Beyond the Surface

Have you ever seen an image or an optical illusion that you have to stare at for a long time before you begin to see another shape emerge?

Perhaps there are hidden faces embedded within the lines of a drawing, or a series of concentric circles that seem to move on the page. Other images invite you to look closely and try to determine which direction a silhouette is spinning. As we watch the image, our eyes play tricks on us. We question what we are actually seeing, and we try to figure out how our brain is processing the light. In that quiet moment of realization, we discover that things are not simply what they appeared to be at first glance. There is something more profound waiting beneath the surface.

Something very similar is taking place in our passage today from the Gospel of Matthew. We as modern readers of Scripture approach these stories with the benefit of two thousand years of reflection. We know that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Word made flesh. However, his contemporaries were not walking around with that settled certainty. If people became aware of his identity, it was usually a dawning awareness that unfolded slowly over time.

Scott Hoezee puts it this way: Jesus did not make many overt claims to being divine or being the Messiah, but for those with eyes to see and with ears to hear, he did so right here in this exchange.

It is a fascinating, layered encounter. This story is the final test in a series of confrontations between Jesus and the religious leaders in the temple courts. First, the Pharisees and Herodians attempted to corner him with the tricky question about paying taxes to Caesar. Next, the Sadducees approached him with an absurd riddle about marriage and the resurrection. Now the Pharisees gather again, putting forward a legal scholar to test him one last time.

Notice how these three tests in the temple mirror the three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. That literary symmetry is no accident. Matthew bookends the ministry of Jesus with three trials in the desert and three trials in the temple courts to show how the powers of fear, prestige, and control continually seek to make love stumble.

The question this legal expert poses sounds simple enough: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

This is not a casual parlor game. This is not like asking someone to pick their favourite flavour of ice cream or debate which Star Trek or Star Wars movie is the finest of the collection. In Jewish tradition, every commandment was sacred because the commandments reflected the righteous, compassionate character of the Creator. To elevate one commandment over six hundred others was to step directly into a theological minefield. The Pharisees hoped that whichever law Jesus picked, they could accuse him of minimizing the rest, finding a crack in his orthodoxy so they could discredit his teaching and move toward having him arrested.

Except Jesus does not take the bait. In fact, he responds with words that every person in the crowd, even the youngest child, would have known by heart.

Jesus answers by quoting the Shema from Deuteronomy: “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.”

Shema is the Hebrew word for hear or listen, taken from that ancient prayer: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. Faithful Jewish families recited these sacred words every morning when they woke up and every evening before they went to sleep. A child would know these words as intimately as a Christian child knows the melody of Jesus Loves Me.

Then Jesus immediately adds a second commandment from Leviticus: “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

It is vital for us to recognize that there is absolutely no conflict here between Jesus and Judaism. As Andrew McGowan reminds us, this teaching cannot be unmoored from its Jewish roots. Jesus is not introducing a new religion, nor is he saying anything that would have sounded foreign to his listeners.

Zina Jacque points out that Rabbi Akiva, whose insights were cherished across generations, called the Levitical command to love your neighbour the greatest principle of Torah. A generation before Jesus, the great Rabbi Hillel famously summarized the entire tradition for a seeker by saying: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.

The Pharisees knew this answer. Jesus knew this answer. Everyone gathered in the temple courts knew this answer. If Jesus had said anything else, it would have raised eyebrows. There was no controversy in naming love of God and love of neighbour as the center of the tradition.

So why did they ask the question? And why do we still struggle with it so deeply?

The crisis never arises from a failure to know the words. The crisis arises from the wide gulf between knowing and doing.

Jesus reminds his listeners that the entire shape of Scripture is love. It is a necessary rebuke to anyone who would attempt to use the Bible as a weapon against vulnerable people. Andrew McGowan notes that in our own day, movements like Christian nationalism fail precisely because people pore over the pages of Scripture looking for isolated proof texts to justify exclusion, while ignoring the overarching shape of the story. The shape of Scripture is steadfast love. You cannot weaponize the Law and the Prophets against their own beating heart.

Jesus binds these two commands together so tightly that they cannot be separated. You cannot love God while despising the people God created. If we claim to be devoted to the Divine while treating our neighbours with indifference or hostility, our devotion is hollow.

Yet if we are honest with ourselves, this is where we so often get stuck. It is easy to love humanity in the abstract. It is far harder to love the actual, specific neighbour who annoys us, the neighbour whose politics offend us, or the family member who broke our trust.

It is okay to acknowledge that reality. We are human beings carrying genuine hurts, boundary concerns, and fractured relationships. Scripture does not ask us to pretend that harm has never occurred or that reconciliation is cheap and easy. But Jesus shows us that loving our neighbour is not an emotional feeling. It is a daily practice of respect, goodwill, and justice.

Every person we meet carries the sacred image of God. That image transcends skin colour, gender identity, economic status, nationality, and physical ability. It is stamped into the soul. When the religious authorities looked at Jesus, they failed to recognize that divine image because their vision was clouded by the preservation of their own status.

Jesus does not stop with answering their question. He turns the conversation around and asks them a question of his own.

Remember where this entire scene began. When Jesus first arrived in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers, the leaders demanded: “By what authority are you doing these things?” Ever since that moment, the conversation has been about authority, leadership, and who truly speaks for God.

Jesus asks them: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

They give the standard, well established answer: “The son of David.”

Matthew opened his entire Gospel with those words, declaring Jesus to be the son of David and the son of Abraham. But McGowan reminds us that while the expectation of a Davidic Messiah was universally accepted, it was not well understood.

Jesus points them to Psalm one hundred and ten, asking: If David, speaking by the Spirit, calls the Messiah Lord, how can the Messiah be David’s son?

At that, nobody could say a single word in reply. From that day on, no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Why were they rendered speechless? Was Jesus merely playing clever word games with an ancient psalm?

Not at all. As Zina Jacque observes so beautifully, Jesus has not changed the subject from love to trivia. He has just illustrated what love actually looks like.

David was the revered king of Israel, the celebrated giant slayer, the pinnacle of royal power and pride. Yet David looked ahead at his own descendant and called him Lord. David, who could have claimed absolute patriarchal superiority and defended his royal privilege, willingly bent the knee. David oriented his heart toward the greatness of another rather than protecting his own precedence.

That is the missing key. That is why loving our neighbour is so difficult, and why we need to talk about it again and again.

What keeps getting in the way of love? It is our pride. It is our ego. It is our desperate desire to protect our status, to be right, to have the upper hand, and to maintain our superiority over others.

You cannot truly love God, and you cannot truly love your neighbour, without first practicing the humility of David. We must take our pride out of the equation. We must lay down our need to dominate, our need to defend our privilege, and our instinct to elevate ourselves above those around us.

When you look at another person through the lens of ego, you see a rival, a nuisance, or an enemy. But when you look at another person with humility, through the eyes of Jesus, you see a sibling. You see someone beloved of God who deserves compassion, dignity, and care.

Jesus showed us what this love looks like. It is not an abstract theory discussed in comfortable rooms. Jesus lived this love all the way to the cross, paying the ultimate price of solidarity with the suffering world. In his life, his teaching, and his self giving mercy, Jesus embodied the Word made flesh.

The religious leaders could not answer because they recognized that Jesus was exposing the spiritual bankruptcy of self preservation. They were afraid because they realized that their systems of control and exclusion could not stand before the transforming power of authentic love.

The good news for us today is that we do not have to live behind walls of pride or fear. We are invited into the spacious freedom of God’s grace.

When you leave this place and step back into the routines of your week, remember the shape of the Gospel. It is not complicated, even when it is demanding. Love God with everything you have. Love your neighbour as yourself. Take your ego out of the center and make room for humility.

If you can find a way to see the sacred dignity in the people around you, that love will naturally move your hands to care for them. May God soften our hearts, dismantle our pride, and teach us to walk the humble, courageous path of love together. Amen.