An old joke about lawyers shows how legal complexities can render us unaware, dangerously so. Two lawyers were out hunting when they came upon tracks. The first lawyer declared them to be deer tracks but the second insisted they must be elk tracks. They were still arguing when the train hit them. So it is that a dangerously unaware lawyer questions Jesus’ knowledge of legal complexities, “Which law is the greatest?” Jesus responded, “Love God, with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Caught up in the minutia of legal complexities we can, like the lawyer, be unaware of love as the proper basis of any law. Love commits us to the care of people and the care of the common good. Justice is different from love. Justice is the basis of law among citizens in empires. Justice commits us to maintain order and to maintain a system of recompense. Justice provides recompense within a system rulers established and maintain. Justice is the legal system of retribution supremacists established to make subordinates suffer for disobeying their rules. Justice originates in the ranks of the military. Military justice dates as far back as the warriors Hammurabi and Moses. Additional warriors updated it over the centuries for rulers’ various kingdoms. Military justice has historically been applied to disobedient women, slaves, recruits, and conscientious objectors. To seek military justice is stay tethered to the system rulers use to keep us oppressed. Love frees us from the rulers’ system. Love begins in the emotion or disposition we extend to others, even those who offend us. It is not to be equated with a niceness that dismisses harm. Love is an energy and it transforms harm. It is the temperament that guides us and our communities. It is the temperament we express to co-create change with or for persons who have hurt us. It is a temperament we express socially. We can shift from a warrior’s justice decrees to establish and maintain a Peacemaker’s Love movement.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. … I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life” (How Do I Love Thee – Elisabeth Barrett Browning)
Prayer: Spirit of Love, may we embody Love as our priority.
Question: How am I aware of love’s Presence?
October 29, 2017 Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time