale to earn money for the church or to enrich unscrupulous clerics.”

On a trip to Rome a few years earlier Martin Luther had been shocked by the corruption of the clergy; and that corruption, among other things that were stirring within his soul, prompted him to “[urge] reform of the Roman Catholic Church, protesting the sale of indulgences and other abuses…”

This website goes on to say that “Luther originally had no intention of breaking from the Catholic church, assuming that his call for theological and ecclesiastical reform would be heard, and ordinarily his theses would have been of interest only to professional theologians. However, various political and religious situations of the time, and the fact that [the printing press] had been invented, combined to make the theses known throughout Germany within a few weeks. Luther did not give them to the people…[but] others translated them into German and had them printed and circulated. Thus, they became a manifesto that turned a protest about an indulgence scandal into the greatest crisis in the history of the Western Christian church, and ultimately Luther and his followers were excommunicated.”

AND…by the middle of the next century, this whole thing–particularly the posting of the 95 theses, had become recognized as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. So Reformation Sunday is a big deal!

So, is this in any way related to the Gospel passage for today? I think so… Simply put, Jesus was calling for reform within the Church. Well, reform within his faith tradition. There was no “Church” yet! 

He was calling for reform particularly within the practices of the religious leaders of the day. Like Martin Luther. The religious leaders had gone astray. They had led God’s people astray. And Jesus was calling them back…back to the central truth of what it meant to be the people of God.

What is the greatest commandment? The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. AND…he continued…there is another, a second, that is like it–just as important–another that cannot be separated from the first. And that is, to love your neighbor as yourself. 

It wasn’t a new commandment, as we heard it read from Leviticus, from what we call the Old Testament, from what were the Hebrew Scriptures, written at least 3000 years ago and possibly more!

Jesus wasn’t introducing this idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. He was calling God’s people back to it… He was calling for reform. Major reform.  

It seems to me some reform is needed in the church today…some calling back to the central truth of what it means to be people of God, what it means to live as people of God…

What does it mean to be the Church, to be followers of Jesus, to be the Body of Christ in the world? What does it look like to be the people of God in the world today?  

Is it about worship, and when and where we do it? 

Is it about mission, and how and why we do it? 

Is it about Biblical interpretation, and by what means we do it?

Is it about doctrine? Or dogma? Or creeds or confessions?

Does it look like internal spirituality–prayer and being still? 

Does it look like external spirituality–activism and social justice?

Maybe all of that is part of what it means, part of what it looks like…But what if we interpreted all of those things through the lens of love? What if we asked, of all of those things and the rest of what we do as people of God, “Is this thing helping us love God? Is this thing helping us to love our neighbors??”

What if, as people of God, we asked, before we did anything, “Are we loving God by doing this thing? In doing this thing–whatever it might be–are we loving our neighbors as ourselves?”

And by “neighbors,” what if we included the people who live across the street and down the street, both from us here at WRP and from us in our homes?… And what if we included people who live down in the Valley and up in Canada? And people who live in Bread Springs and Chinle [both on the Navajo Reservation] and in Santa Clara and San Ildefonso [two nearby indigenous Pueblos]? And people who think like us and look like us and smell like us, and those who think in ways we cannot begin to comprehend and who look nothing like us and who smell bad?…. 

And what if, as our “neighbors,” whom we are called to love as we love ourselves, we included people who love and support and stand alongside marginalized people of all persuasions, and people who condemn and vilify and intentionally hurt marginalized people of all persuasions? 

And what if, by “neighbor,” whom we are called to love as we love God, we included people who work tirelessly for justice…and those who are ignorant of or apathetic toward injustice? What if we included people who are oppressed, and people who deliberately participate in oppression? 

What if, as we tried to live in the world as people of God by truly and consistently and deeply loving God by loving our neighbors, we let go of our notions of judgment and merit, and worked instead to love the person in front of us? What if we let go of our needs for reward and “good” outcomes, and worked instead to love the person in front of us? What if we let go of our pride and need for control, and worked instead to love the person in front of us?

And not “love” as in like! Not “love” as in feel fondness toward. Not “love” as in agree with or understand or find pleasant to be around. 

But LOVE as in the active response to the love of God. LOVE as in choosing to care. LOVE as in intentionally extending mercy and grace and patience and generosity. LOVE as in demonstrating, by choice, by deliberate action, loving-kindness and compassion to another, regardless of our feelings toward that other, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, sympathetic or enraged…

What if, as we tried to live in the world as people of God, we chose, time and time and time again, to truly and consistently and deeply love God by loving our neighbors, including whatever person happens to be standing in front of us, with that kind of LOVE? 

Emotion aside. Understanding–or lack thereof–aside. Gut feelings of outrage and disgust and horror aside. 

As people of God, we are not called to judge one another. We are not called to declare another’s worthiness. We are not called to pronounce whether or not another is beloved by God. Unless it’s to pronounce their unwavering belovedness…

We are called, yes, to call out injustice, to speak up against abuse of power, to reject oppression and marginalization. 

But as people of God, most fundamentally, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. To love our neighbors as we love ourselves. To love our neighbors as God loves them. And God does love them. All of them. Each of them. No matter what… And God longs for their healing. And God calls them to reconciliation and wholeness. All of God’s children. And all of God’s creation! 

What if, as we tried to live in the world as people of God, we chose, time and time and time again, to truly and consistently and deeply love God by loving our neighbors–whoever they are, wherever they’re from, whatever they’ve done or not done, including whatever person happens to be standing in front of us–with that kind of LOVE? 

It’s so hard. 

It’s so hard. 

It’s so hard…

And it’s so risky! As one commentator said about Jesus, from whom we learn this type of love: “Following the path of love leads him to jump into debates and conflicts with his whole self. Love leads Jesus into all kinds of situations that are not just uncomfortable, but dangerous. Eventually, love gets him killed.” And he went on to say, “Of course, we are none of us Jesus.” !! “But there is much to learn by seeing the love of Jesus in action.” 

And it is to this love, the love of Jesus, this love in action, this love of God embodied, that we are called. As people of God, we are called to live within and to live out, by the grace and power of God, this Love that is steadfast and unwavering, that calls each person to healing, to reconciliation, to wholeness. This Love that is patient and merciful, generous and compassionate. This Love that is God’s love. 

It is with this love that we are loved by God…and it is with this love–by the power of God’s Holy Spirit working within and without us–that we are called to love our neighbors and love the world. 

Holy God, by your grace, may it be so.

Amen.