Thomas Kleinert
On Tuesday morning, a group of Nashville clergy met at Beech Creek Baptist Church, where my friend Davie Tucker is the pastor. Pat was there, our faithful convener; she grew up Southern Baptist and converted to Judaism many years ago. Imam Osama Bahloul from the Islamic Center joined us, along with pastors and counselors from various denominational backgrounds.
Davie had brought donuts and coffee, but he didn’t know that as the host he was supposed to provide a conversation starter for the group, a topic or a clip from the paper. He sat there for a moment, and then he said, and this is not an exact quote, he said, “I got nothing. Rachel weeping for her children, that’s where I’m at. I’m sitting with the mothers. A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. I’m sitting with the mothers whose children are no more.”[1]
I thought Davie said exactly what needed to be said, and all that needed to be said. I thought sitting with the mothers whose children are no more was an important thing to do, and, at the time, all that needed to be done; but when he finished talking – I was just half-way through taking a deep breath – a fast-moving discussion started about the need for communal lament, the trouble with lament in our culture, and the need to say something, the need for our group to say something, not to take sides, but to say something all of us could support, along with other faith leaders in the community, and how it would be almost impossible to come up with something that some of us wouldn’t perceive as either too pro-Israel or too pro-Palestinian, and refuse to sign. Clearly, we found it very hard to sit with the mothers whose children are no more.
On the radio, I listened to a young man, a Jewish settler from one of many illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. He said he wasn’t surprised by the attack by Hamas, that this was who they were, the Palestinians. He was armed with a machete, his buddy carried a gun. Did he carry it to defend himself from attackers, the reporter asked. Yes, of course, he said, but that he was looking forward to the day, and it would be soon, when he would use it to attack and drive all Palestinians from the land, “from the river to the sea,” and to kill those unwilling to leave. He was the exact mirror image of the fighter on the Palestinian side who dreams of a land without Jews, and with the name Israel wiped off the map of Middle East, from the river to the sea.
Who is willing to sit with the mothers whose children are no more? Who is willing to hold space for their grief? “Grief, I’ve learned, is … all the love you want to give, but cannot,” wrote Jamie Anderson. “All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”[2] Jamie’s words have resonated with many over the years since she posted them on her blog. All that love with no place to go. Sitting with the mothers we might all learn something, something that would allow our hearts to move beyond rage, beyond despair, and beyond visions of ethnic cleansing. From the mothers and with them, we might learn how love, at its own unique pace, finds new places to go, and how life becomes new.
Jesus teaches, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”It doesn’t say so anywhere in the Torah, but we have certainly heard the commandment being received that way, that to love our neighbors still leaves plenty of room for hating our enemies. But Jesus says,
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[3]
Nowhere and never does he teach that this is what we are to tell the mothers whose children are no more. I am quite confident that he would want us to sit with them and keep our mouths shut. Jesus invites us to ponder in their presence what love demands of us as his followers.
Somebody counted all the commandments God gave to Moses. We don’t know who it was, or when and where, nor how long it took, but the result of the count became part of Jewish teaching: 613 commandments.[4] Now you could make an argument that to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect means to carefully obey each commandment. The 613 include 365 you-shall-not’s, which is one for each day of the year, and 268 you-shall’s, which, according to tradition, is one for each bone of the human body. No doubt, there have been plenty of clever kids who insisted on a recount – either of the text or the bones – but there have also been, without a doubt, equally clever older folks who told them, “Go ahead, count them.” Sooner or later the youngsters would discover that the point of the tradition was not mathematical accuracy, but poetic truth: We are to know God’s will and word in our bones, with our whole being, and we are to embody God’s commandments faithfully every day of our life.
But who can remember all 613? Most of us are relieved when we can name the ten. And who can apply all of them faithfully in every circumstance? Elders amd teachers were commonly asked to summarize the commandments: What is the essence of the Torah? What is the defining center of human faithfulness to God? Is there one commandment in which all the others come together?
Rabbi Akiva said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; this is the great principle of Torah.”[5] The Apostle Paul made similar statements in his writings. In his letter to the Galatians we read, “The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”[6] And in Romans, Paul declares, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”[7] Many Jewish and Christian teachers have given similar answers, identifying love’s demands as the heart of God’s law. Other voices urged caution: wasn’t it presumptuous of human beings to try and rank the divine commandments by priority?
Where was Jesus on this? Did he come down on the side of those who did see a way to sum up God’s Torah in something like a unifying principle, or did he stand with those who urged equal attention to all commandments?
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets,” he tells us.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[8]
Every letter of the law and the prophets matters; not even one stroke of a letter can be considered negligible, Jesus insists. However, he also warns us against not seeing the forest for all the trees. It’s too easy to have one’s attention completely absorbed by small stuff, by tithing, literally or metaphorically, every herb from the kitchen garden, while neglecting the weightier matters of the Torah: justice, mercy, and faith.[9] Tithing your parsley is quite alright, but not if it keeps you from noticing and addressing injustice in your community or the lack of mercy or the fading of hope.
When we ask Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” he names not just one. There are two, but the two belong inseparably together. Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. The two are one. The Torah is a tree rooted in the heavens, and it has the love of God running through it from its roots. Love flows through the trunk and into every branch, into every twig and sprig and leaf: every commandment, every letter, every stroke of a letter pulsates with that love. As creatures made in the image of God and called to live in covenant with God we are to know this love in our bones and embody it every day in every aspect of our life – in wonder and trust, with our will and our mind, with our work and creativity, in how we receive and share what is given – in all things, love. Douglas Hare writes,
Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that [the commandment to love God] demands of us but rather … unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously.[10]
The commandment, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, is a dangerous one. Perfection as a standard for our actions sets us up for failure. Not so, however, when we recognize that perfectibility is an inherently hopeful term, that we can live each day with the desire to grow in our capacity to love. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously. Jesus challenges us to continually expand the boundaries of who we would consider our neighbor, and not to exclude even our enemies from such consideration. He challenges us to trust that love will find new places to go.
[1] See Jeremiah 31:15 see also Matthew 2:18
[2] https://atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/grief-is-just-love-with-no-place-to-go/
[3] See Matthew 5:43-48
[4]Tanhuma 16b
[5] Kedoshim 4:12
[6] Galatians 5:14
[7] Romans 13:10
[8] Matthew 5:17-20
[9] See Matthew 23:23
[10] Douglas Hare, Matthew (Interpretation Commentaries), 260.