GLTC
By H. Isaac
What makes people live forever in the minds of others?
Is it power, Is it money, Is it riches, is it knowledge, is it beauty…..
none of these.
People who have a heart to love will live forever in hearts of others.
Spread your love wherever you go,
said by a woman who never bore a child but became a mother to the whole world, out of her love filled heart, she is none other than Annai Teresa with this introduction,
I would like to focus on the text for reflection is Mathew 22: 34 to 40.
The context
Soon after the response Jesus gave to Sadducees in regard to resurrection later, these verses in Matthew occur while Jesus was teaching in the temple, and the context is more like a debate. People came with questions not to learn from Jesus, but to entrap him. At the end of ch 24 we hear that the Pharisees were plotting to the point of killing Jesus and in ch 26 we see how they carried out that plan of putting Jesus to death. Jesus did not retaliate but took up suffering as a sign of true love, fulfilling what he earlier said Love your enemies.
Next, what is striking to me is that the opponents of Jesus were even fighting among themselves. So the Pharisees used Jesus to attack the Sadducees, and Sadducees to attack the Pharisees. All were the children of God, but failing to love each other.
However, Parallels can be seen today, when people use religion to defeat others and to gain power for themselves, rather than to understand that true religion is that which makes us love others and where the love of God is realized in the love of human. We see it in the way men often treat women. We see it in the way the rich treat the poor. I John says who can hate their neighbor and claim to love God?
Here in this passage pops a question, which commandment in the Torah is the greatest?
In spite, Jesus sums up the whole moral and spiritual law with one word: LOVE
Firstly,
What is Love?
In Greek language there are four words to describe what we call Love in English, they are
1. Eros (Romantic love)
2. Phileo (Friendship, enjoyment, fondness)
3. Storge (family loyalty)
4. Agape (Unmerited love, sacrificial love)
In this passage Agapēseis is repeated twice that is Future Indicative Active Second person Singular which means “You shall love”. Agape is of course that unmerited love we don’t deserve. While we were yet sinner Christ died for us. We don’t deserve it. Our neighbors don’t deserve it. Nobody deserves it. Yet God loves us anyway, and we respond with our love to God as the greatest of commandments. And then instructs us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Both commandments come out of the Old Testament, especially in Genesis which tells us all humanity is created in God’s image. So loving neighbor is loving God, both should go hand in hand.
Secondly,
What does it mean to love God with all our heart, soul and mind?
Heart, soul and mind are the elements which refers to Heart – emotional element, soul – spiritual element and mind – reason element.i.e. Emotionally, physically and intellectually. The totality of the interiority of the person must be involved thoroughly in Loving God.
Thirdly,
What does it mean to love one’s neighbor as oneself?
There’s a beautiful ancient Rabbinic Midrash about two brothers who lived side by side and farmed on adjacent fields. Younger brother married and had a large family of both sons and daughters. The elder brother remained single all throughout his life. One night the elder brother lay awake in bed thinking about his younger brother’s family. “It’s not fair”, he thought, “that I have such a large storehouse full of grain, while there is only I in this house while my brother has many children to feed.” So he got out of bed, got dressed, and went out to shovel grain from his storage bin to his brother’s storage bin so that his brother’s family would never go hungry. Every night he’d got out and quietly shovel grain, that his brother never knew.
It so happened that the younger brother also lay in bed at night thinking about his brother. “It’s not fair,” he thought, “that I am blessed with all these children who will take care of me in my old age, while my brother is all alone, and someday will grow hungry when he is no longer able to work.” So the young brother got out of bed, got dressed and went out to shovel grain from his storage bin to his brother’s storage grain from his storage bin so that his brother would never go hungry. Every night he’d go out and quietly shovel grain, that his brother never knew.
Every morning the elder brother was surprised to find his own grain bin filled to the brim even though he had shoveled out grain in the middle of the night. “It’s a miracle.” He thought to himself “a miracle from God.” But he kept it a secret.
Likewise, every morning the younger brother was also surprised and kept it a secret.
Then one night after years and years of following these same routines, the two brothers met each other shoveling grain in the middle of the night. They finally realized what this miracle was all about. They embraced and celebrated the love that they had for each other.
The rabbis go on to report that the field of these two loving brothers would become the location of the Jeru-salem temple. It is only right that the temple of God should be located in a place where brotherly love had been embodied so perfectly and so generously. We don’t know how early that Rabbinic story is dated or whether the Pharisees in Jesus’ audience had heard this story. But Jesus is teaching at the temple where God’s holiness dwells. So for Jesus, temple is the place where God meets a community which is gathered in love. Here in our community, we have community worship on Wednesday’s, where I have noticed that during tea time, none of the service staff would come inside mess and have tea. If they do so the real meaning of fellowship would be different. I think, that’s the real meaning of fellowship of community life. God’s love will be dwelling in that.
How interesting it is then that the Apostle Paul told the Corinthian Christians that God’s temple was in their midst, far away from Jerusalem. “You are God’s Temple,” says Paul. The spirit of God dwells not within stone and wooden structures but with human beings in their daily interactions, wherever they might live.
And it’s not just Paul, the writer of Leviticus, writing hundreds of years earlier declares, “You shall be holy as the Lord your God is holy.” God’s temple is where people go to show love to god through generous tithes and offerings and sacrificial offerings of love. But the real temple of god exists within people who see God in the other, stranger and neighbor alike, and love the other as themselves, where they avoid any behavior that would defraud or cheat, where the first fruits of the fields, the tithes are not offered to the elite and privileged, to the priests, but the most accessible parts, the edges are left to the poor, the alien, the stranger. And where the seats of honor are not given to the healthy and physically fit, but to the blind, the deaf, and the lame, to those in need.
Chetan Bhagat, the famous contemporary writer, in one of his books, the three mistakes of my life, there will be a critical situation where the person loves his neighbor which completely changes the life around him. This clearly shows that change will occur when “Love your Neighbor” happens. Thus the Grace of our Christ is completely felt through this act.
Conclusion
We live in 4G generation so I would like to conclude by presenting a Wifi model, God’s love is like a wifi which passes through us. As God’s children we have to connect through that, by giving the password, our heart mind and soul. By connecting, we should share that, with our neighbors. The joy of love is nothing but Sharing. I would like to quote Amy Carmichael, a Protestant missionary,
You can get without loving
But you can’t love without giving.
So I am entitling my reflection as GLTC which means,
GRACE LIGHTENS US TOWARDS CHRIST (GLTC), from that
GET LOVE THROUGH CHRIST (GLTC) &
GIVE LOVE TO CHANGE (GLTC).
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