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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Thus says the LORD:
"You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
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 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."
R. (2) I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
The LORD lives and blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
Brothers and sisters:
You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord,
receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit,
so that you became a model for all the believers
in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth
not only in Macedonia and in Achaia,
but in every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
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?"
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.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
* * * * *
Is there anything new to say about loving the neighbour? For weeks of wondering I could find nothing new to say, and then came CathyT's reflection: "Made in the image of God"
Now there's a motive to love the other; in fact it is the motive. Not only can we see God in the other one - irritating though they might be on the surface or downright antagonisitic at depth and therefore a declared 'enemy' - but we have in ourselves the energy of God's love to reach out to them with.
God is love..., and we are the channels of that love to those around us, whoever they are.
The image of God is not 'what God looks like' but what God is, which is love. When we love, or try to love, we are uncovering, exposing and revealing to someone the divine love that lies beneath the surface in every particle of the cosmos.
It might seem presumptuous but more likely we find it humbling. To think that the respect and care you show is in fact God's love warmly shining for them, for Good is LOVE.
Among reflections following Cathy's leader, JohnE observed: '...a wonderful question: Do I reflect the image of God? A serious question, which gets us to ponder those aspects of God we should emulate. Yet instead of being lost in deep theologising about God, perhaps we could take the cue from today's gospel. Not the words of this Sunday's text specifically, but the main character of the gospels themselves - Yeshua. Which is to say, if we wish to be God-like in this life then all we need to do, to be, is Christ-like.'
'Christ-like', of course, is another of those expressions that have lost some of its shine. To be 'like Jeshua' works better, provided you can see the man. The sweet balm of preachers' words can have a panadol effect, masking the pain and causing us to doze off wrapped in pleasant dreams. 'Jesus' gets a thick sugar-coating.
They all knew the man from Nazareth by the name of Jeshua. He lived a very rough life walking the roads of Galilee for three long years, a rough and tumble existence. To say he is the image, the model, of the Father's love is to draw a very bold line under the earthiness of love. Jeshua actually set himself as the opposite of those who live in fine houses, wear fine clothes and drink fine wines. He chose to live close to people who were struggling to survive. More than anything they need to see God's love in the flesh.
As mother's know, loving/caring is in many ways a dirty, smelly business. All those who care for us, social workers, nurses, doctors through to morticians and grave diggers, all know blood, sweat and tears. Like Jeshua knew life on the rough side.
To imitate Jeshua is to love real people as we find them. Level One of love is respect. And Level Two is care. We should be very happy in these times that caring is not just a virtue for religiously-minded people but is the concern of all. We actually have a Care Industry which is driven by love. The people at the coal-face are moved by compassion for those who suffer.
And when things go mad on a massive scale we find peoples around the world bleeding along with the injured and the hostages.
So the message of this gospel passage today is one of hope. Our loving is God's love applied where needed. Our mission, our purpose, is to care about each other and for each other.
The legal eagles of the day were trying to trap Jeshua. Today the trap we have to avoid is the very same: settling for a legalistic religion over a caring one.
Oh, of course we care. But when the chips are down what is the ultimate criterion, what the law says, or what love requires here and now?