How does one love God? How does one love their neighbor?
There are lots of sayings that Jesus is unique on, but in regards to the law, Jesus was shocking in his clarity, but not in his innovation. The shock of Jesus on the law is that he took it seriously and would not accept the lawyerly loopholes. He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). His innovative summary of that law of God is at the end of his re-upping of the 10 commandments in that Sermon on the Mount, “you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” But Jesus also nods assent to the more standard summaries of the law as seen in the introduction to our Gospel Lesson (Luke 10:25-37). “Love the Lord with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer is probing Jesus for what loopholes he will support. And by the end he realizes that Jesus’ answer is “none.”
All of that is so much the second use of the law – religious or mirror use of it. Looking in the zero loophole law of Jesus shined to a perfectly smooth finish with full silvering on the back we can see every single moral flaw on our face. And in doing that there are one of two reactions. Either Jesus is an overly scrupulous nutcase in which case we can just walk away. Nothing that he says is “reasonable”. Or, Jesus is the one who loves us enough to tell us the truth. Being a “good person” is not going to save you. For salvation – and the lawyer’s initial question is “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” – for salvation you must look outside of the law.
But that does not mean the law is useless. The promise of the law – “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them. (Leviticus 18:5)” – is a false misleading dream. We cannot keep it. We have not kept it. We are not perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. But the law does tell us what true love of our neighbor looks like.
I always chuckle at what gets left out of the lectionary readings. Leviticus 18 and 19 are an enlargement of the 10 commandments. The way Luther answers “what does this mean?” in the catechism with “we should fear and love God so that we don’t do X, but we do Y” can be seen in these chapters. The lectionary picks up the “fear and love God” introduction. “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them I am the LORD your God…I am the LORD (Lev 18:1-5).” But what is the first law that is expanded upon that the selected reading completely skips? The sixth commandment. Do not commit adultery. The entirety of chapter 18 is given over to a laundry list of things that God through Moses says, “stop doing that.” And it covers everything from peeping-toms, to incest, to homosexual acts, to child sacrifice. And it comes with a warning. Doing these things makes the land unclean. That is why the Canaanites are being driven out. “The land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants (Lev 18:25).” True love of the neighbor means not using them sexually.
What else does the chosen reading skip? The first table of the commandments which is in Lev 19:1-8. True love of the neighbor includes worshipping God rightly and honoring your parents.
The lectionary reading picks up the 5th commandment (don’t kill). That is the point of not harvesting to the edge or stripping the vineyard bare. As Luther would say keeping the 5th commandment includes “help and support him in every physical need.” The poor and the sojourner don’t have land, but they need a way to feed themselves. True love of the neighbor is ensuring they have that way.
The lectionary reading continues with commandments 7 through 10. And it calls out the various ways we steal from our neighbors or create injustice through the well-placed lie or knowing how the system works. And notice that the way the system works include bias both to the poor and the great. “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great (Lev 19:15).” True love of the neighbor is honest justice.
How does one love their neighbor? By faithfully living the commandments. Do we do this perfectly? No. Does that mean they are meaningless? Absolutely not. This is how we love our neighbor. So how do we love God? By loving our neighbor. God needs nothing from us. In fact he gives us all that we need to support this body and life. We love God by walking in his statutes, not the statutes of Egypt or Canaan we ourselves sojourn in the midst of.