One of the scribes now came up and put a question to him,
Which is the first of all the commandments?
Jesus replied,
This is the first.
Listen,
Israel,
The Lord our God is the one Lord,
And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart,
With all your soul,
With all your mind,
And with all your strength.
The second is this.
You must love your neighbour as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
The scribe said to him,
Well spoken,
Master.
What you have said is true,
That he is one and there is no other.
To love him with all your heart,
With all your understanding and strength,
And to love your neighbour as yourself.
This is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.
Jesus,
Seeing how wisely he had spoken,
Said,
You are not far from the kingdom of God,
And after that no one dared to question him any more.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
I think this is one of my absolute favourite readings.
Because in this we find the crux of what I believe it means to be a member of the white-robed monks of St Benedict.
In that the commandments that we try and live and try and emulate of Christ are those two of loving God and loving our neighbours and loving every person and every being.
Not all these rules that we are given and all these extra commandments and conditions that if you love God in a different way than is prescribed in our books,
Then you are going straight to hell.
If you love one another in a way that is different to what we prescribe,
You are going straight to hell.
And that is unfortunately where many of us find ourselves with these ideas of I am not worthy of the love of God because I do things not written in some law book.
I express my love in a way that is different to what men have said.
But here we see that Christ says,
Love God and love each other.
And it is very interesting that the scribe asked him this question and then afterwards nobody did ask him anything else.
So what does it say to me and to all of us?
I think maybe that scribe came in to catch Jesus.
We see that written over and over.
They tried to catch him and they wanted to find ways of saying that your interpretation of the law is wrong.
Your interpretation of what Moses brought down from God is wrong.
And yet every time Jesus found a way to show them up.
But not just show them up also,
He taught them a lesson.
And I think many times those scribes went home with a different view of the law because Christ's understanding of the law was perfect.
I don't think he was a student of the law at that time anymore.
Because he was the embodiment of the fulfillment of that law.
And we can go on and talk about that on a very academic point of view.
And it will keep us busy for quite a while.
And it's a beautiful discussion I believe that one can have.
But what does that mean to us today?
That Christ was the perfection of that law.
And then the theme of today that Christ being the priest of the covenant.
Jesus Christ came to change our interpretation of the law.
He came to show us that we had maybe lost our way very far.
And maybe I think it's time that Jesus comes again to show us how far we've strayed from the law.
From the commandments.
And only those two commandments love God and love one another.
I found it quite upsetting and disheartening to see how people stand at the podium or at a lectern.
And under the pretense of love they hate and they spew hate.
And they spew dissociation from each other.
And disconnect.
And that is completely not what Christ said.
Christ said love God and love one another.
So who are we then to come and say,
You offer mass with shoes,
I offer mass without shoes.
You're going to hell.
Who are we to say that the way that you express love,
The fact that you can love somebody that I don't understand necessarily,
It is wrong.
And then we come with two questions.
The people who are doing that.
And I think it's human to do that.
It is human to feel disconnected from each other.
And that brings up fear.
And because we are not the same,
We misjudge,
Or we judge,
And we mistrust.
Love God and love one another.
And love them as ourselves.
Which is another whole exploration and a tangential thought.
But what if we combine those two also?
What if we start seeing,
And this theme is coming up more and more,
And almost every mass I celebrate,
God shows me this.
That you only think you are one.
You only think that you are separated from the world and from each other.
You only think that this body is where it ends.
And you forget that I reside inside of you.
And I reside in each one of you.
And I reside in each living being.
So,
What if we combine love God and love our neighbour,
And we say love God in our neighbour?
How dare we then not show respect and show compassion?
I'm going to pray the song in praise of compassion later.
How can one not?
Dare is maybe the wrong word,
Because that's a judgement then from my part.
But how can you not love if you are aware of the fact that the God that resides in you is the same God that resides in every other being?
And once we can start doing that,
And once we can start recognising God inside of each other,
I think often times we can then just take that deep breath and say,
Okay,
Lord,
What are you trying to tell me through this person?
Why am I being triggered by this person's action?
What is the message?
Because those interactions are important.
God doesn't bring random people together.
God has a plan with everybody.
So,
If somebody triggers me,
Then I need to ask myself,
Lord,
What do you want me to know from this?
And if you can do that,
And you can say to the person,
I love God in you,
Namaste.
I honour the God inside of you.
Then those triggers almost don't matter anymore.
Then they become lessons.
And it's easy to stand here and say that.
I spoke earlier about lectern,
Standing at the lectern and spewing stuff.
It is really easy to stand here and to judge and to want to seem like a sage.
And when you go out into the world,
It's completely a different story,
Because people trigger us.
But what if we start just trying?
And in this week,
I would like for everybody just to try and recognise every person that you see as an expression of God.
Amen.
