It's in the timing. Jesus hardly draws breath between 'Love the lord your God with all you've got' and 'and love your neighbour with all you've got'. Well, he actually says 'as much as yourself' which, in my opinion, mounts to the same thing. If you could speak punctuation, Jesus wouldn't have any full-stops between these two sayings but just run them together.
We say 'Man's chief aim is to glorify God' and God says: "Go and never bother about that, just love your neighbour.' The second leads to the first but the first doesn't always lead to the second. It's massive: the whole gospel is in this one bit. Throw out the rest. Go on! I dare you (I dare myself) and just get to grips with this. Everything else, as Jesus says, is just commentary. We turn it into racism, prejudice, theology, rules, dogma, pro-this and anti-that. Jesus just needs us to let go everything else and get down to this bit of gospel. Love God/neighbour. Bin the rest.
But how do I love the assylum seeker? The same way you love yourself! How do I love the Protestant, the Catholic, the gay minister, the racist politician? The same way you love yourself! How do I love... well you fill in the blanks because you know the answer: the same way you love yourself! Get that sorted and the rest really doesn't matter much. Our books of doctrine and theology and regulations would be a lot thinner if we just did what Jesus says here. How did we let them get to big? Let's all go and rip out some pages right now!
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