“May I take your coat?”

A simple offer when welcoming a guest into your home, perhaps, but not according to the first reading from Exodus. In the Old Testament time, when someone was giving a loan to a poor neighbor, it would be common practice to request their cloak as the guarantee of the loan. And Exodus is very clear: do not hold that clothing hostage, as it were, beyond sundown. “If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset” (Exodus 22:25).

In the Gospel, Jesus gives us clear direction, a command, really: To love God completely, you must love your neighbor. Consider the Gospel words precisely; in the first half of Jesus’ answer, the listener – and each of us – are called to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind.  Accomplishing and living that faithfulness to God then defines who I am; the expression of how I love God reflects my inner moral code. We must make sacrifices in order to love God this completely, in that we must give up what the world offers us for the joy of receiving completely what God gives.

Taken together, this shows how we love ourselves, just as God loves us into existence.  Which brings us to the second half of the Gospel commands: “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

We must then ask, “What’s the deal with the cloak?” In short, Jesus teaches the immediacy in which we must love our neighbor. Don’t wait for tomorrow to connect with them; don’t put off for some time in the future when you may need to start loving your neighbor. To do so is to reflect that we don’t need to love God now, either, and we can parcel out that love due to our Creator on our terms, in our timeframe.

Wouldn’t that be a dangerous foundation of love to stand upon! “I’ll love you later, God, when it is more convenient. And then after that I will love my neighbor.” Since God is unknowable in our human condition, at least in the totality of God, then any time we set limits on the time and place when we love God fully means that we have times and places where we choose NOT to love God. Yes, that would be very dangerous spiritual ground to stand upon.

Be the first to return the coat to your guests. Better still, never demand their cloak to begin with, but simply share the bounty of God in your life with your neighbor, by way of saying “Thank you!” to Jesus for His perfect and constant love of each one of us.