Thirtieth Sunday Ordinary

Thirtieth Sunday Ordinary
October 23, 2005

"I love you, Lord my strength... my rock, my fortress" (Psalm 18). "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... love your neighbor as yourself... The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." (Matthew 22: 34-40)

Jesus is again approached by people who want to "trip him up", with a question about "the greatest law". They flatter him with useless titles hoping he will be seduced into saying something he would regret. His response establishes the central principle of Christian life, the "law" of love. This is a revolutionary religious and spiritual concept. Instead of a hierarchy of who or what we should love first, second and third, he places love of God, others and self all on the same level. We cannot love God without loving others; we cannot love others without loving ourselves. The three loves interact, each enabling the other two. The priority is with all of them simultaneously. God is as much within and among us as above and beyond. The choice is whether or not to desire to live our lives based on this law of love.

In actual practice, of course, this becomes a considerably more complicated matter. We are accustomed to thinking that we should love God first, others second and ourselves last. Indeed, many of our theologies and spiritual traditions suggest precisely this. Some of us live much of our lives feeling guilty and inadequate that we cannot make this principle work. We only succeed in demeaning ourselves and feeling profoundly guilty. We can develop a "martyrdom complex", ultimately producing anger and bitterness that all of our efforts to place other people's needs above our own have left us unloved and unappreciated. "I gave up everything for God and other people and got nothing back". Something deep within us seems to rebel against placing ourselves last.

It is true that others, naturally looking out for their own interests will, often without realizing it, either reward us for placing their needs above our own. Other times we may fail to earn their respect regardless of how much we try to do for them. This is a "boundary issue", the tendency to say yes when we should be saying no, or indeed to say no when we should be saying yes. It will feel awkward, selfish and unnatural when we start to reeducate ourselves to be more sensitive to feelings of unfairness and exploitation. We can learn to say no to physical, emotional and verbal abuse, exploitation in employment or misuse of religious authority. We have a spiritual right to ask for help without inordinate strings attached. Spiritual maturity is learning how to love God and others, and ourselves. It does not have to be one or the other. Love should set us free as well as bind us together with ties of mutual support. When it does not, it is a counterfeit of the real thing.