Love, Just Love

And one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “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. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” ~Matthew 22:36­–4

I love this teaching, but I also really like what comes right before it. Jesus has just had a lengthy question and answer session with the Pharisees and Sadducees. They’ve been trying to trip him up and confuse him. They start with a question about the lawfulness of paying taxes and then create this complicated scenario about a poor woman with bad luck and lots of dead husbands. Each time they want to prove just how smart they are. I can almost see them huddled together, each adding a new tidbit of information to make the problem more absurd and difficult. It’s like they’re playing an ultimate game of What if, and Jesus keeps beating them!

As a last resort, one scholar pulls out the zinger question. Which commandment is the greatest? These men are looking for a fight. They want to debate the issue. They're caught up in the thrill of the competition and the ultimate desire to be right.

That’s when Jesus replies with the simplest most beautiful response. LOVE. Before anything else, you need to love.

Sometimes I think we play out the role of the Pharisees and Sadducees in our lives. We like to complicate things. We want to be right. We add layers of meaning and degrees of deservedness to our definition of love. We like to sit in circles and debate our responsibilities toward one another. We throw out our own set of What ifs hoping to find a loophole to this love thing. Sound familiar?

“Do I need to love someone if I (and no one else) particularly likes him/her?”

“What about people who clearly don’t deserve my love?”

“Do I have to keep loving someone who doesn’t love me back?”

“What about people who look and act differently, do I need to love them?”

“How can I love someone else if I don’t really love myself?”

We throw out our questions expecting to be justified or pacified, agreed with or consoled. But each time, Jesus looks at us gently and responds. LOVE. Just love, no conditions, no clauses, no amendments, just love.

That’s our challenge today and everyday.

“We are here to love one another in the most radical way possible, without judgment, and to pray that others can love us in the same way."

from Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart

by the Women of Magdalene with Becca Stevens