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“It’s Not That Complicated” 

There are few institutions in the world quite as talented at making simple things complicated as the church.  

And I say that with a great deal of affection.  

You can walk into a Session meeting with what seems like a perfectly straightforward question: should we move this table? 

And 45 minutes later, you’ve learned the history of the table, who donated the table, why the table was placed there in 1987, and why moving the table might have implications for the future of the congregation.  

Someone suggests forming a committee.  

Someone else points out that we already have a committee responsible for tables.  

And before you know it, a decision that should have taken approximately 30 seconds, has become an agenda item for next month’s meeting.  

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that churches are the only organizations guilty of this. Families do it. Businesses do it. Governments have practically perfected it. Human beings have an extraordinary ability to take something relatively simple and make it unnecessarily complicated.  

And sometimes, we do the same thing with our faith.  

We get caught up in questions about rules and traditions that we lose sight of what God has been asking of us all along.  

Which brings us to this morning’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel.  

The Pharisees and the Herodians have asked Jesus about his authority. They’ve asked him about paying taxes to Caesar. They’ve challenged him about the resurrection. And now, once again, they come to Jesus with a question. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? 

And Jesus gives them an answer that is frustratingly straightforward.  

Love God. 

Love your neighbor. 

It’s not that complicated. Except, of course, when we actually have to do it.  

Now, to be fair to the Pharisees, their question wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The law of Moses contained hundreds of commandments governing everything from worship and religious observance to relationships, business practices, and the treatment of vulnerable people.  

And for generations, Jewish teachers had wrestled with how those commandments fit together. Were some more important than others? Was there a central principle that could help people understand what God required of them? 

These are legitimate theological questions.  

But Matthew tells us that the Pharisees weren’t simply interested in having a thoughtful conversation about Scripture. They were testing Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he reaches back into the Scriptures they know so well and reminds them of something that has been at the heart of their faith all along.  

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  

And then he adds a second commandment: 

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 

And Jesus says that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. In other words, if you want to understand what God desires from God’s people this is where you begin.  

Love God. Love your neighbor. Everything else has to be understood in light of those two commandments.  

Now I want us to pay attention to the last part of Jesus’ answer. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  

Jesus is saying that everything else God commands depends upon us loving God and our neighbors.  

Think about that for a moment. Why does God command us to care for people who are poor or vulnerable. Because loving our neighbors means caring about their well-being. Why does God command us to worship, to pray, and to remain faithful? Because loving God means allowing our relationship with God to shape the way we live.  

Now, when we hear Jesus tell us to love our neighbors, I suspect most of us think we understand what that means.  

Be kind to people. 

Treat others the way we would want to be treated.  

Try to get along with everybody.  

And those are certainly good places to start. But I don’t know about you, but there are people in this world I find extraordinarily difficult to love. People whose opinions I don’t understand. People whose behavior frustrates me. People who have hurt me or disappointed me. And if Jesus is commanding me to feel warm and fuzzy about every single one of them, I’m afraid I’m going to fall considerably short.  

Fortunately, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is asking of us. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great theologians of the Christian tradition, offers a definition of love that I find particularly helpful. Aquinas describes love as willing the good of another. In other words, love isn’t simply about how we feel toward another person. Love is about our desire for them. To love someone is to genuinely desire what is good for them, and to allow that desire to shape the way we treat them. 

And suddenly, Jesus’ commandment takes on a different meaning.  

Because I don’t have to agree with someone to want what is good for them. I don’t have to enjoy someone’s company to recognize that they deserve to be treated with dignity. I don’t even have to particularly like someone to care about their well-being.  

And I think that’s an important distinction for us to make. Because sometimes loving our neighbor means offering encouragement or lending a helping hand. Sometimes it means taking seriously an elder‘s concerns about relocating a table that every Session since 1987 has gathered around. And sometimes it means establishing a boundary because allowing someone to continue behaving destructively isn’t actually good for them or for us.  

In other words, love doesn’t always look like agreement. It doesn’t always look like making someone happy. And it certainly doesn’t mean allowing ourselves or others to be mistreated. Love means seeking what is genuinely good for another person.  

Now, I want to be careful here, because there is a temptation to hear that definition and immediately start deciding what we think is best for everyone else. Willing someone’s good requires humility. It requires us to listen, to recognize that we don’t always know what another person needs, and to remember their dignity matters just as much as our own.  

Perhaps that’s why Jesus places these two commandments together. Because loving our neighbors requires us to see them as people who belong to God. People who possess dignity not because they’ve earned our approval, but because they have been created and loved by the same God who created and loves us.  

Our love for God cannot be separated from the way we treat the people God loves.  

I think that’s why the final exchange in this morning’s Scripture is so important. After answering the Pharisees’ question about the greatest commandment, Jesus turns around and asks them a question of his own.  

He asks them about the Messiah. Whose son is he? 

When they answer that the Messiah is the son of David, Jesus challenges them to think more deeply about what that means. The Pharisees have been so concerned with asking Jesus the right questions that they’ve failed to recognize who is standing right in front of them. 

They know the Scriptures.  

They know the commandments. 

They know how to debate the finer points of religious law.  

But knowing the right answers isn’t the same thing as recognizing the Messiah. That matters because Jesus hasn’t simply come to give us another set of rules to follow. He has come to reveal the love of God.  

The same Jesus who commands us to love our neighbors is the one who welcomes sinners, touches lepers, feeds the hungry, and offers forgiveness to those who have failed. When Aquinas describes love as willing the good of another, we don’t have to look very far to see what that means. We need only look to Jesus.  

For in Jesus, we encounter a God who doesn’t merely wish us well from a distance. We encounter a God who acts for our good. A God who enters into our suffering, bears the weight of our sin, and through the resurrection opens the way to new life.  

And that is the good news at the heart of this morning’s Scripture. We aren’t commanded to love one another in the hope that someday God might decide to love us. We are called to love because God has already loved us.  

And when we find ourselves struggling to love someone who frustrates us, disappoints us, or sees the world differently than we do, we can remember that the love Jesus commands is also the love Jesus has shown us.  

So perhaps this week, when we encounter someone who is difficult to love, we might ask ourselves one simple question: 

What would it mean for me to seek this person’s good? 

Not because the answer will always be easy.  

Not because we’ll always get it right. 

But because we belong to a God whose love for us is steadfast, generous, and overflowing with grace.  

Love God.  

Love your neighbor.  

It’s not that complicated.  

And, thanks be to God, we don’t have to do it alone. 

Amen.