Thought for the week - 25 October 2026

We’ve come to the final question of the series we have heard the last few weeks – the last put by the Lord’s many critics to undermine His authority, to challenge His knowledge of the Law of Moses. In the verses immediately preceding, Jesus has finally silenced the Sadducees in a resounding affirmation of the resurrection. Now it is the turn of the scribes and Pharisees. They, too, will be silenced.

Christ shows His mastery of sacred Scripture in arriving at these two principles under which the many other laws and traditions are subsumed. Jesus first cites Moses’ command to Israel in Deuteronomy (6:5) “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”, words from the Shema, a prayer as familiar to his questioners as their own hands. The command to “love your neighbour as yourself” can be seen to précis the many passages of the Law like that in today’s reading from Exodus urging our concern for the stranger, the widow (or single parent), and the orphan (or children in care). Jesus is not replacing these more detailed requirements of social justice and compassion, however adept we may be at ignoring their needs.

Where, then, does this leave us? Put bluntly, the authority which Jesus here displays cannot be ignored. Is it to be rejected or accepted? Is this not the authority of One who is Himself the Author of Sacred Scripture? The questions are no longer for Jesus, but for the rest of us. If the Gospel reading today stops at this point, Matthew does not. Jesus at once turns the tables, puts the question Himself: “While the Pharisees were gathered round, Jesus put this question to them, ‘What is your opinion about the Christ? Whose son is he?’”.

If we place these questions in their dramatic context near the opening of the Gospel’s passion narrative, we see something of the terrible ironies that play around this scene. All seemingly agree upon what love of God and neighbour should be, but how does that love appear in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth? Whatever their knowledge of the Law, these people are about to engineer the execution of Him who is both Son of God and Son of Man. It has ever been thus, and Christians today will find ways to peddle hatred as well.

“On these two commandments”, Jesus says, “hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.” There are painful echoes here of other texts, of the accursed man who hangs on the tree in Deuteronomy. The Greek verb was used by St. Paul in writing to the church in Galatia when he applied that text of Deuteronomy to the death of Christ. In the death of Christ we see the gap between what we know about love and what we do without it. The cross reveals us to be the kind of creature that can torture and execute even the Son of God. That is one of the most painful truths of the Christian faith, lost or denied when a false theology attempts to shift the blame onto outsiders in racism, hatred, misogyny or some other kind denial of our common fallen state.

Christ’s cross just is, in this fallen world, what love of God and neighbour leads to and looks like. Packed away in this short scene is the unpalatable truth that we too must take up our crosses if we are to love, and so worship God in spirit and in truth. We can expect scorn and even persecution because that’s the reaction love sets up in those who abuse power. We must not under-estimate the forces of evil that confront us. We shall need God’s grace, the power of the Messiah at work in our lives, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the Church and its sacraments. We shall need the divine life communicated to us in the holy humanity of Christ, in His precious body and blood, which is our Eucharist; and we shall ultimately need His judgement and with it, the vindication of the martyrs and the courage of the Saints gone before us who were killed, not because they were in a fight, but because they challenged the status quo, as does Christ here.

We can see again why this last question put to Christ leads to his questioning of the Pharisees. If we are really in the business of loving God and neighbour, we shall need the power and victory of the Messiah. It is not enough to have a humanistic ethic. It is not enough to mean well. The ‘great and the good’ in our secular materialistic society grossly under-estimate the forces of evil which confront us and indeed in some cases create it, or at least encourage it, themselves. This comes from fear - a fear of their own political impotence in the face of a society which has largely not voted for them, a fear of losing their livelihood which is maybe ill suited to the present age, and a fear of the people they govern who, largely, are unknown to them and vice versa. Our true governor is not voted for by us, nor is He negotiable, and He knows each hair on our heads. In a world of fear, evil and hatred, only reliance on the love of God will be sufficient, only faith will remain when principalities and empires have collapsed, what shall remain of us is faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. Love your God with all your heart and your soul and love your neighbour as yourself. The only question remaining, then, is which side are you on?