Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

October 25, 2026

Matthew 22:34-46

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:38).

Now, I’m going to hazard a guess here, and say that we’re all down with the first commandment. We’re all good with loving God. I mean, you are in church after all.

It’s the second commandment, that’s where things get dicey. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a pressing concern. Here we are, on the eve of the midterm elections, and it seems that Americans don’t even trust their neighbors, much less love them. I think we’re all tired of the commercials, the text messages. They’re all about the other – the other candidate, the other party, your neighbor who might vote the other way.

Put simply, I believe this is corrosive. And does not actually paint the full picture. Think of it – if someone wins 60% of a vote, we call that a landslide. A landslide? You’re telling me that if six out ten people prefer hamburgers over hot dogs, that’s a landslide? No, I would say that actually, things are pretty evenly divided. And, if you’re like me, sometimes I like a hamburger, sometimes I like a hot dog. Every so often, I make a hot-burger – that’s where I cut a hot dog in half and put it on top of a burger and eat it all inside a hamburger bun. Just don’t tell your cardiologist.

The other thing going on, of course, is that Americans don’t actually like how divided we are. We don’t like how toxic things have become on social media. We don’t like how we can’t sit down with our families at Thanksgiving and talk about the news. We don’t like how we walk around on eggshells. I’m that way, I feel it, and I don’t like it in me. So things become superficial and fake; or they become tense and heated. And yet, we hear the same commandment – love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, most often we get stuck on how to love our neighbors as ourselves. So we talk about kindness and compassion and empathy. We encourage people to love, to listen, to be there for each other. In the Church, we talk about serving the poor and helping the needy. We talk a lot about how to love our neighbors as ourselves. But we don’t always connect that with the other question – why should we love our neighbors as ourselves?

Now that’s the interesting question. That’s the question of discipleship, that’s the question that actually gets us somewhere. Why should we love our neighbors as ourselves?

Because it’s good for us, and it’s good for all of us together. It’s for social cohesion. All the stuff we’re dealing with right now as a culture, as a society, as a political body – it’s like we’re falling apart at the seams. And that’s not just a recent American phenomenon. It’s happened in all sorts of cultures, all sorts of soceties, across the whole human experience. And just as the condition is the same, so the treatment is the same. Love your neighbors as yourselves. It’s not a platitude, it’s not just some advice for do-goodery. It’s more than being nice to the people around you. No, Jesus tells us to love our neighbors because that is what will make the whole community, the whole society better, happier, healthier. Social cohesion.

But I want to go one level deeper. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. That also means, that he’s told your neighbors to love you. If the command is for everyone, which I believe it is, then it’s also for them. And you’ve gotta accept their love. You’ve gotta accept their charity, their grace, their kindness, their forgiveness. And we don’t like that as much. We want to be the ones doing the loving. We want to be the ones who give the gifts, who feel the empathy, we help out the poor. When we give, when we provide, when we love – that puts us in a position of power.

But that is only feeding our sickness, because we’re all competing to be on top – we want to be the best one at loving our neighbors. And a lot of us don’t want to receive love, because it makes us feel vulnerable, or weak, or needy. As if we couldn’t do everything on our own. But guess what? You can’t do everything on your own. And by denying the love that your neighbor is trying to show you, you are in the way of your neighbor living out the commandment that Jesus gave to them.

Jesus showed this in his own life and ministry. Yes, he loved his neighbors. He fed them when they were hungry; he healed them when they were sick; he gave them hope when they were desperate. But also, he received love from his neighbors. Some Pharisees invited him to dinner, and he joined them and ate their food. There were women who, all throughout his ministry, helped provide him with money; he received their offerings. Even at the end, right before he died, he allowed his friend, Mary, to wash and anoint his feet with perfume. Jesus received love. If we would presume to be his disciples, his followers, then we must do the same.

That brings us back around to the first commandment. Yes, we know that we are supposed to love God. Of course. We go to church and thank God and praise the Almighty for all the blessings of this life. And also, we receive with graittude the love that Jesus so freely offers.

Love is a two way street. As it is in the first commandment, so it must also be in the second commandment. This is the vision, the vision for the Kingdom of God. That we would be a people so committed to God and to one another, that we freely love and receive love. And from that, we trust each other, as we ourselves are trustworthy. We forgive each other, and we accept forgiveness from others.

And that’s the word, that’s the word that we all need to work on.

Other. These two commandments, they’re all about transforming our hearts and our minds so that there would be no other. When we love, and receive love – there is no other, there is only Us. The Church, the Kingdom of God, God’s own people – is not built by getting other people to agree with you. It’s not built on election wins or losses. We are built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, who loves and is loved.

That’s how we’ll transform the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit will make things holier. This is the purpose and the mission of the Church. That we Christians would choose to love and be loved. Because we follow the One who said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’