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 is expressed socially in the care of people and care of the common good. Justice is unfortunately the basis of law among citizens in empires. Though justice is often heralded, including social justice, we can ponder if it is as fulfilling a priority as love. Justice is very unlike love. It is designed to maintain order. It is hoped to provide recompense. But if it does so, it does so in a system rulers established and maintain. Justice is the system, specifically the legal system of retribution hierarchs established to make subordinates suffer for disobeying their rules. Such justice originates in the ranks of the military and dates as far back as the warriors Hammurabi and Moses. Additional warriors updated it over the centuries for rulers’ various kingdoms. Such justice has historically been applied to disobedient women, slaves, and conscientious objectors. It is also true that rulers’ system of justice has been necessarily used by people who are oppressed to hinder and prevent their suffering and death. It is therefore useful. It is also manipulative as justice keeps us 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 ethic we live by. It is the ethic we put into practice to co-crate change among those who hurt us. It is especially such an ethic practiced socially. Peacemakers can establish and maintain a Social 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