To Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

[Our lessons were Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18, Psalm 1, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, and Matthew 22:34-46.]

In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus say what we often call the Great Commandment. In Mark’s version, which scholars now believe was written first, the question is posed by a scribe who seems to really want to know the answer. Here in Matthew’s version, the question by the Pharisees is intended to test Jesus and is asked by a lawyer—imagine that! [Remember, as a lawyer, I get to make remarks about lawyers.]

This is an important question: What matters most to God? This apparently was not an unusual question in Judaism of that time. The Talmud reports that a Gentile asked two of the best-known teachers to teach him the whole of Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—while standing on one foot. One of the teachers, Hillel told him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it.”

In answering, Jesus quotes two passages from the Torah. From Deuteronomy, he cites the classic Jewish affirmation of faith and loyalty to God: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” He then quotes from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” and adds “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Jesus basically says that we must treat everyone around us as if they were members of our own family, deserving of equal honor and special care.

In our culture, we normally think of “love” as a description of how we feel. But in the culture of Israel two thousand years ago, “love” wasn’t just a vague warm, mushy, feeling towards someone. “Love” meant attachment to a person backed up with action.

As James wrote in his letter, using “faith” and “love” synonymously:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith.

Faith and love both are matters of relationship backed up with consistent action, of acting compassionately, not just feeling that way.

These two commandments call on us to use all of our abilities, all of our selves, to help our neighbors. And remember from the parable of the Good Samaritan that everyone, even—perhaps especially—our enemies, is our neighbor.

And, as Paul’s letter to the church in Rome tells us, “‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” There is no better way to overcome the agenda of those who hate us. And in serving our neighbors around the world as we would ourselves, we will act that love, not just feel it.