Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2023

Everyone has seen a movie scene in which two main characters, good and evil, fight either on a bridge or on the roof of a skyscraper. Sometimes the scene ends with the evil one falling over the edge, and then at the last moment, the good one grabs him and tries to save him. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t. Perhaps the most common ending is that the evil guy pretends to let the good one save him, and then tries to throw himself down to die at the last moment, taking the good one with him – which of course he doesn’t succeed, because every decent movie must have a happy ending.

If we look at what happened around Jesus, especially in the last weeks of His earthly life, we see a somewhat similar picture: He is attacked by people hostile to Him, the most prominent of whom are the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the scribes. They all tried to trap Jesus in His words to accuse Him of blasphemy and execute Him.

Jesus was above these attacks and did not allow Himself to be trapped. However, His answers to both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were not only witty and disarming but resembled the way the good character behaved in the movie scene described above: Jesus did not respond to an attack with an attack, nor did He merely take a defensive position. He rather offered his attackers the opportunity to get rid of their wickedness and come over to the side of good, of love, of God.

When Jesus was asked, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law" – hoping that if He singled out one commandment above all others, then it would be possible to accuse Him of belittling the other commandments. Then Jesus did not answer with one of the Ten Commandments or any other precept of the Law of Moses, but instead with the Scripture verses that summarize all the Law and the entire relationship between God and His people, with the verses that every Israelite knew by heart: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

It was not only an answer to the Pharisees’ question, but even more it was reaching out to save them from perdition. It was an invitation to come to God and to His love. It was an invitation to live in love.