Matthew 22.34–40
A sermon from St Margaret’s Nedlands 25th October 2026
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the Law and the Prophets.”
For a few weeks we are following the lectionary, and today’s Gospel reading is about the time Jesus was challenged to say what was the great commandment.
I was standing at the church door after a service. A new couple greeted me and we talked. They were new in Perth and told me they had visited another church the Sunday before. I was curious. I knew the minister, a wonderful friend, and slightly eccentric brother. I asked how it went. “Odd,” they said. The reading was the same one before us today. “He began his sermon ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ and went on. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’” Well,” the minister said, “you’ve got to love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself.” Long pause, “you’ve got to love God and love your neighbour as yourself. Yes, you’ve got to love God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself. That’s what it says. Well, damn it all, that must be what it means, and if you don’t like it you can ship out. In the name of the Father etc.” End of sermon. I’ve never been able to work out whether he just couldn’t think of anything else to say—or perhaps there could have been wisdom in that sermon,. In any case there are many questions, and more than I can say this morning.
It is not that long since young people in the streets were crying out “make love, not war.” These days they shouting for a global war against Jews. One thing this says to me is that the youth of a nation is easily swayed by emotion. That is because it is not anchored to anything stable, and is easily manipulated by propaganda. Another thing it tells me is that it does not take much to incite humans to hate, even to kill. For a long time we have thought these things far from us, but the taboo on murder which prevailed when a Christian view of things was strong is fading. Someone sees the opportunity to kill a political enemy and seizes the moment. “Love your neighbour as yourself” is not the moral principal which first occurs to the mind. As for “love your enemies”—that is laughable.
We should start by asking who said these words. Jesus of Nazareth! So what? Who is he? He lived in Israel 2000 years ago. He announced God’s kingdom. They hated him. He returned their hatred with love. They killed him. He died praying for their salvation. And God raised him from the dead and gave him the highest position in the universe.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.[1]
In other words, God appointed him as king, to rule for a while from heaven, and then to return h and rule God’s creation for ever. If this is true, then “love your neighbour as yourself” is not one moral idea among many, but the right way to live. It is the command of the world’s true king: the word of God himself.
It was Archimedes, the Greek engineer-philosopher who said, “Show me a place to stand and I will move the earth.” He understood the power of levers. With a small force you can move a large object—with a lever. But you need somewhere to stand and somewhere to anchor the lever, that won’t move when you start to push. If we have it from the Creator and Lord, then we have a firm place to stand, and we need to know that.
Otherwise … perhaps you can go with the philosophy of Muhammad. This is what is driving Hamas and its allies in the streets. Or Marx, whose ideas drive the Woke movement. Or any number of others. This is a call for decision. Whom will you follow—“it may be the Devil, it may be the Lord, but you gotta follow someone,” to quote Bob Dylan.
Now let’s look more closely at what Jesus says. You are to love the Lord your God with all your strength. This comes first. My father once told me that loving your neighbour and loving God were the same thing. I thought he meant that you didn’t need to worry about loving God; caring for your neighbour would be enough. That is not so. Jesus places the emphasis on loving God. The Pharisees asked about the greatest commandment, and this is it: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart …” The command to love your neighbour is like it—important, but in second place. This is important, because if you fail to love God, you will find it impossible to love your neighbour. I am sticking my neck out here, but it is what I think. Every week we confess that we have not loved our neighbour as ourself—love is not easy.
Jesus is quoting what they know well. Deuteronomy 6.4, the Shema’; orthodox Jews say it every morning; it is their creed:
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength.
Give me a place to stand! This is it. This is where Jesus stood, and all his people will stand here too. Stand here because God is the ultimate truth, the one fixed point, the place from which everything else is relative. Everything else is God’s creation, it only exists because of his continued will that it should exist; our life came from him, and comes from him, and will everlastingly come from him. And he commands love, because love is his nature, and love the reason he created everything, and holds us in being.
Furthemore, we are designed to love. Our mother and father looked at us and loved us. The first thing this tiny scrap of a babe that was you ever did was to love its mother, its mother’s milk, her touch, her voice. God love came to you through her, and you, though you didn’t know it, returned that love to him with your burps and your grunts. In time you came to love other things. You learned that some things were better to love than others. Some things were very short-lived. The better the object of your love, the happier you were. But you also loved idols, things that captivated you for a while but eventually let you down. Until we find the one who loves us and return his love we will always be let down.
When we refuse to love God with all our power, we diminish ourselves; we content ourselves with a videogame, when we could be on a world holiday. God insists we love him, because he wants us to be truly happy. Whatever may command our love now, we will find something more beautiful. Our affections will never find rest until they find their rest in God. How could it be different, when everything else that delights us is the creation of his mind and love.
But the world does not know God, and loves anything and everything else. And here is the rub: the commandment is powerless. We can be told to love God, but we cannot do it. How can we love one whom we cannot even see? This is why some people fashion idols—visible gods. But the true God, though he cannot be seen, has made himself known. How does he do this? The world he has made testifies to his power and eternity, but leaves us ignorant of his person and will. So, he revealed himself to Israel, becoming their king and telling them his ways. He intended they should be a model to the rest of the world of how good it is to follow God. But they failed themselves to follow him, and instead of being a blessing, they fell under the curse.
So now, the sensational answer to how we can see God, is that he has revealed himself by becoming a man and dwelling in our midst. “The Word [of God] became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”[2] “No one has ever seen God.” says John, “The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him.”[3] So the answer to our inability to obey the commandment to love God is Jesus, who loves us, and gives himself for us, and draws our love to himself and his Father. And the one who helps us understand this, and empowers us to love is the Holy Spirit. As John says once again: “The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”[4]
Now let us think about the second commandment: Jesus said, “The second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
This commandment also comes from Moses. Leviticus 19 is a collection of commandments to do with how we treat others. When you collect the grapes from your vines, leave something for the poor, and so on. Love your neighbour as yourself. This little command is hidden here amongst all the rest, but Jesus draws it out and says, “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, the whole law is an expansion and filling out of these two fundamental principles. This is good to know. Sometimes the laws of the Old Testament seem illogical and pointless, but Jesus says they are all there to show us how to love God and love others. it is important to understand that the commandment were given first to Israel. Some of them were specially for them, to make them different to the other nations. We need to be able to distinguish what applies to all of us, from those that are specific to them.
I think perhaps God tells us to love our neighbour, because he has made us in his image[5]—made us to be like him—and love is his nature.[6] By loving others, we imitate him, and become like him, and live as we were created to live.
I have long puzzled over a comment in the first letter of John:
For whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whover loves God must also love his brother.[7]
I do love God, I love to worship him; but what does this have to do with loving people, who are often so difficult to love? That is exactly the point: God has given us the way to love him, by passing his love for us to others. Maybe that’s what my Dad actually meant. But caring about others is so difficult, and worship is so easy. But then God’s love for us was and is difficult. And when we sing his praises are we not singing of his love for us, the unlovable. To do this, and withhold our love from each other—surely something is not right.
When I started in ministry I attended a Sunday School picnic. I got to know some of the teachers and invited them to dinner. To my surprise they did not know each other, but through sharing a meal together they discovered each other and began to enjoy their new relationship. When I came to a new church I found the people were sitting as far from each other as they could. When the service was over, they left at once for their homes. I said to them, “How can we obey our Lord’s command to love one another, if we are not even friends?” It took a long time, but eventually they came to church eager to see each other, eager to talk and share.
But what about the person on the outer, the person you don’t feel any warmth towards or from, and don’t particularly want to get to know. That is where loving gets hard, but let me tell you, if you make the effort, there is joy in it. And, as Jesus taught us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, when you someone in need crosses your path, and you are able to help, love demands that you should.
Love is not easy, not agape love, not Christ-like love. Thinking badly of people is easy, selfishness is easy, jealously is easy, resentment is easy, hatred is easy.
Now that I have a daughter in politics I hear a lot about what goes on, and there is not much love, not even within your own party. We shouldn’t kid ourselves, the world is not about to become a loving place. It’s not going to happen through an act of parliament. Rather, the Lord calls us to become caring individuals, and then to be a loving community, a community of friends. The early church grew because of its resurrection message, but also because of how the Christians treated one another. “See how they love one another!” And not just each other. Love is expansive. It pushes out to the outsider, to the unlovable.
After the Gulf War many refugees flooded into Jordan. We are told that the Jordanian Government was amazed that the Christians didn’t only look after the Christian refugees, but also the Muslim needy.
So … We will love the Lord our God with all the strength he gives us, because he is absolutely worth loving, and we will love each other and our fellow human beings because that is the way we become like God and begin to discover our true created nature.
[1] Philippians 2.9–11 ESV.
[2] John 1.14.
[3] John 1.18.
[4] John 1.17.
[5] Genesis 1.
[6] 1 John 4.7–8.
[7] 1 John 4.20–21.