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THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

Opening Prayer:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:  Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen. (BCP 236)

TEXT

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “‘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.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

NRSV

READ

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”  In our selfish age, we often use these words to permit our self-love, to emphasize it.  “You cannot love another unless you love yourself,” we say.  We relish the Scriptural foundations for our own self-esteem and the increase of our ego.  But that was not our Lord Jesus’ point.  Our self-love is assumed, not permitted; the command is to transfer this self-love to another.  “The one you love will be to you as another self,” Aelred said long ago, “if you pour out your self-love into him or her.”  We perceive the Other as a mirror, rather than an enemy, a reflection of ourselves rather than an antagonist.  We choose to love them with the same self-preserving love that comes naturally to us.  And as we enter more fully the Kingdom-life, we come to “consider others better than ourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

-Brian Rhea

Closing Prayer

Eternal God, you have bid us love you with our whole selves, and even to love our neighbors with our whole selves.  Continually reveal to us the mysteries of your love, that we ourselves might increase in love, for the sake of the world.  Amen.

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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