Church of the Holy City

The Nature of Spiritual Love

The Nature of Spiritual Love
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 23, 2014

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 Mark 12:28-34 Psalm 119

Our readings from the Old and New Testaments are all about loving our neighbor. Our Old Testament reading speaks about love from a “case law” perspective. By that I mean love is treated on a case by case basis and rulings are given to cover several examples of how love should be shown. In our New Testament reading, Jesus teaches about love as a wise rabbi. He is asked about how to interpret the law, which was and is the job for rabbis.
Let’s see how the Bible teaches us to love, beginning with the story of Jesus. In our reading from Mark, we have a fairly friendly discussion about love. A scribe, or someone well versed in the scriptures, hears Jesus discussing. This scribe sees that Jesus, “answered well.” And because Jesus answered well, the scribe asks Jesus a very hard and provocative question. He asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Now in the Jewish tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. This provocative scribe is asking Jesus to effectively rank all 613 commandments and pick the highest one–the first of all the commandments. Jesus, the Word made flesh, knows the answer. And Jesus responds as a rabbi. Jesus actually quotes from the law–that is, from the first five books of the Bible. (The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, are also called The Law.) Jesus says that the first of all the commandments is Deuteronomy 6:4,
Hear O Israel, The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
Jesus adds a second commandment, which He takes from Leviticus 19:18, which we heard this morning, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The scribe agrees with Jesus and says,
You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that he is one, and there is no other but he; and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more that all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
The scribe is making a powerful statement. He is saying that personal morality matters more than the formal sacrificial rituals that were common in that time. This conversation occurred in a time when the priests were governing Israel, under Roman rule. This meant that performing temple sacrifices was the primary way religion was understood. People were taught that they were supposed to bring sacrifices to the temple for religious holidays and for all manner of reasons like atonement for sin. But this rabbi, and his master Jesus, said that personal morality mattered more than sacrifices at the temple. Being a loving person is more important than all the sacrifices. Jesus is pleased with the scribe’s answer and tells him, “You are not far from the kingdom.” So in Mark, we have a friendly encounter about a central teaching of Jesus, the law of love.
The Gospel of Matthew puts a different spin on this story. In Matthew, the question about the law happens as Jesus just finishes an argument, and it is an argument, with a group called Sadducees. The Sadducees were aristocrats in the time of Jesus, and they maintained the temple. When Jesus silences the Sadducees in an argument about life after death, the Pharisees gang up against Jesus. They ask him the same question we heard in Mark. But Matthew tells us that they did it to test Jesus,
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” (Matthew 22:34-35)
Jesus gives the same answer about the two great commands that he does in Mark. in Matthew, this silences the Pharisees. And in both Gospels, we find the conclusion, “And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did any one dare to ask him any more questions.” I presume this means that no one tried to challenge Jesus any more with trick questions.
Leviticus gives us some practical ways to implement this teaching of love for the neighbor. I think one of the primary case laws that we find in this reading from Leviticus is one about impartiality. Leviticus tells us, “In righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (19:15). This impartiality is explained in terms of wealth and poverty, “You shall do no injustice in judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great” (19:15). This case law extends to all our dealings with our neighbor. God asks us to deal justly with all we come in contact with–friend, acquaintance, or even enemy. Swedenborg tells us that loving spiritually is loving the good that is in a person, not just the person. So wherever we see good, we are to love that in whomever we find it. Loving and doing good only to our friends is not spiritual. Swedenborg writes,
To do good to a friend, of whatever quality he may be, if only he is a friend, is natural and not spiritual; but to do good to a friend for the sake of the good in him, and still more to hold good itself as the friend to which one does good, is spiritual natural . . . (AC 4992).
I see three levels in this discussion of friendship and love. The first, and lowest level is to love our friends whatever they do, just because they are our friends. This kind of love is not spiritual. The second level of love is to love our friends for the good that is in them. At this point, we are verging on spiritual love. Finally, the third level of love is to love good itself. And wherever we see good, in whomever we see it, we befriend that person and the good in him or her. This is loving spiritually. But our love extends to everyone in the whole human race. Swedenborg says, “To love the neighbor is not merely to will and do good to the relative, friend, and good person, but also to the stranger, enemy, and bad man” (TCR 407). Though we love everyone, we show our love differently according to the quality of the person we love. We do good directly to good people, but we show our love to wicked people by attempts to modify their behavior. We don’t want to enable destructive behaviors,
But charity is exercised . . . toward a relative and friend by direct benefits; toward an enemy and wicked person by indirect benefits conferred by exhortation, discipline, punishment, and so by correction” (TCR 407).
I don’t think the idea here is the methods we use to modify destructive behaviors, as much as it is the idea that destructive behaviors are not to be enabled.
We are not asked to have no friends. Rather, this teaching tells us to scrutinize our friends, and become attached to what is good in them, not to their person regardless of their personality. This sounds judgemental. And being judgemental has negative connotations today. But I do think that we need to be aware of the personality of the friends we make and love. And I think, equally, we need to be aware of the people with whom we form friendships. As for me, I begin all my acquaintances with positive regard and I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I try to remain open to friendships with everyone I meet. It is only when my trust and positive regard meets with ethical challenges that I pull away and begin to distance myself from others. If another person shows me that they cannot be trusted, then and only then do I revise my decision to befriend them.
The list of case laws in Leviticus goes on to name several instances and means of being a good neighbor. But then it concludes with a general statement that includes all the forgoing cases,
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love the neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD (Leviticus 19:17-18).
This law tells us to look within. Just as the sum of the Ten Commandments talks about the inner feeling of covetousness, this list of laws is summed up with an inward turn not to hate and to love. This commandment tells us that if we hold hatred in our hearts, we sin, not our neighbor. Neither are we to hold grudges or take vengeance. Rather, as Jesus tells the scribe, and tells each one of us, loving God and loving our neighbor are the sum of all 613 commandments in the Old Testament.

PRAYER

Lord, you have given us two commandments that are not hard to understand. You have asked us to love you above all and with all our mind and all our might. And you have asked us to love our neighbor as our selves. You have taught us that everyone in the whole human race is our neighbor. We are called upon to love distant strangers and those in our own household. We are called upon to love enemies and friends alike. We pray that you soften our hearts, so that we may remain open to our neighbor wherever we encounter him or her. We pray to be filled with your all-encompassing love, so that we may embrace our fellows when we meet them. And we pray, Lord, for your wisdom. We pray for wisdom to guide us into effective love. We would know how to best encourage what is good in our neighbors, and to amend what needs to change. For even as we support our neighbors, we do not wish to enable destructive character traits. We pray in Your Most Holy Name, amen.