As Simple As I Gets

Chumley's, New York City

The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

When I lived in New York, one of my favorite restaurants was a former speakeasy called Chumley’s hidden away in Greenwich Village. They made a wonderful beef shish kabob with mustard sauce. The sauce was so good that I wanted to learn to make it myself. I hunted around and found a pretty good recipe—but it was a bit involved. It took several mixing bowls and saucepans. According to the instructions, things were supposed to be blended and heated separately, then combined in a particular order. It was so good, though, that for years, I always did it that way and got great results.

Then one day, I wondered what would happen if I just streamlined things. I put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet stuff in a saucepan. Then I just whisked it all together and heated it up. Guess what? Exactly the same result—just tremendously simplified!

Wouldn’t it be nice if religion worked the same way?

In ancient times, the old rabbis known as the “Sages”—mostly Pharisees—made a thorough inventory of all the commandments and laws contained in the Five Books of Moses. They discovered that there were 613 of these precepts. Of these, 248 were affirmative laws telling people what they had to do. The remaining 365 were negative precepts and prohibitions. To protect these laws and guard the purity of their faith, the rabbis heaped all kinds of regulations and sanctions on top of these 613 commandments—many “ifs,” “buts,” “hows” and “whens” of their own making. It was like turning the IRS loose on the bible when they got done!

Later on, King David, a lover of God and a holy man, reduced it all to eleven precepts in Psalm 15 (v.2-5). He wrote: “Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman, who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.”

The prophet Isaiah simplified them even further to six rules (Isa 33:15-16a): “He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil—this is the man who will dwell on the heights…”

Micah got it down to three (Mic 6:8): “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Amos the prophet further reduced the commandments to two (Am 5:4): “This is what the Lord says to the house of Israel: ‘Seek me and live;’…”

And Habakkuk got it down to just one law (Hab 2:4): “The righteous will live by his faith.”

Jesus follows this tradition of simplifying the commandments to a few pithy, profound words. When the Pharisees asked him what is the greatest commandment, the Lord replies by quoting the Shema, a prayer known by every Jew (Dt 6:4-5) and a line from Leviticus (Lv 19:18). His two straightforward principles that summarize the law and the prophets are these: “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 the first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37-39).

In saying this, Christ gives us the entire law in a nutshell: love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself.

In some ways, the 613 detailed laws of Moses and the rabbis were easier to deal with: at least you knew what was required in virtually every instance… and you’d also know the penalty if you broke the law. Jesus’ law is more complicated, because it implies a great deal of personal responsibility. It’s as though God knew that as a human race, we had “grown up” enough to be able to make some good choices on our own—just the way parents give more freedom and trust to their teenagers as they mature and demonstrate good judgment.

To follow these two great commandments, we have got to stay close to God, who is love, so we can learn what love is… as well as its implications for our lives as we continue on our faith journey. Staying close to God requires nurturing through prayer. Remember, God’s law is not a rulebook; it is a loving relationship. In other words, Jesus makes it clear that instead of focusing on the letter of the law or its minutiae, we must return to the heart and soul of all those ancient biblical rules.

Picture in your mind how you deal with the people in this world you love the most. How you go out of your way to care for them, be patient with them, know all about their likes and dreams so you can surprise them with nice things, go to bat for them whenever you need to… all that kind of thing. Now generalize and expand that so it radiates out first and foremost to God, and then to everyone else. That’s what it’s all about. Definitely not easy, but something we can strive for.

We give thanks today that our good and gracious God has given us guidelines for our lives... guidelines to help us be better people. We ask for the gift of discernment to help us learn the law of love so we can truly live a life of love.