Christianity Without Christ?
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Just in two months or so we will be celebrating Christmas. One of the many things we associate with this special season is a logo which perhaps you might be familiar with which says ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’. It can be displayed sometimes as a bumper sticker or in some other place to remind us that Christmas is something more than just Christmas gifts, the Christmas tree, or the food that we normally prepare for this occasion. It encourages us to celebrate the true meaning of this time—Christ’s birth. Our secularized society is trying to put aside more and more any Christian elements from the public sphere and social life. That happens when we allow ourselves to be cut off from our spiritual roots. In the end that what remains is some kind of social celebration that meaning, and its origin remains obscure and unclear.
That what is happening in our society with celebrating Christmas may happen to us in our spiritual life. In the gospel for this Sunday, a pharisee asks Jesus about the greatest commandment in the Mosaic law. The question seems to be legitimate, since Moses left over 600 different laws, precepts, and regulations to be observed. Any religious and devout Jew is obligated to follow them all, although they are not equally important.
Jesus’ response to the question is at the same time surprising also familiar to his opponents. He doesn’t pick any of those over six hundred laws but responds with something even more important—the Jewish prayer Shema, Israel which means Listen, Israel. This prayer recited three time a day says: "Listen, Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord is One! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Jesus doesn’t point out to any single precept of the law but reminds us that above all that what really matters is our love towards God and our neighbor. Jesus dying on the cross showed in a perfect way what it means to love God with whole heart, soul, and strength. By forgiving his oppressor he showed us what it means to love our neighbor. And yet we know that for us to love this way is impossible, that without help of our Savior we cannot be his disciples.
By putting this question to Jesus, his opponents were trying to set a trap for him, because of their unwillingness to accept him and his message. They rejected Jesus as their Savior just to try to save their lives with the precepts of the law. This gospel reading reminds us that we cannot love God and neighbor if we don’t first open ourselves to Jesus, and his forgiveness. The first step of loving God is to listen to his beloved Son—that is what the pharisees refused to do. As there is not true Christmas without celebrating Jesus’ birth, so there is no Christianity without opening ourselves to the person of Jesus.
