SAUCIER — A command to love and heal

Coincidence or providence? 

In the gospel reading on the Sunday before Election Day, Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love of neighbor was nothing new or radical. Jesus was just going back to his Jewish roots. The Book of Leviticus says the same thing.

The other Abrahamic faith also teaches neighborly love. “Serve Allah … and do good to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers.”

For a Hindu, the Mahabhurata explains, “This is the sum of duty, do naught unto others that you would not have them do unto you.”

These are the four main religions of Americans, all calling for love of neighbor, for aiding them in need, for desiring what is best for them to flourish.

Yet, for so many of us, the fear, the anger, the dread of what may be if our side does not win has a hold on our soul much stronger than the most basic teaching of our faith.

Regardless of who wins, no administrative policy, no governmental reform, no campaign promise is going to achieve or restore the idyllic freedom from intrusion, fear and want that all politicians claim to offer.

The division and rancor are not going to magically disappear.  Half the country will feel that it has been left unheard, ignored, cheated out of hope.

We can, and should, drop to our knees and pray for our country, to beg for the healing it so desperately needs. 

But divine intervention is not the normal way of our God. We must put some skin on our prayers and assume the agency God expects of us.

That begins with the love of neighbor, a love that truly cares for those who vote differently than we do, who think differently than we. We must extend a hand, and an ear, to those look different, sound different, act different but whose stories, at the deepest level, are the same as ours.

At the end of the Great Commandment passage, Jesus tells the scribe, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

To me, that means, “You understand it — now go and do it.”

We’re created in God’s image, but I believe that we become God’s likeness by the love we live.