In the lectionary this year, we omit the interlude in which the Sadducees approach Jesus with a question about marriage in the afterlife, and instead move to perhaps the most foundational religious question for a student of Jewish scripture and law—and it was one the sages and lawyers had been arguing about for generations. Which, of the 613 commandments in Torah, was the greatest? With over 600 commandments to choose from, even winnowing out the really specific ones about eating and fabric and facial hair, there were still several contenders. Whichever one he chose, Jesus would need to be able to defend his answer. Jesus, five steps ahead of his adversaries as always, answers with a commandment linked to another commandment that together summed up the entirety of the Ten Commandments and all the subsidiary commandments around them.
I was thinking about this situation in the upcoming gospel as I was looking for a prayer request that had disappeared down my Facebook page. Now that so much of our parish’s ministry and liturgy is tied to Facebook, I am chagrined to find myself on that platform as much as ever, even though one of my resolutions back on New Year’s Day was to spend less time there.
Yet one of the fun little amusements that sometimes goes around social media involves a smart phone feature known as “predictive text,” where your phone offers you three words as you type to anticipate shortcuts for those of us who are rather fumble-fingered. Of course, people on Facebook have turned this feature into an amusing little game. The game usually starts with a prompt—a phrase you type in to start a sentence, and then you chose one of your phone’s three proffered choices, linked together one word at a time, until a thought is completed. The words and phrases you use most influence the suggestions, I’m told, and given my vocation, already the playing field is probably tilted toward theological language, so I gave it a whirl. Sometimes, you get gibberish. Sometimes, hilarity ensues. Sometimes, though, you get zen-like koans that bring you up short.
I decided to test how smart my phone was as I thought about that lawyer’s question. I typed in this prompt: “The first rule about faith is…” and my phone finished the sentence like this:
“The first rule of faith is that it is not being used to make the most important decisions in the world.”
Well, now.
I am probably going to turn this little gem over in my mind for a while. For a nation that argues a lot about “faith,” trying to twist it into a synonym for “ideology,” which it should be, rather than a descriptor for a determination to stand for what is life-giving in the world. I nonetheless am in agreement that faith is too often not a guide to our actions—unless that faith provides a context for doing what you were going to do anyway. And faith in each other is a sadly missing commodity in far too much of our national conversation. We talk about faith, but too often we make decisions out of fear or anxiety or cynicism.
So then I tried this prompt: “The greatest commandment in scripture is…” and this is what was returned by my phone’s predictive choices:
“The greatest commandment in scripture is to have mercy upon those people who are not in the same place as you are, and help them to learn the truth about God’s love.”
Given that one of my favorite ways to paraphrase Jesus’s answer is from the prophet Micah: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” once again it appears that my phone has touched upon part of the inner wisdom of Jesus’s answer to the lawyer in our gospel.
I now wonder what it would be like, in this time of intense division and vitriol, if we couldn’t be guided by this idea: to deal kindly on those who are at a different place on their spiritual journey, to listen and converse in kindness in service to deepening our relationships, and in so doing embody God’s love. Because the truth of God’s love is that it never, ever gives up on us. Can we argue that we aren’t called to likewise not give up on each other, as each of us are made in the image and likeness of God?
Jesus’s answer does the same: to love God, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor, and you are demonstrating love for God. Love as a determination to embrace dialogue, even when those with whom you are speaking may not have the most open hearts to your responses. That’s okay. Maybe those observing your dialogue will be the ones to embrace your message.
The first rule is the rule of love, and the faith that flows from love.
This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on October 22, 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment