Don't trust yourself until the day you die

Mt 22:34-40, Ex 22:20-26

The Almighty Father has been saying the same thing to us since the dawn of time, and Sunday’s readings reminded me of this again.  As for the title of this blog, well, as much as I’d like to take credit, it comes from-in my opinion-one of the greatest Jewish Rabbis, Rabbi Hillel (Hillel HaGadol, Hillel the Elder). Who also is famously quoted as saying, “"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."  Which, if we are paying attention, is the sum up and call to action, of both our Exodus and Matthew readings.

Exodus 22: 20 begins thusly: "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”  It almost always amuses me that God must remind us to be people we needed when we were in hardship.  In fact, all the angst that people have about why bad things happen to good people should be answered right there in this understanding.  Even when we have endured some suffering, after the suffering is over we have to be reminded to treat other people who still are suffering nicely.  Can you imagine how heartless we might be, if we had never suffered at all?  So, I would think that sometimes we endure suffering just so we aren’t insufferable.  Small price, really.  As Catholics, we are taught that there is a redemptive quality to suffering which also makes sense in this context since it seems we need to be reminded not to be neglective jerks to people in pain, which leads us to acting in the obedience of loving one another, and obedience brings us closer to holiness.  Make sense?  I hope so, but I tend to doubt it because people far better and smarter than me have been saying the same things for thousands of years and we still don’t seem to be able to get a hold on this. 

As the Exodus verses go on God gets more detailed and levels more than a couple parental threats, along with trying to make us think about our actions as they could relate to our own lives.  You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your  children orphans.  If we pay attention God is asking for us to protect the most vulnerable people of society at the start of this verse.  He then promises He will intercede if we do.  Then he says there will be consequences if we disobey, and tries to evoke compassion/fear by making us think about our own loved ones in the same situation. 

Continuing in Exodus: "If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people, you shall not act like an extortioner toward him by demanding interest from him. If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."  The same pattern  as the beginning of our reading.  We are told not to do this thing, reminded of compassion and holy fear, told there are potential consequences if we don’t act accordingly. It’s not nuclear-rocket-brain surgery-science, it’s very simple.  Hillel sums it up eloquently in the quote attributed to him at the beginning of my writing, which ties together with our Gospel reading.

The Pharisees (the people who are supposed to know the Torah and Law better than anyone) ask: When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Jesus replies: He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Everything that the Torah had been trying to teach is summed up in that, in the order it needed to happen.  God is love and the origin of love, if we do not place him first then we fail from the start.  We cannot begin to do the second without doing the first, it’s impossible.  The foundation of the second part must come from first loving God.  At the same time, we cannot claim we do the first thing without then doing the second.  That too is impossible.  Loving each other is/should be a natural consequence of first loving God in the way Jesus describes in his answer.  This is why they are the two greatest commandments.  Without these two things everything else is the beating of a hollow gong. 

To sum it up, and explain at last why I titled this writing the way I did, we cannot trust that we will do that every day until our very last, because that’s what it is..a daily choice.  The devil may be in the details, but God is found in this simplicity.  We cannot, apparently, learn once to love God and each other, or our scripture would be just one page with that written boldly in the center.  That’s all we’d need.  Instead, we have the whole of scripture, thousands of books of apologetics, and billions of words detailing it all out so we can make the minute by minute, action by action choice to do those two things.  And we can’t trust that we will or have until we are dead, because that is the living dynamic act of being a saint in training. 

Just some food for thought and prayer…

Here I am, Lord, send me!

Lisa Brandel