The Love That Fulfils the Law
Will anyone know they are loved because we have been in church today? We may know every prayer and still miss the person beside us who is quietly hoping to be noticed. Today’s Gospel brings our worship face to face with our neighbour. Jesus calls us not simply to know the commandment to love, but to let God’s love change whom we notice, how we listen, and what we are willing to give.
All of the stories that we have heard these past few weeks from chapter 22 occur after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And so, once again we are in Jerusalem, during the final days of his ministry, as Jesus faces questions designed to trap him. Now a lawyer asks which commandment is greatest. It seems simple enough. Among the 613 commandments of Scripture, what holds everything together?
Jesus answers from the heart of his Jewish faith: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” These words from Deuteronomy belong to the Shema, Israel’s ancient confession of faith. Jesus is not rejecting his tradition. He is drawing upon its deepest wisdom.
For Jesus, the whole of life belongs to God: our desires and affections, our identity and understanding, our questions and hopes. Faith is more than keeping rules or accepting beliefs. It is the turning of our entire being towards the One who creates and sustains us. Nothing is held back: our work, relationships, choices, and worship all belong within that response.
Then Jesus adds a commandment from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” This second commandment is like the first. Together, he says, they uphold the law and the prophets. Devotion to God and care for our neighbour cannot be separated.
And that is where his answer becomes difficult. We can be faithful in worship, knowledgeable about Scripture, and committed to the Church while treating others with contempt. We can defend religious truth while overlooking the dignity of someone whose circumstances or convictions unsettle us. Jesus will not let religious observance excuse indifference.
We cannot love God while dismissing the people God loves. Jesus describes God sending sunshine and rain upon righteous and unrighteous alike. To love as God loves is to let that generosity change us: to see a neighbour where we once saw a stranger, and a person rather than an opponent. Such love does more than help another; it loosens resentment’s grip on us and opens possibilities for reconciliation.
Rules can tell us where a boundary lies. Love draws our attention to the person beyond it. Whose suffering have we overlooked? Whose voice have we stopped hearing? When we respond, our habits begin to change. Compassion becomes something we practise, not merely something we admire.
We must also hear this passage responsibly. Matthew’s sharp disputes reflect estrangement between early Christian and other Jewish communities. They must never become a reason to condemn Jewish people or Judaism. Jesus was Jewish, and both commandments come from Israel’s Scriptures. The warning about religious pride calls us to examine ourselves, not to blame others.
We Christians can become so concerned with protecting traditions or proving ourselves right that we forget those we serve. Worship and tradition matter because they draw us into God’s life. Their fruit is not simply that we know more, but that we become more generous, more merciful, more willing to be changed.
For our congregation, this is practical. When someone comes through our doors, do we ask whether they fit our expectations, or how we can welcome them? Care for hungry, homeless, lonely, and vulnerable people is not an optional extra. It is one way our devotion becomes visible. So is refusing to turn someone with whom we disagree into an enemy.
This does not mean approving everything, ignoring injustice, or abandoning truth. Genuine care can confront wrongdoing and speak difficult words in love. But its purpose is another person’s dignity, not humiliation or our own superiority. We need not pretend evil is harmless, but we must refuse to let it dictate the limits of our compassion.
So, who can teach us to live this way? That question leads into the Gospel’s final exchange. Jesus asks whose son the Messiah is. His hearers answer, “David’s.” He then points to Psalm 110, where David calls the Messiah Lord. Their familiar answer cannot contain the fullness of who stands before them.
This is more than a second argument won. The teacher of these commandments is also the one who embodies them. Jesus will reveal his authority not by crushing his opponents, but by giving himself. The road from this dispute leads to Gethsemane and the cross. There he entrusts himself wholly to the Father and refuses to abandon those who reject him, nor condemn those who put him to death in one of the most horrific ways possible.
The commandments are not simply an ideal he leaves for others to attempt. They take flesh in his obedience, mercy, and self-giving. The Messiah who calls us to love our enemies goes before us. In him, we see both what God asks of us and how deeply God has already loved us.
That is our hope when patience runs out and compassion proves selective. We are not asked to manufacture God’s love by trying harder. We are invited to receive it and be changed by it. Again and again, Christ forgives us, draws us back into communion, and teaches us to begin again.
In the Eucharist, this transforming love meets us in bread and wine. We receive Christ’s body and blood, not as a reward for loving well, but as nourishment for becoming people who love as he loves. Through the Holy Spirit, Christ draws us into his self-giving life and makes us one body. We bring our divided hearts; he forms a people who can give themselves for others.
That change is not automatic or always sudden. Yet as we receive Christ and answer his call, our closed hands can learn generosity; our guarded hearts can make room. The neighbour we welcome may find belonging, and we may discover our own need of them. The table sends us into that encounter: to share food, listen patiently, seek justice, and offer the mercy we have received.
Come, then, to this table—not because we have loved enough, but because we need to be loved into new life. Bring the heart that is weary, the love that has grown cold, the hope that feels too small. Christ gives himself to us here. May his love take flesh in ours: in a place made at our table, a hurt tenderly heard, a neighbour no longer passed by. Here we receive the body of Christ. Beyond these doors, may someone know they are not forgotten because we have been fed. Amen.