Standing Under the Scriptures
October 30, 2011

“Let us boldly go where we have never gone before.”

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Amos 5.18-24: The prophet shatters any illusions the people may have about the day of the Lord.
 
Matthew 25.1-13: In the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, which concerns his second coming as the day of the Lord, Jesus underlines our need to be prepared.
 
I should explain about these readings.  They are not those appointed for this Sunday but rather next, November 6.  And November 6 itself may be observed here as All Saints’ Day with its own special readings.  The reason that I have selected them is that I am to preach on them on November 6, not here but in St. Mary’s Church (which goes back to the 14th century) in the village of Earl Stonham in the county of Suffolk, England.  And in this connection I am anxious to avail myself of the insights of the class.
 
Our reading last Sunday, Matthew 22.34-46, was notable for including the Great Commandment, aka the Summary of the Law.  Our discussion of it was largely about the second part (You shall love your neighbor as yourself) and its relation to the first (You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind).  But there is something to be said about the first part too.
 
We began with some procedural matters.  In Matthew this passage concerns a part of Jesus’ confrontation with the religious establishment in the temple in the final week of his earthly ministry.  He pronounces the Great Commandment in response to a testing question of a Pharisee, a lawyer.  We noted that the first part of the Commandment, at least, is in the Jewish tradition the Shema’, which goes, approximately, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  This is taken from Deuteronomy 6.5.  The second part is taken from Leviticus 19.18.  So Jesus was not originating these two parts but rather was combining what was already in Scripture.  Nor need he have been the first to do so.  In fact in Luke’s parallel version (10.25-28) it is a lawyer who recites the two parts in response to Jesus’ question, “What is written in the Law?”  This then becomes the occasion for his telling of Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.29-37).  In connection with the Great Commandment, a class member suggested that Jesus was availing himself of an already existing tradition rather than creating a new one, the better to make contact with his hearers.
 
Substantively, we perhaps did not devote as much attention as we should have to the first part of the Commandment.  For in saying that we are to love the Lord our God with all heart, soul, and mind it claims exclusivity for him.  If our love of him is total, it will not leave room for any other love, except as this may derive from love of him.  Thus it warns against devotion to idols, including material things, social position, and the like in which we are prone to put our trust.
 
With regard to the second part and to its relation to the first, I attempted to bring to bear on it Karl Barth’s extensive discussion of just these things in a section of his Church Dogmatics which I had recently reviewed (and which given the complexity of his thought I did not do very adequately).  We began with the question of the relation of self-love to love of neighbor.  Loving him or her as oneself might be taken to mean that we must first love ourselves if we are to love our neighbor properly.  And it has so been taken, and not only in our self-oriented age.  Augustine and Aquinas both gave some support to the notion.  But Barth adamantly opposes it, pointing out as we also noted that nowhere else in Scripture, Old Testament or New, is self-love commended.  On the contrary, the Scriptural view of self accords with that in the Confession which we recite in the Rite I Eucharist: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness….  “  Therefore it would be odd if Jesus were here commending self-love.  Instead he may be taken as calling for one’s neighbor to be regarded as oneself.  A class member pointed to the Old Testament reading for the Sunday, Exodus 22.21-27, as bearing on the question.  It begins, “You shall not wrong an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”  The same principle may be seen operating here: as the Israelites were called to identify with the aliens among them, so we are called to identify with our neighbors, so that they become ourselves.
 
We considered, as Barth did at much greater length, the relation of the two parts of the commandment to each other.  Do they amount to two commandments or are they essentially one?  We agreed that certainly they are not to be separated from each other.  One cannot truly love God without also loving one’s neighbor, nor truly love one’s neighbor without loving God, as chapter 4 of 1 John so eloquently attests: “If any one says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  But then is there no distinction to be made between the two parts?  Barth contended that there is a distinction, one regarding their modes, even while they are not to be separated.   The first, about love of God, pertains to eternity whereas the second, about love of neighbor, pertains to the “between time,” that between Jesus’ resurrection and his second coming, in which we find ourselves.  It is the means given us for living out the first.  
 
On the whole we accepted Barth’s views as casting fresh light on the meaning of love of both God and neighbor.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted
 
P.S.  Although I will be away in England for the three Sundays following this, the class will continue under the leadership B.J. Buracker, who so ably filled in for me during my recent hospitalization and its aftermath.  May the Holy Spirit continue to enliven your discussion of the Scriptures.