30th Sunday 2026
Exodus 22:21-27; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40
Whoops! I got that wrong! The first few sentences of today’s Gospel appear at the bottom of a page in the Lectionary. I saw that it was from St. Matthew’s Gospel, and that it began with a question from a lawyer about the Great Commandment.
At this point, my wits went wool-gathering, and I thought “We’re going to have the Good Samaritan”. I know! The Good Samaritan turns up in Luke, not Matthew. Put it down to senility. Of course, the current passage ends with the words “On these two Commandments (ie the love of God and the love of neighbour) depend all the Law and the Prophets”.
So, without the aid of the Good Samaritan, we have to focus on these two Commandments, though we do have the assistance of the Book of Exodus, which gives us some examples of love of neighbour. We are not to oppress sojourners. For “sojourners”—people who stay in a place which is not their natural home—might we read “migrants”?
(A few days ago, I came across an Editorial from the Daily Express claiming “It is not racist to fear migrants” and referring favourably to Mr. Farage. Personally, I am far more afraid of Mr. Farage and his followers than I am of migrants.)
We are also told not to take interest on a loan, or to make life difficult for the poor. The Lord, we have been told, hears the cry of the poor, whereas individuals and government agencies increasingly close their ears. As the cost of living increases for everyone, the poor are pushed further down people’s list of priorities. Where do love of God and of neighbour come in?
Many years ago, a girl in Sixth Form commented to me “We love God differently from the way we love people”. I think that there is a great deal of truth in this. Unless we are mystics, like St. Teresa of Avila, we don’t have a romantic love for God, nor is there sexual attraction. Of what, then, does our love of God consist, a love which is to entail our whole heart, soul, and mind?
Perhaps it is a matter of wishing always to do God’s will, to recognise God’s love for us, and to do our utmost to respond to it. At times, this will involve our emotions, lifting our hearts and minds in praise or petition, and filling us with sorrow for sin. At other times, it may leave us dry and unmoved, though still with a yearning, however faint, for God, a recognition of the truth of St. Augustine’s axiom “You have made us for yourself, o Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you”.
There is a clue in Our Lord’s statement that the Second Commandment, to love our neighbour as ourselves, is LIKE the First. Our neighbour is flesh and blood and, as we are told in the Book of Genesis, is made in the image and likeness of God. So, in loving our neighbour we are loving God, and we should see in them the face of Christ.
What, though, of loving our neighbour “as ourselves”? I don’t believe that this means, as is sometimes suggested, “as much as ourselves”. In any case, many of us don’t love ourselves very much, though we should, as we too are beloved children of God. It seems to me that this Commandment calls us to see our neighbour “AS BEING” ourselves: our neighbour’s face is to be a mirror image of mine, however much it may differ from mine in shape, size, age, skin colour, or whatever. We are to identify with the other.
How different is this from current attitudes? If the media, and especially social media, along with the leaders of nations, are to be believed, the world is driven, not by love, but by hatred. Insults, abuse, threats, violence are the order of the day. And yet, confronted by an injured person, most people will, I think, seek to help the casualty, in response to a basic, God-given human instinct.
If we are to keep God’s Commandments, we must reject any tendency to hate, disprove the claims of politicians and influencers of all sorts that rage, fury, and loathing are natural instincts for human beings, and love God totally by loving Him in our neighbour, whoever, and however unloving or unlovable this neighbour may appear to be.
