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The Love That Holds Everything Up
Good morning, brothers and sisters. One Sunday, the pastor finished a series on marriage. At the end of the service, he was giving out small wooden crosses to each married couple. He said, “Place this cross in the room in which you fight the most, and you will be reminded of God’s commandment of love, and you won’t argue as much.” One woman came up after the service and said, “You’d better give me five crosses.”
 Today a lawyer asks Jesus a trick question, and Jesus answers in about thirty words. The question is: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” It sounds like a theology exam. In fact, the Pharisee is asking something every one of us has asked, usually in a quieter way: With so much to do, so many rules, so many demands, what actually matters most?
Jesus does not give a list. He gives love, and then he gives the same love a second face. “On These Two Commandments Hang All the Law and the Prophets”
The setting matters. This is Holy Week’s Tuesday. The chief priests, the Herodians, and the Sadducees have each tried to trap Jesus. Now the Pharisees send an expert in the Law. Matthew says he asked, “to test him.”
By now, Matthew’s readers know exactly what the word means. This is not an honest search for truth. The Pharisee is not seeking wisdom. He is attempting to trap Jesus into saying something that can be used against him. 
So let's now return to the question itself.  The Pharisee asks Jesus, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” But before we can appreciate Jesus' answer, we first need to ask what the word "Law" means in this context. Jesus is not referring simply to a collection of legal rules. He is referring to the Jewish Scriptures, which are known as the Tanakh (תנך). Christians usually call these same books the Old Testament, although the books are arranged in a slightly different order.
The name Tanakh comes from three Hebrew letters. Ancient Hebrew was originally written using only consonants and, unlike English, it is read from right to left. The first letter is T, the Hebrew letter Tav (ת), which stands for Torah, the first section of the Scriptures, תורה. The second is N, the Hebrew letter Nun (נ), which stands for Nevi'im (נביאים), the Prophets. 
Although today the Tanakh is often bound into a single volume, like a Christian Bible, it is actually a collection of books or scrolls. The Torah contains five scrolls, the Nevi'im contains eight, and the Ketuvim contains eleven.  When Jesus speaks of "the Law", however, he is referring specifically to the Torah, the first of these three sections. 
The Torah is also known by its Greek name, the Pentateuch. The word comes from the Greek πέντε (pente), meaning "five", and τεῦχος (teuchos), meaning "scroll" or "book". The five books of the Torah, or Pentateuch, are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
When we hear the word "Law", we naturally think of rules and regulations. But the English word "Law" does not fully capture the richness of the Hebrew word Torah. Torah is not simply a collection of rules. It is God's instruction for living well. It shows us how to aim our lives, how to stay on course, how to hit the bullseye. So, when a Pharisee asks Jesus, "Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?", what is he really asking?
Jewish teachers had long recognized that the Torah contains a vast number of commandments governing almost every aspect of life. A later rabbinic tradition counted 613 commandments: 365 prohibitions and 248 prescriptions. Although that tradition is recorded centuries after the time of Jesus, it may well preserve a way of thinking that was already familiar in his day. Together, these commandments regulated everything from worship and sacrifice to food, clothing, agriculture, business, family life, ritual purity, justice and relations with one's neighbour.
 If the Law contains hundreds of commandments touching every aspect of life, asking which commandment is the greatest is a perfectly natural question.
Jewish teachers also looked for passages of Scripture that summed up the whole Torah.  One famous story concerns the great Rabbi Hillel, who lived shortly before the time of Jesus. A Gentile approached him and challenged him to teach the whole Torah while standing on one leg. 
Hillel accepted the challenge. He replied, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” Hillel had been asked to sum up the whole Torah. 
The Pharisee also asks Jesus a question about the Torah: "Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”Jesus begins with words every Jew knew by heart, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." These words form part of what Jews call the Shema (ׁשְמַע).  That is the opening word of Deuteronomy 6:4, and it means "Hear"—Hear, O Israel.  Observant Jews recited the Shema every morning and every evening. No words of Scripture were more familiar. 
Jesus then joins to it a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
So when Jesus quoted two commandments, one from Deuteronomy and one from Leviticus, he was not saying anything that his listeners had not heard countless times before. The novelty is in his placing these two commandments together—love for God and love for neighbour—revealing that they are in fact inseparable and complementary, two sides of the same coin.  You cannot love God without loving your neighbour, and you cannot love your neighbour without loving God.”This is what makes Jesus' answer so profound. He is not simply choosing one commandment over another. By placing love for God and love for neighbour side by side, he shows that the whole Law is held together by these two great commandments. Every other commandment ultimately finds its meaning in them.
But that immediately raises another question. When Jesus commands us to love God and to love our neighbour, what exactly does he mean by "love"? It is one of the most familiar words in the Christian vocabulary, yet perhaps one of the least understood.  So, let us have a closer look at that word “love.”
Today, the term ‘love’ has become one of the most frequently used and misused words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings. There is a vast semantic range of the word “love.” That is certainly true of the way we use the word in the English language. Someone can say, “I love playing sport. “I love my country. I love ice cream. I love my sister; I love my brother. I love you. I love God. I love my parents; I love my children. I love my pet dog. I love going to the movies. I love my job. I love my friends.  That one English word, “love,” covers a vast range of experiences, relationships and feelings.
“We need to ask,” “are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?”  I think we would have to answer that the word “love” is certainly being used to designate very different realities. Loving ice cream is a totally different human experience from loving my children, my husband or my wife.
When we hear the English word "love," we usually associate it with feelings. The New Testament, however, was written in Koine Greek, the everyday Greek of the first century. In Koine Greek, four principal words can be translated as “love."  Let us look briefly at each of them.
There is ἔρως (erōs). This is love as desire and attraction: the longing that draws us towards what we find beautiful or good, towards that which we do not yet possess. This word does not appear in the New Testament, and that absence is significant. The love revealed in Jesus does not begin with a lack of any kind. God is not drawn towards us because something is missing in God. God's love begins from fullness, not need. It moves outwards in giving, not inwards in grasping.
Then we have στοργή (storgē). The word refers to the natural affection found within a family: between parents and children, or between siblings.  Although the noun itself does not appear in the New Testament, the reality it describes is clearly recognized and valued.
There is φιλία (philia) and the related verb φιλέω (phileō). These words refer to the love of friendship, warmth and personal attachment. Both the noun and the verb appear in the New Testament. John's Gospel uses this word to describe the affection that Jesus has for Lazarus. It names real closeness and tenderness, the kind of love that grows out of familiarity and shared life. Precisely because φιλέω (phileō) normally presupposes affection and personal attachment, it is not the word used in the great New Testament commands to love our neighbour or to love our enemies. Those commands require a form of love that does not depend on attraction or emotional closeness.  
So while φιλέω (phileō) names something genuine and important, it is never used when the New Testament commands us to love. Whenever the New Testament commands us to love God, to love our neighbour, or to love our enemies, it uses ἀγαπάω (agapaō).
And that brings us to the word Matthew uses in today’s Gospel: ἀγαπάω (agapaō). The noun ἀγάπη (agapē), the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō), and the adjective ἀγαπητός (agapētos) — what we might call the ἀγάπη (agapē) family — occur about 320 times in the New Testament, and at least one member of the family is found in every book of the New Testament.
Unlike the language of friendship or affection, ἀγαπάω (agapaō) does not necessarily depend upon emotional warmth or personal attachment. In both the Septuagint and the New Testament, it can refer to an attitude and a mode of action rather than simply an emotion. It is love shown in deliberate action: seeking the good of the other, acting faithfully towards them, treating them according to what God requires rather than according to how one happens to feel.  That is why Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” is rendered with ἀγαπάω (agapaō) in the Septuagint, and why Jesus’ command to love our enemies uses the same verb.
The point is not that this love is colder or morally superior. It is that this is the kind of love that can be commanded. It can be lived out even when affection is absent. Indeed, it is precisely in such circumstances that its true character becomes most apparent.  A person can forgive, refrain from vengeance, act justly and pray for another’s good without feeling warmth or closeness towards that person. That is why, whenever the New Testament commands us to love, it uses the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō).
We can now return to Jesus’ answer. When Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, he is not commanding us to experience a particular emotion. He is calling us to a way of life.
To love God is to order our lives around him, seeking his will above our own. To love our neighbour is to seek their good, to act justly towards them, to forgive them, to show them mercy, and to treat them with the dignity that belongs to every person created in the image of God. None of that depends upon whether we happen to feel affection at a given moment.   
 Jesus commands us to love our enemies. He is not asking us to like them, or to admire them, or to feel warmly towards them. He is asking us to refuse hatred, to reject revenge, and to seek their good, even when it is costly. Seen in that light, Jesus' answer is not simply one commandment among many. It is the key that unlocks the whole Law. Every commandment ultimately asks the same question: in this situation, what does genuine love require? That is why, as Jesus says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
We should be careful not to make the Pharisees into cartoon villains. The man who asks the question is a serious student of Scripture, and the answer Jesus gives is itself taken from the Jewish Scriptures. Jesus isn’t replacing the Law with something new. He is showing us its heart, in the same tradition his questioner loves. When we hear this Gospel, the question is not “What was wrong with them?” It is “Where am I testing God instead of loving him?”
Just before Christmas, there was a boy who was wandering through a shopping complex. He was admiring the colourful display of the Christmas gifts. A lady closely watched him moving from one shop to another. Realizing the boy's poverty, she took him inside the shop, showed him the Christmas tree and explained the meaning of Christmas. “God loves us,” she said, “And to save us from our sins. He was born in a manger as a baby.” Then she bought him a set of new clothes and a pair of shoes, along with some Christmas gifts, a candy and some refreshments. The little boy was thrilled. As she led him out of the shop, he looked at her and asked her, “Are you God?” “No,” she replied, “I am only one of His children.”– “Ah!” said the boy, “I knew that somehow you were related to Him.” 
It is an anxious season in our province. Many of us will spend this week scrolling through arguments about why some candidates lost elections. The Gospel asks a different question than the one our feeds ask: not “Who is right?” first, but “Who is my neighbour, and what do they need?” Truth matters, justice matters, and citizens should vote with a well-formed conscience. But love is not one of the things that hangs on politics. Politics, at its best, hangs on love.
Every parish has a neighbour to love: the family behind on rent, the elderly parishioner who can’t drive to church, the immigrant family learning English, the community that decides to choose Sunday as a day to hold an event which they expect us to attend. Love of neighbour is rarely dramatic. It is usually urgent and local, and it usually has a deadline of today. Jesus asks us to see every human life as a neighbour to love: the unborn child and the mother who is afraid, the person with a disability, the sick, the elderly, the prisoner, the migrant, the person in despair. Each is someone God hears when they cry out.
So this week, ask Jesus which idols need to come down. Then look across the street. There is a porch light still on, a walk nobody has shovelled, a neighbour who does not want to be a bother. Go and knock.
Once a British journalist visited Kolkata, India, to see the works of the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa. He went to their old-age house at Kali-ghat Temple and watched an attractive young Nun dressing the wounds on a man with gangrene in his leg. The journalist was appalled by the very sight of the wound, but at the same time he was full of admiration for the young nun who seemed to show no disgust as she was cleaning the suppurating wound. “I wouldn’t do that for £1,000,” said the journalist. “Neither would I,” said the Nun, “I do it for love.”
So let us leave this place determined not merely to speak about love, but to practise it. Let us love God through our worship and obedience. Let us love our neighbours through compassion, justice, generosity, and respect. Let us build a Church that recognizes the gifts of its members and walks alongside its wider community. If someone were to judge the depth of our love for God by the way we treat our neighbours, what would they discover?
May God grant us the grace not merely to know the greatest commandment, but to live it.
May our love for God transform our hearts.
May our love for our neighbours shape our relationships.
And may our life together as the Church become a faithful witness to the Kingdom of God in the world.
Amen.f