THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2023)
Readings:
Exodus 22:20-26
Psalms 18:2-4, 47-51
1 Thessalonians 1:5-10
Matthew 22:34-40
The chaos and division that exists in our world, our church, and our politics, have not necessarily been caused by stupid people. I would contend that it has been caused by bright minds, minds that are closed off to the truth, minds that do not follow the intelligent threads that lead towards the solution to what ails us, whether that be in the realm of world peace, peace within our Church, or peaceful negotiations within our national politics. Stupidity is far too facile a reason to explain our problems, and it would be easily forgivable, since genuine stupidity cannot be fixed!
Jesus was perpetually afflicted with annoyingly smart individuals who just didn’t get it. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day (Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, Herodians) were reasonably intelligent, well-versed in the 613 precepts which made up the Law, an expansion of the Decalogue given to Moses by Yahweh. We have seen over the past few Sundays those religious leaders engage in dialogue with Jesus, but all they really wanted to do was trip Jesus up, cause Jesus to embarrass Himself. The Scriptures say “they tested Jesus,” “they plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech,” and they listened to parables which told them “the kingdom of God will be taken away from them and given to a people who will produce abundant fruit.” Their time might have been better spent truly listening to Jesus, and examining their paths to a metanoia (“conversion,” “turn about”), than spent looking for fault and ways in which they could make Jesus disappear. But Jesus was not about to disappear. Jesus was on a mission from God, and in spite of the religious leaders of His day, crowds continued to grow, as more and more people came to believe in the “Way” that Jesus preached would lead them back to the God of all things, the God who had chosen the Israelites to be His special people.
All of the parables we have been treated to over the last few weeks, fell on virtually deaf ears when it came to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, but not so deaf that their anger and fury over Jesus did not continue to grow. Jesus, it would appear, was merely a curiosity to them; they came out with the crowds to hear Jesus, not to listen to Him. Their hearts were hardened and their minds were closed to the possibility that this was the long awaited Messiah. They were not smart enough to see that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophets, something the readings from our liturgical year portray so beautifully. They were not smart enough to make the connections, and to see that they had become so overly focused on the minutiae, instead of focusing on what the heart of the Law truly required of them. Change was out of the question, an attitude that continues to afflict our own Church in the midst of the Synod on Synodality.
In today’s gospel Jesus is able to use the Pharisees’ duplicity to enhance Scripture with one of the most quoted texts in all of Scripture. In answer to the Pharisees’ question, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?,” a question meant to expose some foible in Jesus’ teaching which they could exploit, Jesus gives the Pharisees, and the Church, a remarkably adequate distillation of the entire 613 precepts of the Law. The first part of Jesus’ answer would be extraordinarily familiar to any good Jew, since it comes right out of the Shema and the Book of Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.” Then Jesus adds a passage from the Book of Leviticus: “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And as if to clarify any possible misunderstanding, Jesus adds: “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” Brilliant! Who could possibly argue with Jesus’ summation?
While the combination of these two passages of Hebrew Scripture may seem incidental, it is a critical mixing which carries the full weight of the entire Law for the good Jew, and it challenges all Christians and every person of good will. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in the New Testament, one cannot love God without loving one’s neighbor. The War with Israel and Gaza gives us a perfect example of the challenge this teaching presents, not only to the followers of Christ, but to all those who see the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures as foundational to right living.
Throughout the remainder of Matthew’s gospel, when things are at their hottest, we never see Jesus not live up to the demands of this gospel passage. In the Garden, Jesus shuns violence, and heals the result of Peter’s natural inclination (cutting off Malchus’ ear). Throughout His scourging and His painful death on the cross, there are no recriminations hurled, there is no desire for an insurrection from His people, there are no exchanges of insults. Jesus lived out His distillation of the Law in such a beautiful way that it has attracted millions of people to follow Him. It is our job, as it was that of His disciples, to live out the love of God and love of neighbor in such a way that we attract others to follow after Jesus. People will expand the kingdom of God and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, because people “will know we are Christians by our love.”
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