This week the Pharisees continue their attempts to trip up Jesus. We’ve skipped his debate with the Sadducees about life after death, and now we hear a different line of attack from the political trap over paying taxes to the Romans. Or perhaps it really isn’t an attack – in Mark’s version of this story the Scribe commends Jesus for his answer and gets an approving response from Jesus. And it is something of a softball question. The Scribes (the scholars of the Law) were heavily into debating which laws were more important than others, but there was a fairly wide consensus that the passage from Deuteronomy that Jesus quotes was indeed the primary, or foundational, law – if you were looking for such a thing. If the Pharisees were looking for contention they were rather clutching at straws.
Even Jesus’ rider about a second commandment wasn’t that controversial. In Luke’s version of the story he has the Scribe himself answer the question (which Jesus bats back to him) – and the Scribe includes both commandments. Luke adds the story of the Good Samaritan immediately after this discussion to drive home the point about how we should interpret “neighbor” i.e. everyone.
So it seems Matthew is giving us a very ‘vanilla’ version of the story – apparently with no elaboration at all. But there is something in Matthew’s account which we don’t find in the other gospels – Jesus’ statement “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” Let’s remember, Matthew was writing for more of a Jewish audience than the other evangelists – he has homed in on the actual point of dispute in terms of Jewish law.
There is a not-so-obvious but very important question that follows on: what does it mean to say ‘the rest of the law depends on these two commandments’? We could dive down a very deep legal rabbit-hole at this point since the question of how laws may depend on each other is hugely consequential even now – it’s the basis of the legal argument currently in play about whether the Affordable Care Act should be declared unconstitutional (look up “severability” if you want to follow that rabbit…).
But if we don’t care about Jewish law, or even the fine points of US constitutional law, does Matthew have anything to say to us? Well of course the answer is yes – that’s what evangelists are for – their gospels speak to all people in all times – sometimes we just have to dig a bit. And don’t worry, the digging doesn’t involve taking a law degree! As so often our First Reading gives us a hint to help us forward.
This passage from Exodus is a section of actual law codes from early Hebrew society. The chapter starts with a discussion of very complicated rules for restitution and punishment in the case of various forms of housebreaking, and ends with a prohibition on eating carrion meat, and there’s quite a lot else as well. The Church has given us just the bit that is relevant to us. And this is exactly the point – how do we decide what is relevant? If we treat laws like lists and we can tick off whether we have obeyed or not then we might think that gives us clarity and consistency – keep it simple and treat everyone the same. But what Jesus, via Matthew, is telling us is it isn’t simple in that way. We can’t just have lists of rules, and rules about which rules are more important. Our life as children of God is founded on the commandment to love (something John the evangelist also spells out in his own distinctive way). We have to base everything, all our views on what is right and what is wrong on the commandment that everything must be done with love, love of God, love of ourselves, love of each other. And that means the answers will change. I know some people will be hugely uncomfortable with that conclusion but it is inescapable – no-one thinks we should take the laws in the Book of Exodus and enforce them uniformly, no-one thinks early attitudes towards slavery or the position of women in society should be reflected in our current laws.
If we fear the result of this is chaos and confusion then I think we have to focus back on the words of Jesus – the commandment to love is the foundation of all law. It must be the basis of our treatment of migrants, widows, orphans, debtors, thieves, philanderers, and everything else. Exactly how we play out that law of love in each society is the work we have to do as responsible citizens, as members of a community. It is absolutely not something where we get to pick and choose as individuals. But as Jesus implied in his answer to the Scribe, it won’t be by checking off the boxes and running down a list of rules. We start with love and go from there, together.