"The Gospel according to Matthew." Today, pastors, ministers and priests around the world introduced the Gospel in these words. "The Gospel according to Matthew." Three days before he was to be brutally murdered, Jesus was confronted by the religious conservatives, the Pharisees. I say "confronted," because this was not an innocent question put to Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is thre greatest?" It was asked by a lawyer. Now a lawyer then is not the same as a lawyer now. The lawyer then was a Bible scholar, steeped in the scriptures. There are 613 laws in the Hebrew Bible, and by asking Jesus to choose the greatest, it would leave Jesus open to further questioning about the 612 he did not choose. Jesus answers simply, "All you need is love. Love, love, love. Love is all you need; all you need is love." Wait. That's not the Gospel according to Matthew; thats the Gospel, the Good News according to John. John Lennon. The irony is that John also was brutally murdered. What is it about love that sometimes brings out the very best in people? And the very worst.

Yes, it sounds so simple, so easy. "All you need is love." But really: if you want to boil down or sum up what it means to be a child of God - you cannot do better than the words of Jesus, "'You shall love the Lord your God, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" If it sounds simple, well - if my life is any indication - and maybe your life also, love is the most difficult thing in all the world.

This text is also shared in the Gospel of Luke, and the response of Jesus is the same. But in Luke's account, the lawyer presses on: "who is my neighbor"? And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. A man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho gets mugged, robbed and left for dead. A priest comes upon the crime scene and makes a detour to the far side of the road. And a Levite, a religious scholar, comes upon the scene and makes the same detour. But a Samaritan, a man seen standing upon the bottom rung of social, cultural, and religious ladder, the Samaritan does not steer clear of the the beaten man. He hastens toward him.

The Samaritan cleans the wounds, puts him on his own donkey, and takes him to the nearest hotel. The Samaritan books a room and tells the innkeeper, "Take care of him, and next time I come back, I'll pay whatever the cost." By making this lower class outsider the hero of the story - Jesus destroys class distinctions and any criterion which divides one person from another.

The Samaritan is the neighbor. The Samaritan is the one who takes God's love with him into the neighborhood - any neighborhood will do - and does the neighborly thing. Anyone who practices such care and concern for another, is a neighbor. "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." Love, love, love ... love is all you need.

Why do we make things so difficult for ourselves when it comes to our God and our faith? We spend so much time arguing about what the Bible means that we neglect doing what the Bible says! Back in the 1960s there was a song that asked the question of life, "What's it all about, Alfie?" Well, in our text the lawyer aksed the question, "What's it all about Jesus? Boil it down. Sum it up.What's it all about? What does it mean to be a child of God?" For you and me, what does it mean to be Christian? The theologian, Marcus Borg, writes, "We have sometimes made (our faith) very complicated, and that's because we Christians have often thought it means believing the right things, getting our beliefs right."

A good exampel of this as far as I'm concerned, is Communion. Does the bread and wine physically become Jesus? Does it spiritually become Jesus? Is it merely a remembering the sacrifice of Jesus? Does it really matter; I mean ultimately, does it really matter? As a pastor, I do believe theology is important - the way we think and talk about God. But when theology gets in the way of loving our neighbor - when theology separates Christians one from another - it makes for an ugly day in the neighborhood. Jesus of Nazareth gets right to the point: "Love your neighbor as yourself." John of Liverpool echos the sentiment, "Love, love, love; love is all you need. All you need is love."

Dr. Jane Shaw, an Episcopalian priest, suggests, "Here is a simple truth of the Christian faith: God made us, God loves us and God accepts us as we are. We did not have to earn our creation, and we do not have to earn God's love. But God is delighted when we respond to that love."

But anytime we come to the conclusion that each human being is valuable in the eyes of God, we have to conclude that each individual is then valuable to us. Each human being. I'm not saying that justice wasn't served, but to see Qaddaffi so vulnerable should have been painful to most any person with a self-identification of "Christian."

When God came into the world as Jesus Christ, our God became vulnerable. The word "vulnerable" comes from the Latin; it means to be wounded. Being vulnerable means open to being wounded. And who wants that? Well, Jesus was open, hands wide open, to being wounded - and worse - on the Cross. Do you agree with Jesus, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Do you agree?

Not long ago I shared this in our newsletter about a recent episode of the Charlie Rose Show. The guest was David McCullough, one of the most influential and highly regarded historians and authors of our times. He has written, among other things, biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman, as well as the book entitled, 1776. Near the end of the interview, there was this exchange:

Charlie Rose: So your (tombstone) should say? "Here lies David McCullough: American. Historian. The Master of the American Narrative."

David McCullough: Charlie, if you were to write the epitaph, that would be fine with me.

Rose: What would you add to it?

McCullough: (After a pause) I hope I would be remembered also as having been a (loving) father, and husband, and brother and grandfather.

Rose: It always comes to that, doesn't it?

McCullough: Yes, it does. Your family, your friends and the more you're looking back from the distance I am now, the more you realize that. You've been told that all your life, but you have no idea.

Loving your family and your friends. And Jesus would add, "and loving your enemies and your neighbors as yourself." For our whole life we've been commanded by Jesus, "Love one another." Why? Well, all people are valuable. And sure, all love is vulnerable. Nevertheless, love one another. And Jesus postscripted this to his followers, "Love one another, even as I have loved you." It always comes down to that, doesn't it? And this is the Gospel of the Lord!