“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
In these two simple commandments Christ has summarised for us what it means to be a Christian.
We are told that loving God means total commitment to God. We must love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind. Every faculty that we possess – our very being totally embraces and seeks a relationship in love with God. When we are smitten with love we can only think of the one we love. We can only think about being with the one we love. We cannot bear to be apart for one second and nothing can stand between us and the one we love. Paul puts this most clearly in his Epistle to the Romans when he says “for I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord”.
However, loving God is not enough. We must also love our neighbour. He who loves his neighbour fulfills the commandments and he who fulfills the Commandments is the one that loves God. You cannot love God without loving your neighbour. John in his first Epistle states “little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth”. In other words we need to love our neighbour in the same way and with the same fervour that our love for God.
Loving God, in comparison loving neighbour, is easy. As Christians it is our love for Christ that draws us together. If we did not love God what are we doing in his house today? If we do not consider ourselves as one of his children then why do we wish to partake in the mystery of the Eucharist? Indeed, like Paul we would all declare that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
And yet we are separated brothers and sisters in Christ by the way that we treat other people. The problem that we have is not with the stranger. How many times do we hear of tragedies in faraway places befalling people that we do not know and how many times do we express passing sorrow. On occasion we may put our hands in our pocket and help financially. Thus by being touched by what happens to a stranger we consider ourselves to be alive towards our neighbour.
The reality however is that the closer the people are to us the more we know them, or think we do. The more we invest time and emotion in them the more we feel let down, slighted, insulted or angry when they do something that we do not like or agree with. Then we will retreat and have nothing to do with the person that causes pain to us. We will justify ourselves by using all sorts of reason to vindicate our attitude to the other. So, when somebody acts against us we react by having nothing to do with the other. Consequently, a child does not speak to a parent who they consider as interfering in their lives, nor does a parent speak to a child who they consider has not met their expectations. A brother does not speak to a brother or sister with a sister because of some reason or another. Families feud and fragment. Historic hurts continue to be revisited and relived. Emotional wounds continue to be picked so they never have time to scar and heal. And the terrible thing in all of this is that each one of us will find justification in the power of our mind and consider ourselves correct – no matter where the truth lies. Indeed the truth has no place as each one of us considers ourselves unjustly hurt by their neighbour. And that is the problem – we all see ourselves as the centre of our existence and each one of us is the judge and jury of the other in a case involving ourselves and the other. Hence it is no surprise that each one of us sees ourselves as being correct in our relationship with our neighbour.
So how can we answer Christ’s call to love your neighbour as yourself? It occurs to me that the first thing we need to do is to determine whether or not we really want to live our lives in Christ. If we genuinely do then we need to follow his teaching. We cannot call ourselves Christian without following Christ. If we accept that we want to follow Christ then we must in Christ overcome our self-centeredness and ask ourselves what would Christ do rather than what we would do. As soon as we ask that question something amazing happens – Christ becomes the centre of our life and we begin to see the world in a different way. We begin to understand that being a Christian means responding to his call. It means loving the neighbour who has caused you hurt and distress. It means having to give up your pride by taking the first step to love. It means embracing humility and obedience towards the word of the Lord. It means trying to live your life in the Lord and the Christian.
Some may say what about the other person? What if we attempt to reconcile ourselves to the other and are rebuffed. What if our attempts are met with derision and ridicule. The answer to that is simple. Reconcile yourself to the other and be rebuffed. Let your attempts be met with derision and ridicule. You have lived your life in obedience to God. You are not letting anything separate you from the love of God. The person that rebuffs you or ridicules you or derides you – they will be answerable to God for the way they have acted. You will be responsible for the way you have acted. We are all free to act as we want. We are free to be in the path of Christ or not. Let not the other person who has rejected the path of Christ put you in danger from straying off the path. If you are rejected then pray that the Lord will enlighten the other so they too can return back to the Christian path.
You will notice that Christ talks of how each one of us can be saved. Save yourself by living in the life of Christ. Be an actor – engage the person that you’re not talking to, or you have a dispute with or who has hurt you today. Do not be a reactor and await the pleasure of the person that you are not talking to or are in disputation with or who has hurt you to take the first step. You may be waiting for ever. You may find that your inaction will cost you dearly. Why take the risk? Act today so you can truly say that you shall love your neighbour as yourself. Amen.