Love and Listen

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Scripture: Lectionary 149, 30^th Sunday A Cycle: Exodus 22:20-26. Psalm 18:2-3.3-4.47.51. I Thessalonians 1:5-10. Matthew 22:34-40.

Words are important for our understanding of one another and for our own limited way of communicating with God most often with words or sometimes silently resting in the presence of the Lord and listening or waiting. Today the words listen and love are the thread found in the readings. The greatest expression of love in the Torah—the Bible of Jesus is “hesed”; it means covenantal love which includes loving-kindness, compassion, mercy, faithfulness and solidarity with God. The other word is “listen” which is the virtue of Jesus’ doing the will of the Father and Israel’s most important prayer, the Shem’a which means to listen, to obey, to understand, to answer a prayer and to examine.

Jesus teaches us that the law of God, the prophets and everything in the Bible that unites us to God can be reduced to one commandment: love of God and love of neighbor. The whole 613 commandments are summed up by him in this one commandment and one word “hesed.” To understand that word we need to listen to God—that is what the sacred prayer means, “Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The ten words of God (the commandments) repeat that introductory of Deuteronomy 6:4 which then means that our openness to God and our receiving that word of God with love is what makes the behaviors and prescriptions of the law so easily fulfilled without any counting! Paul who wants the Thessalonians to model his behavior in love and listening tells them that faith comes from hearing which he will emphasize explicitly in Romans 10.

God who is all compassionate listens to everyone who calls out to him with faith manifested in our prayer. The Psalms always are directed to God through faith; God listens to the cry of the poor. Exodus is pointing out who the neighbor is in words that are also symbolic and universal in their application we make through the word of God. Those words are the alien, the widow, and the orphan. Thus all are included in the commandment of love—even the enemy, the marginal person, and the ones who no longer listen or follow the ways of God. The widow represents those who have no one to depend on; they have no relatives or persons who can help them. Their status cries out to God who is their only Rock of safety. The orphan are the youth who are so vulnerable, so abused, and exploited in today’s world that Exodus cries out to us to do something about this even among those who have abused the children under the name of religion.

Only when the fullness of love (“hesed” and “agape”) can bring us to understand what Jesus is telling us about the greatest of the commandments. Our spirituality and religiosity is empty and worthless if it does not have the all encompassing and comprehensive love of God for the alien, the widow, and the orphan. We are called to love God as Jesus and Paul teach us to love with all our hearts, minds, and souls. Both neighbor and God and self are involved in this trinity of “hesed” that is one under the total self-giving of love (agape).

St. Paul commends the Thessalonians for following his example of love and their listening to him and modeling themselves on that love he has shown them. He is one with Jesus in telling us that “the greatest is love.” We know that to listen to God demands our having turned 180 degrees to God after having failed. This too is part of the listening and then experiencing God’s love once again.

Jesus therefore has summed up the whole of the Bible by telling us that love is the totality of the message of God expressed in our human words like compassion, loving-kindnes, mercy, total fidelity, and covenantal love (hesed).

We need to take the words of Deuteronomy 6:4 as Jesus did and pray them while listening to what they mean in reference to God, neighbor, and self or alien, widow, and orphan. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Amen.