A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 29, 2023
Ex 22:20-26, 1 Thes 1:5c-10, Mt 22:34-40
The long and the short of it — literally and figuratively — is that how we live our lives depends on our perspectives.
Every one of us is different, even identical siblings. Each of us was born at a different time, in a different place (even if your mom and mine were side-by-side in the maternity ward). We have different body types, in every way that can be possible.
And through the sheer laws of physics, none of us can see and experience precisely what another of us sees and hears and feels because none of us can exist in the same space as somebody else simultaneously.
Eight billion of us today. Billions who came before us. And, God willing, billions and trillions yet to come after us.
All different. No matter how alike we may think or act or look.
And because we’re all different, because we’re shaped by our times and our circumstances, we are going to disagree. On almost everything.
Pizza toppings.
Ford vs. Chevy vs. Mopar.
iPhone vs. Android. Mac vs. Windows.
Who is my neighbor?
Who is God?
In the 300,000 years since our Creator elevated primates into Homo sapiens, and especially in the 5,000 years of recorded history, our distant and close ancestors have grappled with who God is and how humankind should love God.
Often, our far-gone forebears felt the need to fear God, to be terrified of what pain and torture the Almighty could rain down upon them, and so some of their worship included extreme sacrifices. Their societies saw hurricanes and floods and earthquakes as the wrath of God, and so they became rigid in their adherence to what they believed to be God’s laws.
They established quid pro quo instead of a familial relationship. They sought to appease instead of please God.
They didn’t understand that God is pure love; they looked at angry, selfish, capricious human monarchs and projected those depravities — amplified them, even — upon the Ultimate. Humans’ limited ability to visualize a deity who is not a white-haired, bearded old emperor in flowing robes meant that they created God in their image and likeness, not the other way around.
The true way God created all of us.
So when the Pharisee scholar of the law asked Jesus to rank the commandments, the scholar expected Our Lord to cite one of the Ten on the Tablets, something Mosaic, word for word. And depending on what translation of the Bible we read, Jesus delivers a consistent recitation of the First Commandment, albeit more deeply relational than the Old Testament version that puts God on an unreachable pedestal. That transforms God into a statue.
Instead,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.”
invites the scholar — and all of us — to wrap our arms around our Creator and feel I Am hugging us back like no one else ever has or ever could.
How radical. How very Jesus of Nazareth.
And since this itinerant preacher had dipped his toe into crazy new waters, he waded in all the way.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And he turned the world upside-down.
Until this point in human history — and, frankly and sadly, even until today — the notions of (a) loving someone and (b) identifying a neighbor were narrowly defined.
Love and neighbor, hospitality and friend … these were tribal concepts. These were reserved strictly for people who looked like each other, who spoke the same language, who worshipped alike, who contributed to the clan’s common wealth, who smelled the same. People who could intermarry without a scandal. People whose descendants would maintain the same way of life in perpetuity.
Not those people.
Oh, Lord, no.
Yes, Jesus said, those people.
In declaring that every woman and man on Earth, past, present and future, is neighbor and sister and brother to every other woman and man, Jesus set forth a broader, far more divine notion of what love is. Love with a capital L.
This love allows us to disagree without hating. To do the anatomical math: Two ears and one mouth means that listening is twice as important as speaking.
This love allows us to compromise without sacrificing our values. Without turning our backs on truth. God’s truth.
This love compels us to fight for justice for everyone, to de-rig any system that steals the dignity of even a single person. Including those people.
This love for neighbor means we don’t have to like everybody, but we do have to love them. Respect them. Tolerate them. Appreciate our differences.
God created each of us to be different for a reason, even if there are days when we can’t possibly fathom what that reason could have been. And because we’re all different, we see and hear and experience life and our relationship with God in ways unique to ourselves.
Our God-given humanity, though, is our common thread. A thread that unites us, fragile though it may be.
God wants us never to break it.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
The whole survival of humankind depends on these two commandments.
