"Pulley" by Matti Mattila via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Come Sunday: Love hangs on (Matthew 22)

Poem by Kyle Oliver for prayr.cc (CC BY 2.0)
Photos: “Pulley” by Matti Mattila via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) & “Frayed colours” by Tom Bech via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

"Pulley" by Matti Mattila via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) - reminds me of Matthew 22

A poem inspired by the gospel reading from Matthew 22 for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (aka Proper 25A):

I’ve often wondered

why should the
law & prophets
“hang”
on
the
two
great
command-
ments?

why not
rest upon them?

why not follow from them—as an argument?

or as a pattern (a [nested] special case)?

I think because
we must hang on them too
claw and clasp for purchase
leverage what we have on hand
MacGyveresque

something so simple
and yet so strenuous
can only be conjured by
white knuckles
straining arms
a length of fraying rope
a bent thumbtack

love God with your all
love neighbor as yourself

if these are my foundation
my starting line
my first principle

perhaps my metaphor
is stronger than my grasp

"Frayed colours" by Tom Bech via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) - reminds me of Matthew 22

Matthew 22:34-46

World English Bible (Public Domain)

34 But the Pharisees, when they heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered themselves together. 35 One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The whole law and the prophets hang* on these two commandments.”
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?”
They said to him, “Of David.”
43 He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying,
44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
sit on my right hand,
until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?’
45 “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”
46 No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward.

* The WEB actually has “depend,” but “hang” certainly seems to be the more faithful rendering.

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Hanging by a Thread: The Questions of the Cross by Sam Wells

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