Matthew 22:34-46
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
“The son of David,” they replied.
43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’
45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
“Loving Others”
The righteousness Jesus is talking about is the righteousness of love, which is more than being right and doing what I have every right to do. It is being redemptive so that something forgiving and creative and good has a chance to happen within me and between us, and even through us.
To love others begins with loving ourselves. If we don’t little good can happen with us.
A black Methodist minister in Mitchell, SD in the early ‘60’s put it this way:
“When I gets up in the morning and I looks in the mirror;
If I don’t like what I sees, you’re in trouble.”
We are to love others as we love ourselves. That is, to want what is best for them even as we want what is best for ourselves. This means tough love - not doing for them what they must do for themselves as well as tender love - being a helpful hand when they cannot do what needs to be done.
To love others is to act redemptively in their lives. Sometimes it means to say no; sometimes it means to put our lives on the line and suffer, and always it means to love as we have been loved.
The Pharisees were not willing to be loved as God would love them, and live with love as the driving force of their lives. Neither are we!
Martin Niemoeller, a German Pastor from the World War II days gets to the heart of what Jesus is saying about loving our neighbor.
“Love our neighbor in place of, instead of yourself.
In other words, change places with your neighbor...
letting the other one enter the space where our love is.”
This we can only do as we first let God love us!
There is no greater task on the face of the earth then to get people to smile because God loves them. There also is no greater goal then this!
Martin Luther King when asked how he wanted to be remembered: “Let them say, ‘He tried to love somebody.’”
Mother Teresa: ”All gestures of love, however small they be, in favor of the poor and unwanted, are important to Jesus.”
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