Love is the fulfillment of the law

Today’s Gospel reminds me about a story I heard about one of our local priests who did an amazing thing several years ago.  Once when this priest was offering mass at a downtown parish, he stopped the mass just before the offertory and said, “Everybody outside.” Everyone got up and stood in the main aisle and even others spilled out onto the porch. He stopped the mass because two rival gangs were at each others’ throats and the mothers of the two key leaders were in the mass. The priest was tired of burying kids. So when this priest stopped the mass, he had the mothers from rival gangs get their sons to meet at the entrance of the church with everyone else present. Once when the guys got there, the priest made them agree to a cease fire and that no violence would take place on church property.  

When all is said done, what was ultimately accomplished? Was there love? While no more violence has happened on church property, the rivalry still continued and continues until today. The violence was only contained, not eradicated. It was a ceasefire. Like the Israelis and Hamas, a ceasefire is a delicate agreement that is conditional and at best temporary.  A ceasefire is super valuable because it gives breathing room to get to the root causes of violence because what we want is lasting peace…and to get to lasting peace, we have to get at the root of the problem. Today’s gospel gives us a glimpse at how Jesus gets at the root cause of violence in his day.

The root of violence in Jesus time was a conflict how the land ended up benefiting the select few.  Jewish law states that the land that God gave to the people Israel is supposed to benefit the common good rather than benefitting the select few through private interests.  When this balance is violated by human greed, chaos soon follos. Violence in the time of Jesus came about during a massive migration brought on by an ambitious building project in Galilee.  (see http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/biblearchaeology/a/041511-CW-Galilee-In-Jesus-Time-Was-A-Center-Of-Change.htm) The building projects by Herod Antipas brought thousands of more people into the rural region. Villages went from 400 people to 1000’s of people in a very short time. The population boom displaced thousands of people who made their living from the land. Farmers, used to producing small yields, were now pressed to produce more produce for a large population.  When farmers couldn’t get the yield from their field, they lost their farm and became indentured servants on what used to be their property.   People began to turn on one another and neighbors became estranged from each other and violence erupted throughout the region.

The land was not used to produce food when the region shifted from agricultural self-sufficiency to dependency on employment - and employment was controlled by people who lived in Jerusalem, not in the local region. Jesus was not naive about the issues of his day.  Debt, massive migration, poverty and the immense gap between the powerful in Jerusalem and the common laborers in Galilee all played into what Jesus was saying, “…whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  

Jesus’ words, “loose on earth”   was directed at his disciples. What I have come to understand is that Jesus was teaching about letting go of something that would become more important than loving another person. In other words he’s asking us to embrace something other than material possessions or an ideology above embracing a real living creature.

Paul quotes Moses’ teaching, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul underscores Jesus’ teaching about love.  Love is about a real relationship that is built on mutuality - that we owe no debt nor do we expect payment from our neighbor. Love seeks to create a true reciprocal relationship in which we do not commit evil against our neighbor nor do we enter into a relationship with the intent to exert power over our neighbor.  Loving one another means that we learn to love in a way that isn’t about competition or trying to get something from someone else, but rather, that our love is a giving away of ourselves fully without any restriction or condition. “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”  This is way beyond a mere cease fire.

So is this idealistic and naive?  Of course it’s idealistic but it’s not naive.  Jesus paints a picture of a world in which love guides us, not greed. To get to that world of love, he preaches that we need to have forgiveness in our hearts. Forgiveness is the sense that we won’t hold anything we have against another person. It means that our relationship is a relationship built fully on letting go of rivalry and we abandon any sense that we need to get ahead of the other person by somehow conquering or having power over another person. Forgiveness in this sense is more than saying, “I’m sorry.”  Forgiveness is about getting to the core of the conflict and creating new conditions that will foster mutuality and long-lasting cooperation.

If enough people live this way, it would result in a radical shift in culture. What if we began to define ourselves as working in mutual partnership with other people rather than trying to have some power over others?  If the poorest 40% of this country were to take up Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness and pardon of debt, we could change the face of this country.  Let’s imagine that world now. Take a moment and ask, what would healthcare look like? What would education in poor communities look like? What kind of salaries would people be receiving? What would partnerships and marriages look like?

I believe that such a world is possible.  We need to be thinking about whether we want to belong to such a world.  As we come forward for communion we will be faced with the option to embrace things - that is the conquest and need to dominate or, to have the option to be embraced by our sister and brother who offer us nothing but love. What we choose will define whether or not we are fulfilling the Law.