28 October 2023 – 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

Just like last Sunday’s Gospel, again we have persons asking questions, who are also out to trap Jesus. Now the aim of the question today, addressed to Jesus, is to have Him commit on a much debated topic and thus make it possible for the crowds to be divided about it. And always, the aim of the Sadducees and the Pharisees was to always discredit Jesus. And they tried it again. So, always smarter than them, evading the trap, Jesus pinpoints as the greatest commandment what is strictly speaking not really a commandment at all but rather the soul and the center of all commandments. He pinpoints the love of God. The love of God – the source of everything.

Now in His reply to those, to the person who questioned Him, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4 & 5, the heart of Shema, a prayer recited morning and evening by pious Jews. But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to make this abstract commandment of loving God very concrete and practical by quoting also Leviticus 19:18 – You shall love your neighbour as yourself.  

So He combines Deuteronomy and Leviticus and the Jews know this. Now what is new? It is not bringing these two Commandments together. No. But the making them of equal weight and importance. And this, my dear brothers and sisters, is very important for us to believe, to accept and to know that He put both of them on equal weight and importance. Then we begin to appreciate the whole Gospel.

What is more, Jesus declares that all the laws of the Old Testament, all the preaching of the prophets, the whole of God’s revelation hang upon these two Commandments, as upon a double peg. Okay, we’ve got that. Where do we go from here?

We asked this question that has been asked in the Gospel before:
Who is the neighbour?
How are we to love him?
How are we to love her?

Now the context of the First Reading from Exodus is most important for us to understand and appreciate the words and teachings of Jesus in the Gospel today. 

The First Reading comes from a section of Exodus known as the Covenant Code which lays down the conditions of the covenant on Israel’s side. You know the people God made a covenant with them: I am your God, you are My people? Very important concept in the Old Testament or rather a relationship. That is vital. I am your God, you are My people. Very important.

Now Exodus lists out all the things that Israel should be doing. So it includes laws about worship, slaves, homicide, injuries, property and in the passage of immediate concern to us – the various social laws. So verses 20-27 which is today’s reading deal, as you have heard just now, with the most vulnerable and least protected of any society: the foreigner, the widow and orphan and the very, very poor.

The stranger referred to in the reading is any refugee, exile or foreigner, that is anyone in an alien country in which one has no civil rights. Now the Israelites knew what it was to be strangers in Egypt. They had already had that experience. And so concern for the stranger, concern for the fatherless and the widow is a recurring theme in the Old Testament.

Israel’s law was essentially humanitarian. For Israel’s God was a humane God who cared for the poor. In verse 27, we hear: “If he cries, the poor man cries to me, I will listen for I am full of pity,” the Lord says.

The covenant was a model of union and it was by the law that Israel remained united with Yahweh. Ironic. It is a secular law but through that law, it remained united with Yahweh. It was by crying, carrying out a predominantly secular humanitarian law that Israel was to love Yahweh. That is to be united with Him. To seek, to be attached to Yahweh while remaining indifferent to one’s fellow human beings would be a contradiction.

So my dear brothers and sisters, it is important to see the commandment to love in the Gospel in the context of this reading from Exodus.

Now who are the most vulnerable and who are the least protected in our society today? They are persons and communities who are in the periphery of our society. In our Malaysian society, both in the rural and urban peripheries, we have people who experience the poverty of isolation and loneliness, homelessness, modern day slavery, trafficking, relational poverty. They experience of being abused, of victims of violence and the list goes on. and you know that.

These circumstances are often drivers of poverty or the result of poverty. These include men and women and children. These include persons of all races and all religions. These include citizens and foreigners. I believe we can be quite overwhelmed to think of God’s fundamental commandment in this manner. Hey, we are here religiously every week. We are praying. We do what we can. We have our own commitment at home to our family, our careers. We do our parish duties. So what’s this? What’s this?

It is what it is, my dear brothers and sisters. It is what it is. This is our mandate. We need to be open to be led by the Lord to be His hands and His feet. And the Holy Spirit will lead us. I know it is easier said than done. I am sure. 

This requires of us to examine how we engage with the marginalised person or community around us. Ignoring a marginalised community means that the church will have a marginalised awareness of their existence and needs. A Jesus-centered understanding of love, the love that the Lord talks to us today fuels you and me to run to people in their time of affliction. And it is definitely not by sitting in a meeting, remote meeting room, remotely discussing their plight and deciding what to do according to our needs rather than the needs of those in the margins.

It is very hard for a local church to meet the needs of people they have never met. Demographic studies can help a local church, a parish understand who their neighbours are but those studies cannot keep up with a rapid rate of transition in our communities. Hear say and presumptions and prejudice don’t help either. The church must get out and become visible to meet their neighbours. The local church should be learners of the local context and the best way to learn about a local community is by being among its residence, the same way Jesus was.

Over and above all these, there may be an underlying disposition within us that I believe we may be ignorant of. And this underlying disposition that perhaps we are ignorant of will definitely hinder any endeavour to live the Lord’s commandment of love as it must be. That disposition that I am referring to was prevalent among the Jews during the time of Jesus. And what is that? And that is a total dichotomy or separation between their understanding of the love of God and the love of neighbour.

The focus was placating God so that they will be blessed. They did everything so that they will be in right terms with God, even at the expense of others. It was basically about them and God only. Loving and a life of service of their brothers and sisters in reaching out to the marginalised was only an appendix to their religious life and perhaps only carried out by a marginal few. Not much has changed after 2000 years.

We have that similar situation in the church today. I think we are very focused on the vertical relationship. We’re very good at it. For our so-called living out of the love of God, our perception of that. And therefore it is reflected in the way we are as church, the way we are as parish, the way we are as individuals. And I dare say that there is still a dichotomy – it is your struggle and my struggle. This kind of belief could be even spewed by us clergy and lay leaders alike. Outreach as a community is still an appendix burdened with 613 rules and regulations. (I am just trying to be funny. The Jewish law comprised of 613 commandments. That’s why everybody got confused with the commandments that they never really understand, the law). Perhaps some of our practices and rituals have become our idols.

Marcus Borg says: Christianity is not about avoiding punishment or gaining reward. It is about loving God and loving what God loves. And what God loves is the whole of creation.

There is much hope, I still believe, for all of us. We are encouraged by Saint Paul as he reminds us in Thessalonians, in the Second Reading today, of the essence of their conversion. He reminds the Thessalonians that. Previously they were worshippers of idols. Idols. But now they’ve turned away from idols to serve a living and true God. To a living and true God, there must correspond a living and authentic worship. A worship consisting of not in offering of gifts to the deities and the temples. that is what they were doing before.

And for us, we have to consider what our idols are but in the life of service. Life of service. Once this conversion happened, they understood what it was. Their conversion had been so radical that it was widely spoken about and served as an inspiration to many more to follow the example.

My dear brothers and sisters, I am sure, that we have had, all have had, a conversion experience in our lives or even more than that. Likewise, we pray today that our daily conversion will be an inspiration to each other, to truly live the commandment of love as Jesus taught us.

May the Holy Spirit constantly direct our lives.

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