The Answer to Everything

This past week, I watched some of the third and final presidential debate. Don’t worry; I said all that I want to say about our political and civic responsibilities in my homily last week. But watching that debate, I noticed how both candidates always had a response to anything they were asked. Sometimes their responses actually answered the question, sometimes not, but no matter what they were asked they always had something to say.

In the Gospel today, Jesus is asked to answer a question, and just like the question in last week’s Gospel about paying the census tax to Caesar, it is a question designed to trip him up. In fact, at this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is asked a whole series of questions, all of which are antagonistic. They come at the very end of his earthly ministry, after he has triumphantly entered Jerusalem to the acclamation of the crowds, and after he has cleansed the Temple by throwing out the moneychangers. The scribes and Pharisees have long been annoyed by Jesus, who has criticized them, called them hypocrites, and eroded their authority with the people. For that reason, they’ve been repeatedly trying to discredit him, but to this point they’ve failed. The questions they ask him in Jerusalem, then, including the question we hear today, are a last ditch effort to trip him up – to get him to say something that will undermine his moral authority with the Jewish people.

Jesus, though, is always ready to meet their questions with an answer – not a pat, flippant response, not an avoidance of the question, or a harsh dismissal of it, but an honest and direct answer. Jesus’s answers were also incredibly insightful – far more insightful than the wisdom of the scribes and Pharisees, the supposed religious authorities of their day. In Jesus, the Jewish people saw that God had sent them the One who could answer all of their questions. As Christians, we go one step further. Jesus doesn’t just have the answer to all of our questions; he is himself the Answer – he is the “Logos” of God: the Word, the Reason, the Design. As the Second Person of the Trinity who has come to share our nature and reality, he speaks with an authority that is at once divine and human. He reveals to us the mysteries of God but also the deepest truths about ourselves.

The Pharisees and Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus (c. 1892) by James Tissot

You and I also need to hear the answers Jesus provides, and what only he can teach us. What God wants us to understand from his Son are not just truths and revelations from long ago; they are things we still must understand and live out today. And, indeed, today’s Gospel tells us that what God commands us is not something distant or esoteric, but straightforward. “The whole law and the prophets,” Jesus says – everything that is contained in what we call the Old Testament – consists in loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

The principle is just that simple: to love God and to love others. But as we know, living it out is much harder. We know all too well how hard it can be to love in practice not just in principle. We are aware of the different circumstances in our homes and family lives that can make it difficult to keep ourselves focused on loving God above all and to loving others in the way that we should. In our workplaces, in our relationships, in the particular questions that make up our lives in the here and now, we know the different scenarios that don’t always provide an easy answers about how to love. Even in our Church, we wrestle at times with uncomfortable realities, painful pasts, and uncertain futures that can distract or discourage us from the simple if challenging command to love. In short, when Jesus tells us that the whole of the moral life can be summed up by loving God and one another, it feels that often we might find ourselves prompted to respond, “Yes, Lord, but *how*?”

Let me share two thoughts that might be helpful. The first is to keep asking ourselves questions and keep striving for answers. One of the greatest dangers to loving well is becoming satisfied with our where we are at – becoming lazy spiritually. We think, “Oh, I’m too old or too set in my ways to seek God, or to grow in my faith, or to learn how to love more deeply.” There is a spirit of indifferentism that can afflict us when we don’t want to keep striving to grow and to deepen our faith, when we take it for granted in search of other goals. Jesus calls us all of us to holiness, and holiness according to the standard of loving well. If we want to reach it, then we will have to keep asking ourselves important questions – questions like: “Do I love God?”; “Do I love him with my whole being; my heart and soul and mind?”;“Do I seek to love my neighbor, whoever that may be – not just the persons I like, or admire, or who make me feel good about myself, but even the persons I don’t like, the persons who bother me, the persons who have aggrieved me?” Asking those questions isn't easy, and we won’t always like every answer to them, but that’s okay. It’s important to keep asking them, because they point us toward where we have room for further growth.

The second thought is to repeat what I said at the start: Jesus is himself the Answer to all of our questions. In the end the love of God and the love of others is united in the love of Christ. In him, we fulfill both of the commandments of this Gospel: we love God in the Person of his Son who reveals to us his love for us each day; and we love others by loving Christ present within them. If we really want to learn to love well, not just in principle but in action, we must learn to love Jesus wherever we find him: in the face of one who is suffering, in the cries of those who demand justice; in the encouragement of one who calls us to growth and conversion; in the mercy of one who forgives us our faults and transgressions; above all, in the Church, in the sacraments we receive, especially the Most Holy Eucharist.

Friends, seek out the Lord Jesus this week in prayer: in your home, here in church, or in any place you find conducive. Seek him not out of obligation, and not out of malice as the scribes and Pharisees did, but with humility and love. Ask him some questions – about your own life, about how you can love more deeply – and listen for what he says in response. It may be that you will come away with some answers, with insight into what he is asking of you right here and now. If nothing else, you will have spent time with the One who loves you, who is himself the Answer to all your questions, and who gives you the strength to love in return.