You just have to love them

 

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.

Matthew 22:34 - 40

I recall my grandmother Elsie once saying of her relatives, 'You don't have to like them, you just have to love them.' That pretty well summed up her view on the great commandment. This also carries a certain weight when you have adolescents or long-needed-to-be-gone adult children still at home.

Palestine had a long history of being occupied by foreign powers: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians and Romans. Each of these powers brought change both subtle and radical, but nevertheless enriching (or debasing) the culture and religious life of its inhabitants. By Jesus' time the Sadducees - who represented a privileged, priestly, aristocratic-like group. They were more Hellenised, open to share (political) power with their overlords. They interpreted Mosaic law (and in particular the requirements of Levitical purity) with a rigid literalism. Indeed, the Sadducees' scriptural canon comprised only the five books of Moses.

Also sharing power on the Sanhedrin but fiercely rejecting secular - and in particular Roman - influence, the Pharisees desired freedom and independence from Rome. They raised tradition and oral law as equal to scripture, though they included in their canon the prophets and the Ketuvim (comprising the psalms and wisdom literature). Their worship was centred on the synagogue where study and prayer took place, in contrast to the Sadducees who still practised ritual sacrifices in the Temple.

The conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans began with the fall of the northern kingdom (of Israel) that had been established by the descendants of Joseph to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and of the southern kingdom (of Judah) to the Babylonians in 600 BCE. As both kingdoms were reinhabited, the Jews detested the mixed marriages and pagan influence on the worship of their northern cousins and neighbours.

All this goes to contribute to this now extraordinary encounter between Jesus and the Pharisee, a lawyer, following hot on the heels of Jesus' response to the Sadducees about life after death. The question put to Jesus is a test at multiple levels: there is the provocation about Jesus' orthodoxy, whether or not he is a literalist; there is the challenge about whether Jesus was aligned with the current practice of applying this command to love one's neighbour (from Leviticus 19) only to fellow Jews. Samaritans were evidently unfaithful, gentiles worshipped pagan gods. By extension, if Jesus were to support their view, would he support the Pharisees against their religious and political enemies?

Jesus' answer is of course unequivocal. Loving God and loving one's neighbour are both sides of the same coin. And Jesus really does mean - love your enemies (Matthew 5:43 - 44).

Since my grandmother uttered those words to me some 50 years ago, I have applied her advice time and again to my relatives and colleagues. I'm rather short on enemies, so I am yet to commit myself to loving them. Give me time.

 

Peter Douglas

SIN IS IN THE AIR!

 

Fr Kevin Bates SM

In this age of euphemisms, you don’t hear sin being spoken about very much anymore. It’s been replaced by softer terms, sometimes by psychological jargon which seem to excuse rather than name. It’s similar to the use of the word “passed” when referring to death. We seem squeamish about embracing the truth of things.

 It’s clear that sin has always and always will be part of the human experience. What sin is however is sometimes less than clear. The Catechism definition that I grew up with goes: “Sin is any wilful thought, word, deed or omission against the law of God.”

This is true to a point but falls short in one important respect. Sin is much more than the breaking of a law. It is fundamentally the fracturing of a relationship, with ourselves, each other and with God. Any law is meant to safeguard these relationships, and while sin may well involve the breaking of a law, it involves first of all the damaging of some of our primary relationships. 

It is connections that are damaged rather than rules that are broken. When we equate sin with the breaking of rules, we run the risk of unfairly judging people who appear to be “living in sin” for whatever reason, when in fact no relationship has been tarnished.

Where might we look in order to see sin in action? Well, one starting place could be for us to look in the mirror! An honest look at our own heart will reveal our judgemental self, our unresolved angers, fears, prejudices and blind spots. Here we may encounter our unwillingness to make a difference to the world around us because we are so caught up in our own small life.

More broadly, we can see the result of human sinfulness in the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor. Here we encounter the lack of freedom, adequate healthcare and education in so many societies. We see the impact of climate change, much of it caused by our own behaviours, personally and as communities.

The greed of large companies surfaces from time to time. Rio Tinto’s reckless destruction of historic aboriginal sites earlier this year brought a strong rebuke from shareholders and a change of policy, albeit too late for the places destroyed. We could hope that BHP’s shareholders respond the same way as their company seems intent on further exploitation without regard to cultural sensitivities.

The sin of corporate greed is often on display and too often goes unchallenged as our desire for dividends clouds our view of massive injustice.

The increasingly fragile nature of the environment is in large measure the result of our own carefree use of resources and garbage disposal practices. For such sins our children will pay a heavy price along with our neighbours in many developing countries 

The school-yard spat that passed for a Presidential debate in the US last week is further evidence of our divided world, our fear of each other which turns to anger and rejection and our inability to negotiate our differences reasonably and justly.

For all these sins we share responsibility.

We can so easily be seduced into thinking that our sin is private and individual. St Paul points out more than once that even the most secret of our actions and attitudes, has its effect on others. Likewise we can focus on one form of sinfulness, such as sexual and other individual sins and think no further.

Jesus gave attention not so much to such matters but more to self-righteousness, hypocrisy, abuse, deception, injustice and exploitation. It was those who made burdens for others who were the target of his moral teachings and parables.

The “plank in our own eye” could be worth visiting so that we deepen our understanding of human sinfulness and play our part then in the releasing of God’s grace.

Sin is in the air, but thankfully, so is grace. It’s up to us to set it free.

Fr Kevin is parish priest of Holy Name of Mary Parish, Hunters Hill, NSW.