"Love as the Answer to a Divided World"

On Sunday 25th October, our Lay Worship leader gave us this homily based on the lectionary readings of the day.

Readings:

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18

· Matthew 22:34-46 ·

I suspect that many of us in this room know what it's like to be a foreigner. To be the person whose accent gives them away, who misses the references, who sometimes feels quietly judged by a look, a tone, a form to fill in. Living abroad — even in a country we love — teaches us how quickly people sort one another into "us" and "them." And in recent years, that sorting has become the great sickness of our age. We are, we're told, the most connected generation in history. And yet we may be among the most divided. It's not for lack of information or technology. It's a lack of love — or rather, a lack of understanding about what love actually means.

Our Old Testament reading was from Leviticus 19 which is sometimes known as the “Holiness Code” – there is, within this chapter, various commandments about how the Israelites are to live. The passage we heard comes from the beginning of this chapter, and it starts with the commandment “be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”. This sounds really abstract – you can imagine the Israelites looking at each other as this was recounted to them, thinking “Yes, but what does that actually mean?” But it soon gets to the nitty-gritty as we learn what true holiness looks like in God’s terms.

Justice without favouritism, honest speech, and active love – not simply avoiding hatred but calling out wrongdoing and forgiving others rather than nursing a grudge. In short, loving your neighbour as yourself.

Here we see love as a command – it’s not something touchy-feely. It is solid, and we are told what it looks like. It governs everything we do and that we are called to be in those places where divisions are seen today – in workplaces, in neighbourhoods, in relationships. Love is a command.  It’s not a bit of sentimentality, something that it’s nice to do until things get sticky between you and other people. Rather, it is demand of holiness itself: our relationship and life with God shows up in how we treat one another.

In the Gospel text we see how Jesus is tested by the Pharisees with the seemingly innocent question “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” – which of the 613 laws and commandments will you choose, Jesus? And which can we trip you up on? But Jesus is not to be caught out. Instead he joins two texts from the Torah, Deuteronomy 6:5, Love God with everything you are and have, with Leviticus 19:18 You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Two texts fused into one command.

And then, not giving his questioners time to breathe, Jesus goes on the offensive, asking them, “Whose son is the Messiah?”  and he soon ties them in knots, pointing out that if David calls the Messiah Lord, then the Messiah must be more than a descendant of David. For us, who know Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, we know that Jesus is Lord and that he is both the interpreter and interpretation of the law.

The point that Jesus is making here is that it is not possible to love God without loving your neighbour, and that you cannot truly love your neighbour without God. As one commentator said “The two loves are one movement. Division in the world is, at its root, a rupture in this double love”

The causes of tension and division that we are warned against in Leviticus are still rife in our world today – we judge people by their party or class or label before we know them. How often do we hear people clumped together and judged as “migrants”, or “MAGA”, or “Muslim” — labels we reach for without ever asking who's underneath them? —How often do we lap up stories on YouTube or Facebook (or wherever the cool kids go) about our neighbour’s mishaps or errors? How often do we see resentment nursed in private exploding into vengeance taken in word or deed? The warnings given to the Israelites about two and a half thousand years ago are still relevant today. And the commandments given by Christ about 2,000 years ago are still to be the tenets by which we should be living.

But what does this mean for us today, sitting in the pews in Christ Church? For some of us, it might look like speaking of our opponents – political, personal, or workplace-based – as we would wish them to speak of us. And this includes online, where anonymity can make fierce warriors of us all. With the political upheaval in France, in the USA, in the UK, this can be difficult, because tensions are running high, but it is what God commanded.

For some of us it will mean we pray over and try to repair one broken relationship this week. We might make that phone call, make that apology or confession, refuse to pass on or revel in gossip about another person. This can be difficult, especially in a group situation, but it is what God commanded.

Or perhaps it means resisting the urge to lump people into groups – “them”, “migrants”, “the homeless” – and generalise about them, but rather trying to see the individual, to understand what brought them to this place. Our neighbour is always a person, not a category. This can be difficult, but it is what God commanded.

And so, this week, I invite each of us to choose one — just one. The relationship you've been nursing a grudge over. The group of people you've been talking about rather than to. The neighbour, French or English-speaking, churched or unchurched, whom you have quietly filed under a label instead of learning their name. One act of love across one line. Not because it will fix the world. But because it's what God commanded, and because holiness is not our achievement — it is our participation in the love of Christ, who loved his enemies all the way to the cross.

This is what we see whenever we celebrate the Eucharist together: bread broken and shared among people of a dozen nations and histories, reconciled by one Lord. The world will not be healed by winning arguments. It will be healed by those willing to love across the lines. "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" — and holiness has a face: the neighbour beside you, and the Lord who first loved us. Go, then, and love as you have been loved.

***

Lord God, you have told us to be holy as you are holy,and you have shown us that holiness has a face:in the neighbour beside us, and in your Son, who loved his enemies to the cross.

We confess how quickly we sort and label one another,how easily our love falls short of your command.Forgive us, and strengthen us.

Give us courage this week to love across the lines —to speak well of those who speak poorly of us,to mend what we have let grow cold,and to see your image in every person we would rather file under a name.

Not by our own strength, but by your Spirit,make us bearers of your reconciling love,through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.