All You Need Is Love

Proper 18, Year A 

Conflicts raged between Jesus and religious leaders throughout his ministry. During one of these confrontations, the Sadducees asked Jesus a question (Matthew 22:34-36). Sadducees were the religious leaders who planned and ran Temple worship, and judged legal cases using literal interpretations of the Torah. After other religious leaders failed to prove Jesus was a heretic, the Sadducees tested Jesus with a question. They designed their question to show their expertise, and to show that Jesus was a fraud. The Sadducees asked,

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40).

Jesus’ response was wise and well versed in the Torah. The Sadducees were silenced because no fault could be found in Jesus’ answer. They failed to discredit Jesus.  

There was, and there is no way to refute the power of love. Every world religion acknowledges the importance of unconditional love. The value of love is even extolled in popular culture.  Remember the Beatles’ song?

There's nothin' you can know that isn't known
Nothin' you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus shows us how to use love to address community conflicts, family disagreements, and sin (Matthew 18:15-20). Jesus offered this lesson because while it is true that “all we need is love,” love, contrary to the Beatles’ song, is not “easy” to manage. Love for God, ourselves, neighbors, and enemies is not easy to accomplish. We need, therefore, to follow Jesus’ teaching about how to love. Sin, disagreement, and conflict are ever present and impossible to avoid. Sin, disagreement, and conflict even happen in the church. This is why we need to read, mark, and inwardly digest Jesus’ teaching.

Let’s take a closer look at Jesus’ instruction.  It begins:

If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the problem when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained them as a sibling (Matthew 18:15).

There are features of this first step in using love to address sin, disagreement, and conflict that we need to notice. Number one: Jesus directs the person harmed, offended, or wronged to initiate action. We are not supposed to wait for those who injure, victimize, or malign us to come to their senses, apologize, “stop acting the fool,” and make amends.  Number two: reconciliation is the action we are directed to take.  Jesus did not teach what my brothers taught me, “don’t get mad, get even.” Number three: Jesus said that the first meeting with our offender must take place in private. Jesus did not tell us to complain to family members, gossip to friends, post the incident on social media, call them out during a family meal, or talk about it during a church meeting. 

In the second step for using love to deal with sin, disagreements, and conflicts, Jesus said:

If you are not listened to during the private meeting, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence witnesses (Matthew 18:17).

To help the person hear your words as loving, and maximize the potential for reconciliation, I suggest selecting the witnesses from among that person’s allies, friends, or family. Trust must be earned, not assumed.  Interventions for substance abuse or behavioral addictions are more effective when family members and friends of the afflicted person participate. Jesus understood, long before Freud, Jung, or recovery programs, that transparency and accountability are essential. In order to name, claim, and change bad behaviors, and thereafter repair the damage done, witnesses are needed. Community involvement is needed. Commitments of prayer, support, and experience from church, family, friends, and colleagues are needed.

For the third and final step in the application of love to conflict, disagreement, and sin, Jesus said:

If that person refuses to listen to their loved one, friends, or peers, then tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector (Matthew 18:17).

Jesus was pointing out a hard and undeniable fact: not every problem can be fixed; some crimes will never be solved; and certain sins must be left for God to address! It is odd that Jesus used the word “church.” How did this word get into Jesus’ teaching when the church came into existence around one hundred years after his ascension? The disciples of Matthew, after his death, recorded Matthew’s descriptions of events and in retelling parables and recounting teachings, they put this word into Jesus’ instructions. They put the word “church” into this teaching. Mathew’s disciples did this because their church members needed help. The members desperately needed to learn how to apply God’s love to cope with persecutions and conflicts. The last resort in dealing with sin, disagreement, or conflict is to reveal the problem to the community. This was necessary to protect the community. You have heard the proverb, "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” Jesus knew a single negative, toxic, bad actor can ruin an entire group if they are not stopped, corrected or removed.

Love is the greatest commandment. The apostle Paul said: “faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these spiritual gifts is love.” (1Corinthians 13:13). Love, God’s love, can be your super power. As we prepare for elections this November, grieve with the people in Nepal over the thousands of deaths caused by global warming (that we helped create,) as we shift from seasonal neighbors to year round neighbors, we need to read, mark, and inwardly digest Jesus’ instructions so that we can use love to address conflict, disagreements, and sin.