Deut 34:1–12 Ps 90:1–6, 13–17 1 Thess 2:1–13 Matt 22:34–46.
Five little words caught me off guard at our midweek Eucharist on Wednesday.
Words I must have read hundreds of times. They introduce the confession in our prayer book and come from the gospel we just heard. Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” We know this. But did you hear what Jesus says next? “The second is like it.”
I was so struck that I checked my Bible after Mass. Had the prayer book created a useful paraphrase? But no. There they were: “The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” I had always heard two commandments. Love God wholeheartedly. Love your neighbour. This week, I heard the connection. Jesus doesn’t say, “And the next important thing is…” He says the second is like the first.
What does loving the invisible God with your whole self look like? The answer is found in how we love the person beside us. And how we love ourselves.
I wonder whether those five words might help us stand beside Moses on the mountain, because I find today’s Old Testament reading almost unbearably sad. I cried over it this week. Moses has given his life to this journey. He summoned his courage to confront Pharaoh, led the people out of slavery, carried their complaints and fear. He pleaded with God for them, lost his temper with them, and somehow kept going. And now, at last, there it is: The promised land. All that country stretching into the distance. The destination towards which his life has been directed. You can see it, Moses. But you will not enter it. After all those years of trying and failing and trying again. After all he has done to love God and the people in his care. Surely he could just cross the river. Stand there for a moment. Feel its earth beneath his feet.
Surely God’s grace could extend to Moses? The wider story gives reasons for his exclusion. But reasons do not remove the heartache.
There is a particular grief in coming so close to something you have longed for and discovering it will remain beyond your reach. Some of us know that grief. A relationship we gave everything to. A healing we prayed for. A future we thought we would share with someone who is no longer here. Sometimes we must face the possibility that the work of our lives will bear fruit after our lives have ended.
Moses will not enter. But the people will. The people he argued with and prayed for. The people whose freedom he helped bring about. They will cross the river, with Joshua leading them. Their children will make their homes there. That doesn’t make Moses’ sorrow disappear. But it means his love has a future. Perhaps loving God means loving our neighbours enough to work for a future they will enjoy, even when we will not.
Planting a tree beneath whose shade we may never sit. Working for peace we may never see. Challenging injustice whose roots go deeper than we can reach in a lifetime. Handing on faith to people who will carry the gospel into places we will never go. There is something deeply demanding about this. We want to know our efforts have worked. We want to see the change. Cross the river ourselves. There is nothing shameful about that longing. Moses wanted to enter the land. Of course he did. Faithfulness does not require us to pretend we don’t care about the outcome. Love makes us care very much. And love asks us to keep seeking goodness, even when we may never see its fulfilment.
Long ago, people from Mount Hawthorn were sent here with a charge: go to the water’s edge and plant a church. They could not have seen all that would grow from their work. Over time, priests and people came, each contributing something to the life of this place. Now it is our turn.
We are caring for a church we have received, shaping something we will one day hand on. Some of what we begin may flourish quickly. Some may become a gift to people whose names we will never know. Our call is to love, faithfully. Not all the results will be ours to witness.
As a priest, I feel that keenly. Six years in my first parish; so much began and continues under someone else’s care. Five years in Beaconsfield. What will grow from the seeds sown there? What fruit will someone else harvest? Perhaps that’s why I want to stand beside Moses and say, “God, it hurts.” We are allowed to say that. And perhaps, through our tears, we can look out with him across the land. Someone will live there. Someone will find freedom there. Someone’s children will have a future there. And the love that helped bring them to its border will always have mattered. So, we keep journeying.
Our call is to love God with everything we have. And our second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself. May we do both, faithfully and diligently, with all we have. Amen.
