XXX-Sunday-A

XXX-Sunday- A
Ex.22:20-26;1Thes.1:5c-10;Mt22:33-40

Jim was a drunkard. The doctors had warned him that his drinking would kill him. Jim’s wife spoke to the pastor about her husband’s alcoholic problem. The priest promised to call over. On the day the priest arrived, Jim was dead drunk and lying flat on the floor. The priest spoke to him, “Jim, do you know that alcohol is your worst enemy? Why don’t you give it up?” “Alcohol,” said Jim, “is my enemy. But Father, you preached in Church that Christians should love their enemies, and that is what I am doing; I love alcohol, my enemy.” The priest replied: “True, we have to love our enemies, but I did not say you should swallow your enemies.” We laugh at the alcoholic swallowing his enemy. However, many Christians today, swallow not only their enemies but also their friends. We gulp down people and their rights.

The central theme of today’s readings is the greatest commandment in the Bible, namely to love God and express it in action by loving Him in our neighbor. In answer to the lawyer’s test question, Jesus quoted the great Shema from Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength." This is the sentence with which every Jewish service still opens, and the first text which every Jewish child commits to memory. Even today, a pious Jew, as he enters his house, will touch a little box called a mezuzah which contains the words of the Shema, which is attached to the door post. The gesture reminds him of the great commandment.

But Jesus went further, by naming a second commandment which is like the first, the law from Leviticus, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." When Jesus tells the lawyer, "On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets," the lawyer approves.

Here Jesus laid down the complete definition of religion. Religion consists in loving God, and man. To God we must give a total love, a love which dominates our emotions, a love which directs our thoughts, and a love which is the dynamic of our actions. In short a total commitment to God. The natural outcome of such a commitment will be the second commandment. “Love your neighbor.” When we love God man becomes lovable.
One without the other makes Christianity meaningless. A bird requires two wings to fly; a man needs two legs to walk. To fly or to walk to God we have two commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. Without these two commandments we may fail to meet God in this life and in the life to come.
We were created in love, for love, by a God who is love. All love comes from God and is directed toward God. The desire to give and receive love is one of the most authentic and natural desires; for where there is true love, there is God.

Jesus underlines the principle that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves because both of us bear God’s image, and to honor God’s image is to honor Him. Love for our neighbor is a matter, not of feelings, but of deeds by which we share with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us.

Love of God and love for neighbor are oars of the same boat. Or the two sides of the same coin. If one side is not printed the coin is considered counterfeit.
Lewis L. Austin, “in This I Believe”, wrote: "Our maker gave us two hands. One to hold onto him and one to reach out to his people. If our hands are full of struggling to get possessions, we can't hang onto God or to others very well. If, however, we hold onto God, who gave us our lives, then his love can flow through us and out to our neighbor." Truly loving one's neighbor entails valuing them as gifts of God.

St Thomas Aquinas suggests that it is impossible to love our neighbors if we do not love ourselves. So we should first love God, then ourselves, then our neighbors, then our bodily life (Summa Theologiae II.II.25,12). The problem is that we feel that we should avoid anything that seems like 'self-love' because that sounds too much like self-indulgence, self-centredness and selfishness. Loving oneself as the image of God is not selfishness.

Jesus is the one who teaches how to love God and our neighbor. There is no shortcut to learning Christ-like love. It's like learning to swim - you really have to jump into the water and get wet. The Holy Spirit is a great instructor, but he can't make any progress unless we are willing to take the risk of diving in.

But the sad, fundamentally simple word that defines the majority of humanity in taking a dive is “if”. When comes to tolerating our siblings, our neighbors or our co-workers we put an “if”, if only he did not do that, if only he did not say that, if only he did not behave like that…..indefinitely goes on our excuses. We take comfort in the excuse “If only things had been different, and If only people had been different.” But things do not need to be different. People do not need to be different. But we need to be different.

There is a story about a man who had a huge boulder in his front yard. He grew weary of this big, unattractive stone in the center of his lawn, so he decided to take advantage of it and turn it into an object of art. He went to work on it with hammer and chisel, and chipped away at the huge boulder until it became a beautiful stone elephant. When he finished, it was gorgeous, breath-taking.

A neighbor asked, "How did you ever carve such a marvelous likeness of an elephant?" The man answered, "I just chipped away everything that didn't look like an elephant!"
If we have anything in our life right now that doesn't look like love, then, with the help of God, let’s chip it away. Let’s chip away anything that does not look like Christ’s love on the cross + the love that reflects the Father’s love to the human kind and the love that Jesus had for his fellow beings.