Thoughts for the Day

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard version)

Thoughts

This passage in Matthew's Gospel, and the ones preceding, show us the Pharisees and the Sadducees trying to catch Jesus out. Matthew's Gospel shows us how first the Pharisees try to trap Jesus into a snare over tax (Matthew 22.15-22). When he evades this, then the Sadducees take over and attempt to entangle Jesus in an issue about a widow marrying seven brothers in turn as each one dies (Matthew 22.23-33), and on silencing them, the Pharisees step forward once again to ask which of the Commandments is the greatest?

The Sadducees and Pharisees were customarily at odds with one another. The Sadducees were a priestly sect that flourished until the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans. The High priest was selected from their ranks, and their concern was all about the Temple and its worship. For them the Torah (the first five books of our Old Testament) held the only Law. The Pharisees on the other hand embraced not just the Torah but also the oral law with its thousands of rules that answered questions like "What was work?" or "What made a person unclean?" They were a small but powerful lay group who fervently believed the oral law had as much validity as the written law, and who tried to insist on people obeying it.

Now think of the simplicity of Jesus' answer to the Pharisee as to which law was the most important. Paraphrased, he says, there are only two laws only:

1. Love God.
2. Love everyone.

If we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul then we shall love our neighbour as well, and break none of God's Commandments. Alright, we're human and we shall need to confess, but we can also try to live up to Jesus' commands to love God and to love others!

Almighty God,
teach us to love You as You deserve,
with all our heat, soul and mind.
May we respond with every fibre of our being
to Your call,
and allow Your love
to spill over into the rest of our life,
encouraging us to respond
to those around us with love.
When we fail forgive us,
and help us to try again.
Amen.