Father Richard describes how we can grow in our love for God, others, and ourselves:
The God Jesus incarnates and embodies is not a distant God that must be placated. Jesus’ God is not sitting on some throne demanding worship and throwing down thunderbolts like Zeus. Jesus never said, “Worship me.” He said, “Follow me.” He asks us to imitate him in his own journey of full incarnation. To do so, he gives us the two great commandments: (1) Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength; and (2) Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–28). In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37), Jesus shows us that our “neighbor” even includes our “enemy.”
So how do we love God? Many of us seem to have concluded that we love God by attending church services. For some reason, we think that makes God happy, but I’m not sure why. Jesus never talked about attending services, although church can be a good container to begin with. I believe our inability to recognize and love God in what is right in front of us has allowed us to separate religion from our actual lives. There is Sunday morning, and then there is real life.
The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how I myself seek to love God, is to love what God loves, which is everything and everyone, including you and including me! “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “If we love one another, God remains in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us” (1 John 4:12). Then we love with God’s infinite love that can always flow through us. We’re able to love people and things for themselves and in themselves—and not for what they do for us. That takes both work and surrender. As we get ourselves out of the way, there is a slow but real expansion of consciousness. We’re not the central reference point anymore. We love in greater and greater circles until we can finally do what Jesus did: love and forgive even our enemies.
Most of us were given the impression that we had to be totally selfless, and when we couldn’t achieve that, many of us gave up altogether. One of John Duns Scotus’ most helpful teachings is that Christian morality at its best seeks “a harmony of goodness.” [1] We harmonize and balance necessary self-care with a constant expansion beyond ourselves to loving others. This is brilliant! It’s both simple and elegant, showing us how to love our neighbor as our self. Imagining and working toward this harmony keeps us from seeking impossible, private, and heroic ideals. Now the possibility of love is potentially right in front of us and always concrete. Love is no longer a theory or a heroic ideal. Love is seeking the good of as many as possible.
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| Who Are Jesus’ “Brothers”? |
 Few topics make modern people more uncomfortable than judgment. There is a false narrative that judgment is something people did in the past, but today we’ve grown more tolerant and accepting—other than religious people who would prefer to remain in the past. This is, of course, nonsense. Every society judges. What is today’s “cancel culture” if not an updated version of religious ex-communication perpetually judging what voices, people, and ideas are acceptable and which are to be condemned?The ubiquity of judgment, although often misguided and destructive, is rooted in the admirable human desire for justice. We want good praised and evil punished. We want victory for victims and villains vanquished. While we may have glimpses of justice now, Jesus promises true and final justice will come with his kingdom.In Matthew 25 Jesus compared the final judgment with a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats in his herd. Some have tried to find significance in the imagery of the animals, but that is a case of over-interpreting the metaphor. In ancient Israel, goats were not viewed negatively and were often herded together with sheep. Goats were even identified as an acceptable sacrifice for the Passover lamb (see Exodus 12:5). The emphasis of Jesus’ metaphor is not on the nature of sheep or goats but on the eventual separation of two groups. Much like the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30), the righteous and unrighteous, the just and the unjust, are allowed to coexist until the end of the age when they are finally identified and separated at the judgment. The basis for their separation is ultimately how they acted toward “the least of these my brothers” (25:40).Who are these “brothers” Jesus refers to? The entire meaning of the parable hangs on that question, and there has been much debate over the correct reading. Some argue that Jesus’ was speaking of his disciples. He uses similar language in Matthew 10:40-42, but that is a text about mission and not the final judgment. There are many more instances in Matthew where Jesus uses the word brothers without referring to his disciples. Furthermore, there is no support elsewhere in Scripture that the final judgment will be determined solely by how the world serves or neglects Christians, or that Christians will be exempt from judgment as this interpretation would imply. Finally, when the judgment is repeated for the “goats” in verse 45, Jesus does not include the word brothers but only speaks of “the least of these.”For these reasons—and numerous others—the most common view has always been that Jesus’ “brothers” in the story refers generally to people in need who’ve been neglected by the world, and those who are declared righteous are the ones who showed compassion. As we find throughout the Bible, in Matthew 25 we see personal righteousness (our standing before God) being inexorably linked to social righteousness (how we have cared for those mistreated by the world). With this important matter of interpretation in hand, we will explore the scene in more depth in the days ahead. Until then, consider who in your community Jesus would identify as his “brothers.” DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 25:31-46 JAMES 2:14-17 WEEKLY PRAYER From an African Christian O God, enlarge my heart that it may be big enough to receive the greatness of your love. Stretch my heart that it may take into it all those who with me around the world believe in Jesus Christ. Stretch it that it may take into it all those who do not know him, but who are my responsibility because I know him. And stretch it that it may take in all those who are not lovely in my eyes, and whose hands I do not want to touch; through Jesus Christ, my Savior. Amen. |
