“And Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is, “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” This is the first commandment; and the second is like it, namely this, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” There is none other commandment greater than these’.” (Mark 12. 29-31)
Last Sunday, Harvest Thanksgiving, Fr. Peter well
reminded us of the message contained in the Gospel reading appointed for “The
Blessings of Harvest”; said reading being that, even as we give thanks to God
for earthly abundance at harvest time, it is the sustenance of our souls that
is of paramount importance. And, of
course, it is Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, Who, in the Sacrament of the
Altar, gives us that spiritual sustenance.
There is a twofold reason why we participate in the
celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the Communion of the Body and Blood of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I say reason,
singular, as it is not really possible to separate the two: on the one hand, to
participate in the Eucharist is to be obedient to His direct commandment to “do
this in remembrance of Me;” and on the other hand, to participate in the
Eucharist is to satisfy the need and desire to partake of Him as the Bread of
Life, which, in a sense is also being obedient to His teaching that we must so
partake of Him to be recipients of His gift of eternal life.
Obedience to God’s commandments and teaching. Surely obedience is one of the aspects of
loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.
It has been observed quite often by all of the
priests in this parish, and I daresay everywhere, that the Summary of the Law
rolls off the tongue so very easily, just as does the Lord’s Prayer, and
perhaps even such things as the General Confession and others, because we know
them so well. Equally, and possibly
because of the familiarity, we might assume that their respective meanings are
so clear that we might not tend to think as deeply as we should when reciting
them.
This was very topical this past Wednesday evening at
Bible study, where in coming to the passage where Jesus articulates the Lord’s
Prayer in His Sermon on the Mount in Chapter 6 of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, Fr. Peter quite appropriately spent the entire evening on just the
Lord’s Prayer. What do the various
petitions mean in the Lord’s Prayer? Is
our daily bread just plain simple food? the Sacrament of the Altar? or is there
a deeper sense of the spiritual, life-sustaining food of the Word of God, Holy
Scripture, and the teaching it contains?
What does it really mean when we apparently ask God, “lead us not into
temptation” when, at face value, such behaviour is utterly inconsistent with
His character as we understand it otherwise?
As short as it is, as brief as are the individual
petitions in it, that prayer that our Lord and Saviour taught us to pray is so
comprehensive that several sermons could be preached on it alone.
At the end of the particular passage in Matthew,
Jesus presents a very brief commentary on one part only of the Lord’s Prayer,
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive
you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6. 14,15).
And He elaborates no further, assuming that we all understand just what
that means. Sadly, as C. S. Lewis points
out in Mere Christianity, we all do indeed know what that means, but very few
of us indeed are able to manifest perfect forgiveness to others in our daily
lives. It is also worth noting that
Jesus doesn’t qualify the necessity for forgiveness by stating that we should
only forgive others if they apologize to us first.
In his chapter on forgiveness, in which Lewis begins
by stating that in a previous chapter he had suggested that chastity was the
most unpopular of Christian virtues, he begins his chapter on forgiveness by
altering his suggestion in stating, “in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’
includes ‘thy enemy,’ and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving
our enemies.” It is worth noting that he
wrote this book shortly after the end of World War II, and he poses a question,
“I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a
Jew?”
And he then proceeds to answer the question as if he
were in that very position, “So do I. I
wonder very much. Just as when
Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from
death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to that
point. I am not trying to tell you in
this book what I could do - I can do precious little - I am telling you what
Christianity is. I did not invent
it. And there, right in the middle of
it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are
offered forgiveness on any other terms.
It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be
forgiven. There are no two ways about
it.”
The petition concerning forgiveness, and our Lord’s
warning that we must actually attempt at all times and in all places to forgive
others if we expect forgiveness from God is one of the logical connection points
between the Lord’s Prayer and the Summary of the Law - to love God with all of
our being, and our neighbours as ourselves.
But just as with the Lord’s Prayer, the Summary of
the Law is perhaps too well known, and therefore perhaps similarly too glossed
over when we hear it or say it.
Unlike the Lord’s Prayer, in which Jesus taught us
several petitions - things that we ask of God - the Summary of the Law contains
two direct commandments from God to us.
And, as it states, all of the law and the prophets are neatly
summarized, spring from this summary. If
we believe that to be true, then we should perhaps spend some time in pondering
it as carefully as our Bible study group did the Lord’s Prayer.
At the very beginning, a good thing to be reminded
of when we hear the Summary is that when God commands us to love Him, it is not
because He needs our love. We might
remind ourselves of Bishop Mercer’s sermon on prayer. Our prayers do not tell God something He does
not already know; prayer is not bending God to our wills; our prayers do not
empower God. In those observations, he
was commenting most likely on specifically intercessory prayer, whether on
behalf of others, or even concerning ourselves.
He went on to observe that perhaps the highest purpose of our prayers is
to unite us to the perfect will of God that exists within the Trinity; to share
in the love that binds together the three Persons in One God. That perfect love is beyond our
understanding; yet God wishes us to be partakers of it; thus He commands us to
love Him with every fibre of our being - heart, soul, mind and strength -
nothing held back. Only then do we
experience glimpses of the love that exists in the Trinity. Only then do we begin to become capable of
carrying out the second of the two injunctions - to love our neighbours.
But then we must pause to remember that in Greek
there are four words for the one English word “love.” Certainly the word used in the Greek is not
eros (eros) - physical love such as that between husband and
wife. Neither is it storge (storge) - the affection
that members of a family, brothers and sisters, have towards one another. Some might guess that it would be philos (filos) - brotherly
love such as we feel towards our closest friends. But, no, the word, that almost unique to
Christianity word is agape (agape) - love that gives - which
is to say, love that always puts others before self. To even begin to love God in that sense, we
must always put Him before ourselves. To
love our neighbours with agape, we must always put them before ourselves.
“Aha,” hopefully some are saying, “now I begin to
understand the nature of the commandment.”
But let us not be too hasty.
There are many that would turn around the two injunctions, placing love
of neighbour first, holding that it doesn’t really matter which comes
first. But let us not fall into that
thinking.
Most often, those who would have us reverse the
order, in love of neighbour are thinking only about works of charity. There is no denying that caring for the less
fortunate, is indeed very important, and very clearly one aspect of love of
neighbour. Our Lord made that abundantly
clear both in example and in teaching.
And yet, there are very many people who profess no particular religion
at all who are just as involved and caring when it comes to helping the less
fortunate. And that is actually part of
the distinction. Helping the poor, as we
are commanded to do, is only one aspect of loving our neighbours, and frankly,
it is quite possibly the easiest when it comes to contemplating everything that
the injunction to love our neighbours actually entails. Lewis, in recognizing that forgiveness is a
much, much more difficult component of loving one’s neighbour - which includes
our enemies - separates this other aspect into a chapter entitled “Charity”
wherein he makes the important distinction that Christian charity is, or should
be, all encompassing vs. the type of worldly charity that ends up being
extended only to people that someone likes.
We might think of another Bishop Mercer sermon on
the overall topic of love of neighbour wherein he related an anecdote in which
he asked God in prayer truly to teach him what it means to love his
neighbour. Over the next few months, he
was significantly distracted from his attempts to learn by an absolute
curmudgeon who had moved in next door, and was making life quite miserable -
until the good Bishop suddenly realized, “Oh, love that neighbour.”
Here again we come to that very tight bond between
this commandment and the Lord’s Prayer.
We must forgive others, the unlovable, those who have wronged us, those
whom we perceive to have been rude to us, those who cause us for whatever
reason to become angry; and, not only must we forgive them, as Jesus says we
must in His only comment on the Lord’s Prayer, in order truly to satisfy the
second of the injunctions in the Summary of the Law to love our neighbours, we
must place them ahead of ourselves, agape, Christian love. It is a commandment, not an option.
Some might ask, “But placing others ahead of
ourselves doesn’t seem to be consistent with “love thy neighbour as thyself”
which seems to suggest a more equal distribution of agape. Lewis again is quite marvellously blunt in
his presentation of this point. In
summary, he observes that we all love ourselves far more than we should,
especially when we (and we all should) contemplate the unlovable things we do
and the unlovable way in which we often behave.
Without really thinking about it, we are always forgiving ourselves; God
asks us to love our neighbours the same way.
One important thing to note: it is sadly missed by
very many people, even, or we might observe especially by Christians, that
misunderstandings, wrongs, rudeness and such are not just a one-sided
affair. How many of us, or rather should
I ask, is there any of us who, as the innocent person being wronged, behaves
with absolute courtesy towards the perpetrators of the wrong? Even if we don’t manifest outwardly anger or
resentment, is there any of us who is so full of grace that we don’t harbour
bad feelings is some sense? In that
situation, both parties need to offer and to receive forgiveness, not just the
original perpetrator. It is bad enough,
according to our Lord if we haven’t forgiven someone their trespasses, either
real or perceived; it is only made worse if we are carrying around very un-agape-like
feelings towards them as well. Proudly
maintaining that we don’t need to forgive them if they don’t apologize, we miss
our Lord’s point that, in any such situation, God will not forgive us.
These often very unhappy aspects of interpersonal
relationships and the attendant command of loving our neighbour are much more
difficult than caring for the poor. It
is quite possible to care for the poor without any perceived help from God;
but, for most of us, it is frankly impossible to love the unlovable - agape,
putting them before ourselves - without God’s help. Thus, the reason why we must never fall into
the thinking that love of God can somehow be secondary. It is paramount; that is why it is the first
commandment. Without it, we can only
scratch at fulfilling the second commandment to love others. In offering ourselves, our souls and bodies
in love to God, we become in some small measure a partaker of the love that
binds together the Three-in-One, wherein the love that exists within the
Trinity is returned to us. Only then,
when the Divine Love is thus manifested in us do we begin to acknowledge that
it is in fact God’s love, not ours, that the world sees in what the world
perceives to be us loving our neighbours.
“Which is the first commandment of all?”
ANNUNCIATION,
OTTAWA 2006 CLRK