THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF YEAR "A"

THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF YEAR   I

Ex 22, 20-26; Mathew 22, 34-40: Love your neighbour as yourself

In the first reading, God spells out the love of neighbour in stark detail: avoid molestation, harshness and being exploitive. This sort of considerateness doesn’t sound like the Old Testament, something like today, relevant, and contemporary. That’s a fact. God speaks to us today in great detail. Our smallest concerns are his concerns. Are you being treated badly, ignored, hurt, exploited? Then know that God is concerned about you. He is listening to every hard word that hurts you; he feels every violent action that injures you. He says, “I am with you. When you are hurting, I am hurting.” In times of pain and sadness, remember and say to yourself, “Jesus is within me, this body of mine is his body, these emotions of mine are his emotions, my pains are his; he takes all the knocks for me.”

Now let’s go back to the idea of considerateness for our neighbour. God has made it so that we cannot love and serve him unless at once we love and serve our neighbour. One love conditions the other. That is Christian charity. We cannot see God, so we love our neighbour.

“Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?” The question may appear harmless to us, but it was a verbal hand grenade with the pin pulled out and ticking. For centuries the Jews had been arguing about that question. If it was their lucky day, the Christ would give an unpopular answer, and the crowd would turn against him; which is what the Pharisees wanted.   I guess you know that laws were aplenty for the Jews. According to Rabbi Simlai, the collection of laws in the Torah reached up to the total of 613, of which 365 were prohibitions (one for each day), and 248 were positive ones. So 248 “do’s”, and 365 “don’ts”. Here was a test case for Jesus. Were all the laws equally binding ? Was there not one that could sum up all of them and call it the greatest commandment ?  Jesus’ answer rings out loud and clear even today. You must love both God and the people next to you. Neither of these concepts was fresh to the Pharisees. Both were lifted by the Master out of the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. But he put a peculiar spin on his response: he took the separate concepts of God and neighbour and made them one; besides, he made it clear that Jews must also love Gentiles. The Pharisees only loved to hate the Gentiles.

Loving God is no hassle: we express our love by our prayer of praise, by keeping his commandments, and losing ourselves in him.  Loving neighbour is a little more complicated. Here Jesus gives us a good indicator or yardstick : love your neighbour as you love yourself. As you love yourself: that’s the yardstick.  It’s a very good and practical starting point.  For instance, don’t we have an habitual tendency to watch out for our own interests, seeking out whatever seems to be good for us and avoiding whatever threatens us ?  We go on loving ourselves in this pragmatic fashion whether we are exhilarated or despondent, whether we are pleased with ourselves or disgusted. In this sense, self-love is remarkably tolerant, maintaining its devotedness to the welfare of the self, no matter how boring or bad we manage to become.  And this is precisely what we ought to do to our neighbour:  watch out for his/her interests with unrelenting practicality, whoever he or she may be, regardless how much or how little our neighbour pleases us. The Parable of the Good Samaritan forcefully reminds us how indifferent to personal likes and dislikes this love is required to be.  The parable shows that love is undiscriminatory,  i.e. it is sensitively alert to the needs of others and to how those needs can be provided for.

The learned people tell us that as human beings we are free. We value our freedom very much. Some people value it so much they think they can do what they like. Freedom was not created for its own sake, but for doing good, for building the community and the world. And that’s love. Do you know what the true test of your freedom is ? How do you know you’re really free? It’s when you’re able to forgive; when you’re free of hatred and prejudice. Freedom to forgive. Here is where the Gospel message becomes unmistakeably precise; where Christian love becomes definite. Forgiveness means loving somebody who has failed to love. Forgiveness is love at the height of its freedom and fullness of power. Forgiveness is the surest sign of divine love in us. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to forgive. But then freedom is no joke.

So, dear friends, this week give of your time. Give a friend flowers or share a plate of steaming rice with someone.  Or how about a phone call or cheering note ?  Give hope to a sick person. Hug a child needing affection.   Speak praise to a teenager. Give peace. Forgive an enemy. Set differences aside. Use humour to defuse an argument.  Smile. Say ‘thank you’ and mean it.  This Gospel speaks to each one of us.

PRAYER (John Calvin)

O Lord, save us from self-centredness in our prayers, and help us to remember to pray for others. May we be so lovingly absorbed with those for whom we pray that we may feel their needs as keenly as our own, and intercede for them sensitively, with understanding and imagination.

We ask this in Christ’s name.    Amen.