Sermon

Two Sides of the Same Coin

 by The Rev. Canon Joe Behen

It’s an interesting experience to see two things that you imagine to be quite separate, even as polar opposites, and then to find them not only to be related, but to begin to see them as two sides of the same coin.  About eight years ago, I saw the Spielberg film, Catch Me if You Can.  You may recall that it was essentially the story a 1960’s con man, Frank Abagnale Jr., and how he impersonated at different times, an airline pilot, a lawyer, and even a doctor.  He is chased diligently around the world by detective Hanratty.  Good guy and bad guy, right?  Well, I’ve since seen the film again, and like any good film it goes deeper than I had thought.

One of the ironies presented in this film is how alike these two men are increasingly shown to be.  Neither of them can stop doing what they’re doing: Abagnale from deceiving, and Hanratty from chasing.  But on deeper level still, the film is about the deception that is part of ordinary relationships.  The absence of truth-telling in their families has left these two men quite alone.  In occasional phone conversations over the years, they are actually shown to have the only honest relationship in the film.  They find that they need each other for just this reason.[1]

In today’s gospel, Jesus condenses the whole of Hebrew law and the writings of the prophets into just two statements.  Love God, and love your neighbor.  Doing this accomplishes two things.  First, as we’ve seen with many of the gospel readings, it does what the word implies: it sums up a diversity of biblical writings into a “big picture,” calling us back once again to the main thing.

But, as we’ve also seen in Matthew’s gospel, a summation like this serves as an interpretative tool.  What could otherwise be read simply as a list of rules now becomes a product of the heart that created them.  Commandments to avoid stealing from a neighbor or coveting a neighbor’s wife become singular aspects of loving one’s neighbor.

As a parent, I can remember learning to respond to my children’s questions about the rules.  I’ll never forget the moment in which I first realized that the answer to the question, “Why?” truly is, “Because I said so.”  But I found that as my children got older, some context for their questions was helpful to them.  I tried to share with them something about why a particular rule is in place, inviting them into a higher level of ownership.  The rule then becomes simply one instance, of something that I find to be important.  On some level, I’m asking them to find this important too.

Something similar can be said, I think, about Jesus’ summation of the law.  God is determined that the law be written on our hearts[2], to the point where the law itself becomes less important than the sentiment behind it.  That sentiment is what Jesus is pointing us to today.  This summation is an invitation into the heart of God.

I’ve often suspected that to love God is perhaps harder than we sometimes think it is.  When Jesus says in today’s gospel that the command to love God is “like” the command to love our neighbor, I wonder if he is challenging our notion of what it means to love God in the first place.  It’s a long and varied list of things that people have done in the name of God.  The crusades were an attempt to protect God’s honor by a people who felt intensely dishonored themselves.  Half of the world was colonized by European countries who understood God’s greatest wish to be an expanded realm, not unlike what they wanted for themselves.  The list goes on.  Our Lord seems to be a big target for our self-projections.

In John’s first epistle, he writes that, “…those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”[3]  Is it easier to love God because we imagine God being so like ourselves?  The grumpy neighbor and the self righteous co-worker seem less like ourselves.  But we are more alike than we know, and for us to see this similarity seems to be quite important to God.

The detective and the con man from Catch Me If You Can, no doubt saw themselves as polar opposites at one point.  Their differences were obvious and easy to spot.  It was a more nuanced awareness that began to allow them to see similarities in each other.  Perhaps this is what Jesus is trying to tell us.  It’s easy to think that we love God.  But loving neighbors as a barometer of sorts can show us something different.  This, we have to work at.  If we choose to love only when it is obviously warranted, we will never love anyone who doesn’t immediately look and think very much like ourselves.  But love is a choice – a choice that we have to make every day.  Over time, the choice to love others teaches us how profound a thing it is to love God.

In just a few chapters, Jesus will take these two commandments from today’s gospel, and blend them together.  Regarding the feeding of the hungry, the welcoming of the stranger, and so on, Jesus will say, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”[4]  The two laws that Jesus gave today then become each the lens for the other.  They are part and parcel of the same thing.

I’ve often thought of God’s love as a kind of gift.  God gives it, we accept it, and there it rests.  It is certainly a gift, but it seems that it’s not unlike a current, something that God continually puts into the world.  It keeps moving through the world like a breeze, touching and affecting everyone and everything in its path.  When we reach out to others, we come in contact with this current and become part of it.  At that moment, we are acting out our role as stewards of God’s love.  That stewardship places us directly between the two great commandments.  Love of God, and love of neighbor:  They don’t happen in isolation from each other, but are intimately connected.  Two sides of the same coin.

Amen.

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[1] Tom Hyland, from his article, “Catch Me If You Can: Two Sides of the Same Coin” found on the Cinema Directives blog: http://cinemadirectives.blogspot.com/2010/12/two-sides-of-same-coin.html , accessed on 10/20/2011
[2] Jeremiah 31:33
[3] 1 John 4:20
[4] Matthew 25:40

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