Message: from Matthew 22:15-46.

Most of you know that Moira and I spent several years working in Guinea-Bissau, west Africa. It’s not a big country: about two-thirds the size of Wales and with about 60% of Wales’s population. As in every African nation, its people come from many different tribes or races, some larger, some small. So, for example, in the far west there are the Papels, with the Balantas clustered to the east. These groups mostly followed their traditional religions, as did the Bijago people on their islands in the Atlantic Ocean. A large group in the north, nominally Catholic, are the the Manjacos; while the eastern half of the country is dominated by the Muslim Fulani and Mandinkas, groups which spread across large swathes of west Africa. Each of these races has its own language and identity; and, when we were there, there was a definite “pecking order” of social status, with the Fulani and Mandinkas at the top looking down at the Balantas at the bottom.

I’d now like to take you back to India in the days of the British Raj. (I’m not endorsing colonialism, simply using it as an example). The expatriate community was relatively small, but everyone knew their place. At the top were members of the Civil Service, then there were those in “business” who must never, ever be confused with those in who dirtied their hands in “trade”; there were also the engineers employed by the railway and, in a class of their own, military men from General to Private Soldier. In this confined society, rank and social position were all-important; woe betide the hostess who sat her dinner guests in the wrong order. How petty it all seems today!

We’ve been to Africa and to India; we’re now going to first-century Palestine; more specifically to Jesus’s encounters with lawyers and scribes who are asking him what seem to be trick questions – I’m sure that you’ve heard many sermons about them in the past. So you’ll know that the question about taxes was asked in order to suss out his political views: was he a nationalist, dedicated to getting the Romans out of Palestine, or a meek collaborationist who would never “rock the boat”. You’ll also know that the ridiculous question about the woman whose husbands kept on dying (was she unlucky or a mass murderer?) was asked by the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the afterlife; so where did Jesus stand on that? To both questions he gave clever answers which any modern politician would be proud of.

None of this seems to have anything to do with the “tribes” I mentioned earlier. But hang in there, you’ll soon see where I’m going! For we now come to the final question put to Jesus: “Which commandment is the greatest?”. To understand what lay behind this apparently simple question, we need some background; this is where the “tribes” come in. For the scribes, one of whom was questioning Jesus, spent a lot of time debating the Old Testament laws (that’s 365 “you shall nots” and 248 “you shall”), deciding which ones were “big” and which were less important. As you can imagine, they didn’t always agree! One school, led by Rabbi Shammai, took a very conservative and traditional view of the Law: it had to be observed literally. Another school, led by Rabbi Hillel, was progressive and believed that the Law had to be reinterpreted for current circumstances. Five other schools of thought lay between these extremes. Christians today have similar debates about the Bible; they can get acrimonious when one group, convinced that its inter-

-pretation is the only correct one, slags off everyone else. We’ve seen this in debates about women’s ordination or gender identity: supposedly loving Christians can get very nasty as they defend their ‘tribe’s’ position.

But all these scholarly schools did agree that the greatest commandment was the first, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”. This was the first part of the Law that young Jewish boys – including Jesus – committed to memory. However, when it came to which commandment was the second greatest, the Rabbinic schools most certainly did not agree! For the traditionalists, it was “Keep the Sabbath”; for the progressives, it was “Love your neighbour”,  ranked only seventh by the conser-vatives. All this means that Jesus was definitely stating that he had come to reinterpret the Jewish Law; and of course we often read of him saying, “It is written … but I say to you”. Jesus went further than even Rabbi Hillel and his followers; this would eventually lead Paul, originally a strict Pharisee, to say that new Christians didn’t have to follow the Jewish Law at all, only obey its principles. Mind you, that was a view that many in the early Church struggled to accept.

So the question, “Which is the greatest commandment?” was loaded. The scribe (about who we know nothing, but can suspect of taking a traditional view of things) was trying to find out which “tribe” Jesus belonged to; to put it another way, he was trying to label him or pin him down – which is something we often do when we meet someone new. But Jesus refused to be pinned down. Indeed, when he said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me”, he was actually saying, “Don’t follow the teaching of any of the Rabbis, don’t yoke or tie yourselves to them. Allow me to be your teacher, listen to me and follow me. Their yokes of law-keeping can be demanding but mine is not”. Or is it? For we know he also said, “Deny yourselves and take up your cross daily”.

All this has, I hope, been interesting. But it’s also been a bit academic, so what we need to do now is think about what Jesus meant by his summary of the Law, what principles which should govern the lives of his followers. For while they appear to be clear and simple; they also seem to be impossible and unattainable.

What I think we need to see is that there are three “loves” mentioned here, not two. For we can slightly recast Jesus’s words like this: “Love God with all your heart and soul and mind; and love your neighbour as much as you love yourself”. In other words, although we must love both upwards (that is, to God) and outwards (to our neighbours – we know who they are from both the parable of the Good Samaritan and the way that Jesus got alongside the outcasts of society), we do not neglect inward love for ourselves. We’re not being told to say that we are the worst sinners or the most useless people who have ever lived, we’re not being asked to do ourselves down. No; we esteem and care for ourselves in the same way that we respect and serve our neighbours – both stemming from our love of God, which must come first.

You may remember that in last week’s message I asked how it was possible for rejoicing and love to be commanded. I said that we weren’t dealing with feelings here but a conscious act of will. Douglas Hare, a Canadian theologian, makes things clear: “In our age when the word ‘love’ is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that God demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbour, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbour is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously”. Or, as the apostle John bluntly put it in his letter, “Let us love one another, because love comes from God … Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love … If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars”.

Well, we’ve gone a long way from those “tribes” I mentioned when I began. Or have we? I ask because so many people in our world love to gather themselves into groups, ferociously committed to each other but unwilling to reach out to others or even hating them. Jesus showed that he had no time for such cliques and divisions; Paul, too, said that all believers are “one in Christ Jesus”. As we love God – far less perfectly, I’m sure, than we ought to – so his love should flow from us to our neighbours, however like or unlike us, how likeable or even repellent, they may be. That’s a big ask; can we, with God’s help, do it?