Hanging by a Hair
A Reflection on this Friday’s Gospel - Matthew 22 34-40 – 23 August 2024
The original “Semitic-Greek” language for the Gospel today is particularly expressive. So, I apologize in advance for the following Greek exegesis. In understanding the Greek, we hear the power with which our Lord tells us that, everything depends on love.
What does that word, “love,” really mean? In our culture the word “love” has become so hackneyed that the radical nature of Jesus’ call to love in Mathew 22:34-40 is lost. Also, it is easy to pass right over Jesus’ final words on the topic that, “the whole law and the prophets” depend on our full love of God and neighbor. (Matthew 22:40) These final words carry the weight of eternity, the weight of eternal life.
Let’s begin with the word “love.” The word which Jesus uses for the love for God and of neighbor is recorded in Greek as agapeo (ἀγαπάω). Agapeo expresses a kind of love that originates in our will, which results in overwhelming affection rather than an emotional response or feeling. It is a love which has, at its core, no limits. It is the same term which St Paul uses to describe God’s love for His people (Ephesians 2:4), and which Jesus obliquely refers to as the divine love between the Father and the Son (John 8:42). In a sense, we lose some of the power of what Jesus is telling us because our language does not have the same rich differentiation for the word, “love,” that the Greeks and the Romans have in about a half dozen different words at their disposal.
The love to which Jesus commands for God is the same love that He directs for our neighbor. Some like to infer that love of neighbor is “less than” the love commanded for God. The first commandment is the greatest but, as Jesus tells us, “The second is like it.” (Matthew 22:39 NABRE)
Perhaps a better translation for Matthew 22:39 is that the second commandment is the “same as” the first in both appearance and character. The word translated as “like” in Greek is, hŏmŏiŏs, from the root homou, meaning similar in both appearance and character. Jesus is telling us that the willed and intense love that we have for God must be reflected in our outward actions and in its result in how we care for our neighbor. As Jesus describes in the story of the Good Samaritan, love of neighbor extends to those whom we do not like and especially to those in need whom we don’t even know. The manner with which we love our neighbor demonstrates and is interdependent with our love for God. As St John writes,
If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20–21 NABRE)
We often gloss over the last verse of Jesus’ teaching; “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:40 NABRE) Let’s look at the law first.
The whole of the Hebraic law aimed at attaining a society which acted in a “just manner.” A just response is our obligation toward God given the state of holiness in which God created us. (CCC 375) It is also the just response due toward all peoples which obliges respect for the rights of the other and establishes a harmony that promotes equity regarding persons and for the common good. (CCC Glossary) For any individual, community, or nation to be “just” is dependent upon the love to which we, as followers of Christ, are commanded. Without love, justice is not possible.
Jesus also tells us that what the prophets proclaimed is dependent on a community which lives out agapeo-love. The prophets were those who worked as God’s envoy’s, the legatus divinus, who constantly proclaimed divine revelation which called society to truth. Everything they, and now we, proclaim about Truth, Jesus, depends on the quality of our undivided love for Christ, and with equal manner, our love of neighbor, wherever we find them.
The word for “depend” in Greek is “krematai” meaning, “to hang.” The word image is of a large mass precariously suspended by means of two very thin ropes or hairs. (Huntington Matthew 22:40) This is how important our love is. The law and the prophets hang as if by hair. If we do not love, there is no justice, and the truth of the Gospel rings hollow. Without Christian love of God and neighbor, everything comes crashing down. The Gospel is meaningless. It reminds me of the hymn, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”
Everything depends on love, not an emotional affection, but an intense and willed love for God and our neighbor. It is in and through the quality of this love that God’s kingdom on earth is realized. It is to this love that justice and truth hang, like a great mass, suspended upon two hairs. It is to this love that Jesus commands us especially regarding our neighbor. It is only a question of our will. Will you love?
Endnotes:
Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000. Print.
Harrington, Daniel J. The Gospel of Matthew. Ed. Daniel J. Harrington. Vol. 1. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007. Print. Sacra Pagina Series.
New American Bible. Revised Edition. Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011. Print.
Yarbrough, Robert W. “3 John.” Holman Illustrated Bible Commentary. Ed. E. Ray Clendenen and Jeremy Royal Howard. Broadman & Holman, 2015. 1377. Print.