The English author Dorothy Sayers wrote these words:

"The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a
bore—on the contrary; they thought him too dynamic to be safe…He was tender to the
unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before Heaven; but He insulted
respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; He referred to King Herod as "that
fox;" He went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a
"gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners;" He
assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; He
drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; "He
cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of
other people’s pigs and property; He showed no proper deference for wealth and social
position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, He displayed a paradoxical humour
that affronted serious-minded people, and He retorted by asking disagreeably searching
questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. "He was emphatically not a
dull man … He had ‘a daily beauty in His life that made us ugly,’ and
officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without
Him." (Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos)

Although at first glance, the Gospels seem to tell the whole life story of Jesus, in
fact the first three Gospels each spend more than half of their pages on just the last
week of Jesus ¹ life. The story we have heard in our Gospel this morning comes towards the
end of that week, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, after the cleansing of the
temple, but perhaps a day or two before the events of the last supper and the crucifixion.

In these last days, Jesus seems to have spent his time in and around the Temple,
fielding "loaded questions" thrown by various religious types like Sadducees,
Pharisees, and the religious scholars called scribes. Now it was obvious to onlookers that
these functionaries were disturbed after Jesus ¹ assault on the "organized
religion" represented by the Temple with all its sacrifices and offerings. After all,
if the Temple can come into disrepute, then its leadership and its influence with Rome
would weaken. The "Establishment" brought in its cadres of friends, supporters,
and those who "owed" favours in return. Significantly they decided to take this
"teacher" on as if he were a serious threat to their ideology. It was an obvious
ploy.

If they could show he was just a fine, pious Jew but not too knowledgeable about Torah,
they could discredit him. Listen again to this seemingly innocent conversation.

One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which
commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "’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.’ On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets." (Mat 22:35-40 NRSV)

Now the first question that may occur to some people is, "Why didn’t Jesus
just ignore them since they were so obviously insincere and trying to trap and discredit
him?" The answer may surprise you, but the truth is that he couldn’t dodge them
without losing face. Ancient wisdom teachers had to prove their ability to debate as well
as to demonstrate the truth of their opinions. Although the Jews did not play by quite the
same rules as the Roman schools of rhetoric and debate, they shared their respect for
learning, and their enjoyment of a discussion in which the question at hand was examined
from every possible angle.

Usually these discussions were conducted without rancour or personal enmity, but they
almost always looked like a contest, and sometimes even a battle royal. The way the
Gospels present this part of the story of Jesus, he seems to have set up a verbal contest
of skills in interpreting the Jewish law. It was the contest he was born for, and the one
he came prepared to win. He’d challenged them the day before by overturning
moneychangers’ tables and driving out animal sellers. The preliminaries were over and
the "main event" was to take place.

After going round and round in circles for a whole day, maybe more, Jesus ¹ opponents
finally move in for the kill, metaphorically speaking. They asked "the
question", the one on which on which many great teachers had come unstuck, and by
their answers to which many of the greatest rabbis of Israel were known..

"There are 613 commandments in the Torah; which is the greatest?"

Jesus ¹ answer was original, but not entirely so. It stood in continuity with great
Rabbis like Aquiba and the authors of several books of Jewish piety (Testament of the 12
Patriarchs) dating back to the previous century. Jesus even cheated a bit, but giving not
one commandment, but two.

His answer is to be found in the Shema, a prayer twice daily on the lips of every
observant Jew. "You must hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, God alone.

You will love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your might." Those words are found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and echo the First
Commandment of the Sinai Covenant, "You shall have no other gods before Me."

Of course this is a statement, which is also a promise, and only partially a command.
"Hear! Listen! Pay attention, O Israel. You shall love the Lord your God, with all of
your being. That is what it is all about."

The second part of Jesus ¹ answer is also more of a promise than a command.

Jesus quotes from Leviticus 19:18 and says, "… you shall love your neighbor as
yourself:" As we saw in our first reading in Leviticus chapter 19 (verse 18) the word
"neighbour" refers quite specifically to "my fellow Israelite", but
implicitly in verse 34 of the same chapter, and explicitly in the teaching of Jesus, it is
clear that in the summary of the law "Love your neighbour as yourself" means,
ŒLove your next-door neighbours, your fellow Israelites and/or Christians, and anyone
else who get the opportunity to love, especially if they are your enemy, and especially if
they are in need ¹.

In chapter 10 of the Gospel according to St Luke this is illustrated most clearly when
Jesus answers the question "Who is my neighbour" by telling the parable of the
Good Samaritan.

"’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind.’ Š ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

A lot of wise words have been written and spoken about what Jesus meant by the word
"Love", and a lot of bunkum as well. CS Lewis added greatly to the confusion of
English speaking Christians with his book The Four Loves, in which he drew an arbitrary
and quite false distinction between the four different Greek words for "Love",
and made out that the word used most frequently in the New Testament, a*gaph had a special
and unique meaning which was particular to Christianity.

In fact, this word has the same range and nuances of meaning as the English word
"Love". It is used in the Bible in both testaments to mean all different kinds
of love, including sexual love, lust, brotherly love, love of God, affection, friendship,
and so on, but mostly it just means "Love". Love is not exclusive to
Christianity – it existed before the time of Jesus, and we would be unbelievably arrogant,
and wrong, to think that it is only, or always, found amongst Christians in the world of
today.

There are countless verses in the Bible, and even more examples from the life of
Christians down the ages and today, where Love is the point of encounter between us and
God. In the summary of the Law Jesus perhaps surprised the lawyers, scribes and Pharisees,
by giving an answer to their question which was breathtakingly simple, entirely in keeping
with religious opinions across the spectrum, and yet at the same time almost
breathtakingly radical. All the law, all the prophets, everything that matters in
religion, is summed up in two simple commands. Love God, and love your neighbour. The rest
is just commentary.

The Rev’d Canon Nigel B. Mitchell

St George’s Cathedral, Perth

October 1999