Habits of Grace: Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself (Week of March 30)
Last week I was reading in Matthew 22 and I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before. Matthew 22 is Holy Week, it’s smack dab in the middle of Holy Week. The conflict in Jerusalem is escalating. Jesus knows this and it’s at that point that he’s tested by, clearly someone who probably was trying to entrap him. He knows that. It was the guy who came up and said, “What is the greatest law in the entire legal edifice of Moses?” And Jesus responds, drawing on what Moses taught in the Hebrew scriptures, in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, “You shall love the Lord your God with all yourself, all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” And then he says, “On these two, hang all the law and the prophets.”