Proper 25 (30) – Year A

Welcome to the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost. This week’s Gospel takes place during Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem. He has entered the Temple, overturned the money changers’ tables, and been challenged by the religious authorities: “By what authority are you doing these things?” Since then, a series of tests has followed. The leaders ask about paying taxes to Caesar. The Sadducees challenge him about resurrection. Now a lawyer asks, “Which commandment is the greatest?”

At first glance, it sounds like a theological debate. But something much bigger is happening. It has to do with who has the authority to speak for God. 

His answer is familiar: Love God. Love your neighbor. It’s at this point that we expect Jesus to pick the more important of the two. But he insists on keeping them together. There is no love of God apart from love of neighbor. The two rise and fall together. But if we have to pick one, Jesus makes the default position clear. When in doubt, it is the love of neighbor that reveals everything. The Apostle Paul picks up on this after many years of reflection: "For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal. 5:14)

What Jesus is offering is more than moral instruction. It is an anthropological revolution. Jesus reveals a God so deeply identified with humanity that the measure of our love for God is found in how we treat one another — especially the vulnerable, the stranger, and those we are tempted to overlook.

The temptation is always to draw smaller circles around who counts as “neighbor.” Jesus consistently widens the circle, expanding our view of God and ourselves. That, according to Jesus, is what the whole law has been about all along.