Which of our laws are most important? Sometimes it’s easy – a law against murder is more important than a law about fraud, and we really don’t care much about a law regarding speed limits. Some tie us in knots. Is a law protecting freedom of speech more important than one that prevents riots, or a law preventing transmission of infectious diseases more important than one protecting personal autonomy?
Jewish society in the time of Jesus was no different. Some of their laws were similar to ours and some, particularly where they concern dietary habits and personal hygiene, were very different. But those people understood some were more important than others, even if there was a small group who obsessively tried to comply with all of them equally.
The laws we hear from the Book of Exodus this week (Ex 22:20-26) represent two areas that remain very topical for us today: the treatment of aliens, a term we still use in a legal context, although we more typically say migrants or immigrants; and the basis for acceptable financial relationships. However if we look at the chapter as a whole there is a huge range of laws, some of which seem very strange to us.
In this context Jesus is asked one of those clever lawyerly questions – in amongst all this, how do we decide what is most important, not just the obvious ones, but the whole shebang? Since they all came from God we’d better get it right. An industry of lawyers is not a modern invention!
The answer Jesus gives is not particularly original (Mt 22:34-40). It echoes ideas that are already found in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Mark’s version of this story (Mk 12:28–34) he extends the interchange with the scribe (lawyer) to have him comment back that Jesus had given a good answer, and Jesus in turn commends him. Matthew just gives Jesus’ plain answer with no elaboration or commentary – which may lead us to ask, so what significance did Matthew see in the interchange?
Jesus is asked which commandment is “the greatest”. But rather than give us a hierarchy, this is the topmost, then this one, and then this, … he inverts the whole pyramid and gives us the two commandments which are the foundation of everything else. All the rest are built on these two, “all the law and the prophets depend on them” as he puts it. We know that Jesus doesn’t like the game of “tell us what is most important” whether it’s played with commandments or people. What he’s teaching is how to use the law, how to understand it, how to let it drive our choices and our lives.
If we turn it into a mechanical process, as for example the church did for many centuries with the issue of lending money with interest (when it was called usury and banned, at least in theory), then we’ve lost the plot. The commandment had become disconnected from its foundation in the law of love. The age-old challenge of dealing with migration in a way which is founded on the law of love seems as far away from us as ever. But whatever answers we come up with, if we are to be faithful to Jesus’ teaching (and the prophets before him), it must be founded on the principle of loving our neighbor as ourselves (which doesn’t seem to figure prominently in much current discussion of the topic).
If the law gives us life, as the psalmist insists, then it can’t be a complicated game played out by lawyers. A law which gives life, the law which Jesus taught, is a law to love. There is one foundational law, which comes in two parts – love God and love everyone around you. And everything else must follow from that.