Sermon — October 25, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
There’s a great talk from 2011 by a computer programmer named Rich Hickey with the title “Simple Made Easy.” The core idea is that although we often use these words interchangeably, “simple” and “easy” mean different things. Something is simple when it does or means or consists of exactly one thing. The opposite of “simple” is “complex”; complex things are made from simple things woven together in a way that can be hard to disentangle. Something is easy, on the other hand, when it’s familiar or close at hand; when we can just do it without much effort. The opposite of “easy” is “hard.” And these two categories can be combined in any combination. We can probably all imagine things that are simple and easy (a vegetable peeler) and things that are complex and difficult (rocket science, brain surgery). But the other two combinations are possible as well. Rich Hickey’s point about programming is that in our effort to make things easy, we often make them more complex, and then suffer the consequences. A good non-programming example of this would be taco seasoning, which combines cumin and oregano and pepper, garlic powder and chili powder and also a bunch of salt. It’s easy to use, but the complexity has a cost: you can’t tweak the flavor profile, or add more spices relative to the salt. If you want spicier tacos, they end up saltier; if you want something milder, it turns out bland.
Now, both Rich Hickey and tacos are entirely irrelevant to the rest of this sermon, except insofar as the Two Great Commandments that Jesus names in our Gospel reading today fall into that fourth category of things: they’re very simple, but they’re not at all easy.
Jesus didn’t come up with these two commandments, by the way. You might be able to tell this from the lawyer’s question, but it’s worth fleshing it out. The rabbinic tradition of Judaism, which began forming around the time of Jesus, teaches that there are 613 commandments in the Torah. You can list them systematically, citing where you find them in the Bible by chapter and verse. So this lawyer comes to Jesus and asks him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matt. 22:36) For once, this isn’t a trick question or a trap. And Jesus answers straightforwardly enough. He quotes the second half of the Shema, a well-known Jewish prayer found in the Book of Deuteronomy, and says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matt. 22:37; Deut. 5:4-5) “This is the greatest and first commandment.” (22:37) And then he gives a bonus track, and says that there’s a second one that’s like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (22:39; Lev. 19:18), quoting from the Book of Leviticus.
This is a real answer to the question of which of the 613 commandments is the best. But then Jesus adds a little more. He elevates them above the rest. “On these two commandments,” he says, “hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22:40)
I like to picture them as the poles of the tent, with the tent material hanging on them. They provide the structure around which everything else is built; not only the 611 other commandments in the Torah, but “all the law and the prophets,” everything that what we call the Old Testament, which was the whole Bible in Jesus’ day. The whole word of God, in other words, hangs on these two laws: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. These Two Great Commandments are so central to Christianity that Michael Curry, the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, used to say, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”
I’m not sure everyone thinks about Christianity this way. You may have been taught ways of relating to God that have more to do with fear, or control, or shame. But I think it’s fundamentally true: if it’s not about love, it’s not about God. And lest you think this is some kind of wishy-washy Episcopalian nonsense, I can tell you that Michael Curry didn’t come up with it. It comes pretty directly from Saint Augustine, the great African bishop and theologian of the 5th century, who taught that when we’re trying to figure out whether we’re interpreting the Bible correctly, these two commandments of love should be the deciding factor. He wrote, “if it seems to you that you have understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not yet understood them.” (De doctrina I.36,40) It’s actually better, Augustine says, to misinterpret what something in the Bible means, in such a way that builds up love, than it is to interpret the Bible in any way that does not build up this love; because indeed, to paraphrase, if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.
Isn’t that awesome? I love love. I think it’s great to belong to a church that believes this. It makes me feel good to hear that the meaning of everything hangs on these two laws: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”; and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I want to be on Team Love. And I suspect I’m not alone.
But… Spoiler alert for anyone who’s in an Episcopal Church for the first time today. After the sermon, we’re going to say a few prayers, and then I’m going to say to everyone, “Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.” And we’ll pray, together:
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
Anything that we say every week like this will sometimes feel rote. Some of us may not be thinking of particular things we’ve done in the last week during this prayer. (Some of us may; I never have a hard time coming up with a list.) Some of us may be uncomfortable or struggle with the language of “sin” at all. But this prayer is for every one of us nevertheless. Because—even if we’re basically good and decent people who spend most of our time doing basically good and decent things—by the simple standard of the Two Great Commandments, every all of us nearly always falls short.
Jesus asks us to love God with all our hearts, and all our souls, and all our minds. But I know that I don’t quite manage that. There are all sorts of things that compete with God for pieces of my heart, and soul, and mind, and that get them. Jesus asks us to love our neighbors, and that can be hard. People are wonderful in many ways, but they’re not always very easy to love. But he doesn’t only ask us to love our neighbors, he asks us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and this is a much more radical thing. To do this means to treat other people’s interests and needs as being equal to my own in the decisions that I make. And I certainly don’t do a very good job of that. I’ve known many compassionate and generous people in my life. Few of them have truly loved their neighbors as themselves.
These commandments may be simple. But they’re certainly not easy. The Two Great Commandments give us a good and beautiful Law, a goal toward which we should always strive toward—and try as we might, we will always fall short.
But that’s kind of the point of Jesus being who he is. He’s not only a prophet, who comes to give us the Word of God, or a lawyer who helps us understand the Law. He’s not only a king, a “Son of David,” who will rule the people and enforce the full weight of the Law. He’s a Savior who will forgive us when we fail to bear that load. He is the love of God made flesh, who loves us with all his heart, and all his soul, and all his mind; who loves us even more deeply than he loves himself, who loves us so much that he’s willing to die for us.
This is “the gospel of God” that Paul declared. (1 Thess. 2:2) “Gospel” means “good news,” after all. And while these Two Great Commandments are wonderful, they aren’t news; Jesus doesn’t invent them, they were already there. The good news isn’t that Jesus inspires us to be the best versions of ourselves; the good news is that he loves us, when we are at our worst. When we falter under the burden of that Law of love, he offers us compassion and grace. He forgives us, when we need to be forgiven, and he invites us to return and start following him once more on the journey toward that eternal Source of Love; to let our hearts and souls and minds be filled a little more with his love, to give us the strength to love God with our whole lives, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
