Hang On Love
30th Sunday of the Ordinary Time – Hang On Love
There’s a tiny thrift store and food pantry in rural Somerset County that serves the neediest residents of Maryland’s lower Easter Shore. For more than 40 years now, it occupies a piece of land next to an old Conrail freight line in what once was a John Deere tractor dealership and repair shop.
Until recently, four religious sisters from the order founded by Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton served those whom the world often forgets: the hungry, the ill, the disabled and the immigrant. Their vocations – and their very lives – spoke to the power of living the Gospel and pouring out one’s life in loving service for others, regardless of where they’ve been or how they live their lives.
Sister Dianne – one of the five Sisters of Charity who made Somerset County their home – was often a whirlwind of activity: sorting donations; carrying cases of canned goods donated by the state Food Bank; and playing basketball with the neighborhood boys after they were finished school for the day. It was hard to keep her in one place, and to track her down: she was always on the move. Usually, she was doing five things at once, so when you had to interrupt to ask a question about some need that had suddenly arisen, she would say: “Hang on, love.”
For Sister Dianne, it wasn’t just an expression of asking for patience; it was a way of life.
Hang on, love.
We find Jesus again this week being asked on his way to Calvary what the greatest commandment is. For the faithful Jew, it was the Shema Israel – the central declaration of faith and belief in the one true God as found in the Law. It was the core tenet, and so sacred that Jews repeated it daily in prayer and wrote the words on scrolls kept on their person. “The Lord is God and Him alone. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”
That’s it – and Jesus knew this was the Law in its fullness. Love God with everything you have and all that you are, and you will surely find holiness and righteousness.
But look what the Lord then goes on to do. After stating the Law as found in the Book of Deuteronomy, he takes another vital law found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures – namely, love your neighbor – and places it on equal footing with loving God. As Christians, we hear this statement so often that we sometimes forget how radical this saying actually is. Jesus is coming straight out in the days leading-up to his Crucifixion and saying to the world that loving God and loving one’s neighbor are one in the same. You can’t separate one from the other.
In some ways, we get that. There’s the famous expression taken from St. John’s epistle: How can I love the God I can’t see if I don’t love the neighbor I do see?
Certainly we try. Most of us, anyway. It is hard, though, isn’t it? People let us down and annoy us. Their brokenness rubs-up against our brokenness. Sometimes selfishness clouds their decisions and ours. Loving the neighbor is hard, especially the ones who don’t fit into our camp.
Thus, Jesus tacks on two additional words to his Golden Rule that really puts it all in perspective: “Love as you love yourself.”
Whether we admit it or not, we put our needs and those of our children/loved ones as first priority. We want to be listened to, respected, treated with fairness and dignity, fed and housed, and seen as beautiful, worthy and lovable. (You could no doubt add to that list). These are all good and noble desires, ones that the Lord himself has placed on our hearts in the first place. We want them because He wants them for us – because He loved them into us, you could say.
But those very same desires are ones that we can’t keep for ourselves or seek only for our closest family and friends. As Christ commands it, they must be offered to all, especially the ones we don’t want to be our neighbor.
Let that sink in. The ones whom God wants us to love are the very ones we’d consider to be unlovable – the ones who we would say on our worst days: “Get away from me.” Our ex-spouse. The political party we think is leading the nation down the wrong path. The child abuser and abortionist. The friend who betrayed you twenty years ago. They, too, are our neighbors.
The Book of Exodus is clear: take care of the ones whom no one else sees or cares for, for God certainly hears their cry and is compassionate toward them. Yes, even the ones who don’t seemingly deserve love. Why? Because there but for the grace of God go I.
St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians – the early Church community being persecuted for following Christ – is beautiful in how it expresses the power of a Christ-centered community whose heart is focused on love of God and neighbor, neither separating one from the other. Paul says: “You know who we were among you, and you became imitators of us throughout the entire region.”
Who were they, you ask? A small humble gathering of disciples who came together, shared their resources, and lived in the world, inviting others into their lives and homes and hearts, no matter who they were. They cared for the least: the widows, the lepers and the unloved children. For them, it wasn’t about voting power and rights. It was about serving and laying-down one’s life for others who never felt love and who didn’t believe God could ever love them.
That’s what strikes me most about all of these readings this weekend: The Church is at her best – loving both God and neighbor – when she (we the Church) love the ones who just can’t believe that God could ever love them. How many hearts cry out these days to be heard? How many souls are crushed under the weight of feeling that they could never be healed or helped? How many of our neighbors act out from a place of brokenness and hate simply because they never experienced true, selfless and sacrificial love?
All of which brings me to this final important point that is so easy to miss, but so very vital to understanding this core teaching of our faith: After Jesus equated love of God with love of neighbor, he ends with: “The whole law and prophets depend on these two commandments.” He’s not just telling them to remember the real reason why the Father imparted the Law in the first place, although there is truth to this. But really, they knew it. So do we.
So why did Jesus end with this fact about the law depending on living the two commandments as one? Because he actually didn’t say “depends upon.” The better translation would be: Hangs from or clings to. The law hangs on to love and clings to love of God and neighbor. The law hangs from and pours out from …
The greatest and fullest expression of that kind of love came at Calvary: when Love Incarnate hung from and poured itself out from the Cross in order to save the world. Love of God and neighbor is best lived when we stand at and cling to the Cross, recognizing it is there that we are redeemed and saved. It is there that we help others find rest and healing. And it is there where we learn that loving our neighbors with heavy crosses is actually loving God and God loving them through us.
Sister Dianne, in her own way many years ago in a tiny rural corner of Somerset County, Maryland, tried to do just that toward all who came to the Seton Center thrift and outreach center, especially the most forgotten and unlovable.
In the end, maybe she wasn’t asking them to wait by saying, “Hang-on, love.” Perhaps it was more of a gentle command and reminder: “Hang on Love.” Everything depends on it!