30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A-Oct. 29, 2023
Exodus 22: 20-26; 1Thessalonissians 1: 5c-10;
Matthew 22: 34-40
Theme: Love Your God, Love Your Neighbor, And
Love Yourself
Let us first recall the historical
context of our Gospel story. Jesus has been facing a series of questions from
the Jewish religious leaders who were looking for legal evidence to get him
arrested and condemned. Everything started when they questioned Jesus’s
authority (Matthew 21: 23-28) and in response, Jesus told them three parables
in a row. These parables were: the parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:
28-32) that we heard on Sunday, October 1st, the parable of the Tenants
(Matthew 21: 33-43) that was the Gospel reading of Sunday, October 8th,
and the parable of the Wedding Feast (Matthew 22: 1-14) that we read on Sunday,
October 15th. Through these parables, Jesus revealed to them that the kingdom
of heaven was being taken away from them and being given to tax collectors,
prostitutes, and sinners because they failed to believe in him, but the tax
collectors, prostitutes, and sinners welcomed the Gospel, believed in him, and repented.
The reaction of these Jewish religious leaders was to get rid of Jesus whom
they considered a threat to their power. Matthew lined up a series of trapping questions
that they asked Jesus to embarrass him in public and get something legal to
accuse him and have him condemned.
The first question came from the
unholy alliance of the Pharisees and Herodians regarding whether it was lawful
to pay the census tax to Caesar or not. While their question was a trap, they
were amazed by Jesus’ answer. He told them to “repay to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” (That was the Gospel story of last
Sunday. To know the theological interpretation of Jesus’s answer, please see my
homily for that Sunday). Matthew ends this story by saying that they were
amazed at hearing Jesus’s answer and left Jesus.
The second question was that of the
Sadducees. (This story is omitted in the Lectionary of the Sunday Mass). Note
that The Sadducees were part of the leadership in Jerusalem and Judea. They
were members of the powerful priestly party in the time of Jesus. The Jewish
population did not like them because they conspired with the Romans to maintain
their positions of power. Theologically speaking, the Sadducees were known as conservative,
and they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They made up a story
in which a woman, by Moses’s law, ended up marrying seven brothers because all
of them died without giving her a child. Their question to Jesus was to find
out whose wife this woman would be in the resurrection of the dead due to all
seven brothers marrying her. Their intention was to make the belief in the
resurrection of the dead ridiculous and consequently embarrass Jesus in public
(Matthew 22: 24-28). Jesus rebuked them for knowing neither the Scriptures nor
the power of God. The sexual relationships of this world will be transcended as
the risen body will be the work of the creative power of God (See note to Matthew
22: 29, NABRE). “At the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage but are like the angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22: 30). And concerning
the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by
God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is
not the God of the dead but of the living.” (Matthew 22: 31-32). Matthew
concludes this story the same way he did in the previous one by telling how the
crowds were astonished at hearing Jesus’s answer.
The third question is that of the
Pharisees regarding the Greatest Commandment. This is our Gospel passage of
today. Note that, unlike the first trap in which the intention of the Pharisees
and Herodians was to entrap Jesus in speech and obtain legal evidence to get
him arrested and condemned, in the last two tests, their goal was to ridicule
Jesus publicly to have the Jewish population disapprove him.
The sacred author starts our passage by referring
to the previous question of the Sadducees, “Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.” (V. 34, NABRE). This introductory verse
shows that the Pharisees are aware that Jesus Has escaped their traps two times
already. The first time was when Jesus amazed them with their alliant Herodians
and the second time was when Jesus silenced the Sadducees. Keeping all these in
mind, they came again to test Jesus for the third time. It appears to me that
this time they have prepared themselves very well with a very complicated question
in order not to fail again. That is why, they mandated an “expert in the law”
to be the one to question Jesus (v. 35). The question is: “Teacher, which is
the greatest commandment in the Law?” (V. 36, NABRE). The test resided in the
level that for them there could not be one greatest commandment insofar as all
laws were important. In his answer, Jesus has summarized all the laws into two:
the first is “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind.” (V. 37, NABRE). Here Jesus quoted the Jewish famous passage
known as the shema (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5) which to this day is
recited several times a day by pious Jews as the Christians recite the “Our Father’s
prayer.” The second law is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Here Jesus quoted the
“Holiness Code” of Leviticus (Leviticus 19: 18).
Before I analyze these two laws, I
think it is important to point out that it is wrong to think that by
summarizing the Law with the two commandments of love Jesus somehow made the
Law less challenging or demanding. We will understand that Jesus does not make
it easier to fulfill the law; rather, he makes it more challenging because there
are no excuses in love. It is very challenging to live out love for God and
love for our neighbors perfectly.
Let us find out what Jesus means by
his two commands of love. The first command says, “Love your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. The stress is on the
words “all”, “heart”, “soul”, and “mind”. The Greek word for heart is kardia;
it can be understood as the seat of emotions or affections. So, when Jesus
commands us to love God with all of our hearts, he asks us to cultivate our affection
and emotional attachment to him. The “soul” is our spiritual nature. Then, to
love God with all our souls means that we need to seek spiritual union with him,
a personal relationship with God, and intentional discipleship. The “mind” (in
Greek, dianoia) is an intellectual endeavor. So, loving God with
all our minds challenges us to seek to know God, not only using our faith but
also using our intellect. That is why we are all encouraged to attend my Weekly
Bible Study on Sunday’s Gospels (Online and in-person every Friday at 5:00 p.m.
Central time) to learn how God reveals himself to us in the Scriptures[1].
The second command challenges us to love
our neighbors as we love ourselves. This command alludes to what the sacred
author of Exodus teaches us in our first reading. This reading comes from a
larger section of the book of Exodus that Biblical scholars called the
“Covenant Code” (Exodus 20: 22 – 23: 33) which contains a collection of case
law, pronouncements, commands, and prohibitions. The passage that comes
immediately before the Covenant Code talks about God’s appearance on Mount
Sinai when he delivered the Ten Commandments. Because God’s appearance was
accompanied by thunder, lightning, and smoke on the mountain, the Israelites became
afraid to encounter God directly; so, they asked Moses to speak God’s
commandments to them instead. That is why in our first reading passage, Moses plays
the role of a mediator who speaks two of God’s Covenant laws to his people. Both
commandments can be put into a category that today we might call “Social
Justice Teaching’ or, to use Jesus’s language, “Love for our neighbor”.
The first command calls to “not oppress
or afflict a resident alien (…) You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.”
(Exodus 22: 20-21, NABRE). The Hebrew word for resident aliens is ger, which
means stranger, temporary dweller, or sojourner. And note that in the Old Testament
society, the resident aliens are regularly grouped with widows and orphans as
the poorest and most vulnerable. God gave them one reason why they should not
abuse the strangers: “For you were once aliens residing in the land of Egypt.”
(Exodus 22: 20, NABRE). Then God told them about the punishment for those who
would not follow that command, “My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you
with the sword” (Exodus 22: 23, NABRE).
The second command deals with money lending.
Note that in the context of the Old Testament, only the poor people used money
lending because they did not have any other access to financial resources. And
the lenders used to take advantage of them by overcharging them and demanding significant
collateral. In the case of our first reading, the collateral is the cloak which
represents the highest riches that poor people could have as it served as their
bedding at night to protect themselves from the cold. So, God commanded them to
not demand interest when they lend money to the poor and when they take their
cloak as a pledge, they should give them back their cloaks before sunset so the
poor could use them at bedtime (See Exodus 22: 24-26).
Notice how God identifies poor people:
“My people” (v. 24) and “your neighbor” (v. 25). This teaches us that the poor are
God’s people and are our neighbors. In the Biblical language, especially in the
context of our Gospel passage, a neighbor is anyone (near or far away) who needs
our assistance. So, when Jesus commands us to love our neighbors as we love
ourselves, he wants us to know that there are his people (near us and far away
from us) who need our love materially, spiritually, and emotionally. The reason
why we need to show love to our “resident aliens” or “neighbors” is because we
too are “resident aliens” and “neighbors” in front of God and need God’s love.
(Cf. Exodus 22: 20).
In this second commandment, “Love your
neighbor as you love yourself”, there is a third love that many of us do not
pay attention to when we analyze this passage. It is the “love for yourself”. The
model for the love for our neighbors is the love for ourselves. One cannot love
others if the person does not love himself or herself. To love oneself means to
forgive oneself, reconcile with oneself, and give oneself a second chance. Once
we are capable of loving ourselves, then we can do the same to our neighbors.
Jesus is the model of this love for us
to imitate. He has loved his “neighbors” who are you and me. He continued to
love us even to the cross when he sacrificed his life for our salvation. Saint
Paul, in our second reading, speaks of himself as a model as well and he
encouraged us to imitate him and the Lord Jesus. Note that this second reading is
the second half of the Thanksgiving section of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians,
which we started reading last weekend. This
section contains the major themes of Paul’s letter. There are two of these
themes in our second reading passage: “Imitation’ and “affliction”. So, here Saint
Paul calls us to imitate him and the Lord Jesus with joy even in great
affliction (Cf. v. 6). When we do so, we too will become models for our family
members, church members, and other people in our neighborhoods and everywhere
we live to imitate (Cf. v. 7).
So, amid the suffering and trials that
we go through today, let us continue to love God, our neighbors, and ourselves
with joy. May the liturgy of this Mass enable us to become models of love for
others to imitate us. Amen.
Rev. Leon
Ngandu, SVD
[1]
In my Weekly Bible Study program, we study, share, and pray with the Gospel
passage that we hear on Sunday of the same weekend. First, we study the Gospel passage
to understand what the evangelist tried to teach his people at the time he
wrote his passage. This analysis Is called “Exegesis”. Second, we try to know
what our Mother Church wants to teach us today by selecting this Gospel passage
for this weekend. This exercise is called “Pastoral Implication. After studying
the Gospel, we now do the Lectio Divina. This is praying with the
Scripture. We meditate on the Gospel passage, share with our peers what God
speaks to us individually, and pray to God to give us his grace so that we can
live out what he just taught us. If you are interested in joining us every
Friday at 5:00 p.m. Central time, email me at ussbiblicalapostolate@gmail.com
Here is the Zoom link that you can use to participle
to all sessions: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83645165259?pwd=9fXYojZSPWIViJm9iA1SOt6QQJnSHu.1
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