Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Last Sunday after Trinity 2026

The poet T.S. Eliot used to tell a story about getting into a taxi, the cabbie knew who he was. Cab drivers like to tell you that they have met other famous people so, Eliot was told: “Only the other evening I picked up Bertrand Russell, (the famous philosopher) and I said to him: ‘Well, Lord Russell, what’s it all about?’ And do you know, he couldn’t tell me!” 

What’s it all about? The big question. As I was growing up the radio was seemingly forever playing ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ Cilla Black singing a song written by Burt Bacharach. I was nine and I was still saving up my moments of existential crisis for my teenage years, so the words rather passed me by. But Burt Bacharach was indeed asking the big question

What's it all about Alfie
Is it just for the moment we live?

What’s it all about? What does it all mean and what should I do?

Read the gospels and you will find that the question being asked of you is ‘Who is this? Who is Jesus Christ?’ But the question asked of Jesus himself was rather different

A certain ruler asked [Jesus], "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 

That ruler was urgent; he really wanted to know. First, Jesus told him to obey the commandments. The ruler replied that he had done that for years

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

Sadly, our ruler was wealthy and that was too much to ask.

Asked for answers Jesus usually replied with questions and parables. When he did give direction, he suggested simply that people change direction and learn to follow. ‘What’s it all about?’ Jesus answers, ‘It’s all about what it was always about, faith and the commandments, but if you want more, ‘It’s about a living differently, turning aside’. That’s a challenge that people find difficult. 

That story is in Luke’s gospel and we have heard it before

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Luke 10: 25 

And the answer was the same—‘Obey the commandments’. Again there is another question, the lawyer wonders who ‘my neighbour’ might be. Famously, he is offered the story of the Good Samaritan.

It’s a fundamental instinct to ask both the big question and then want the detail. ‘What’s it all about?’ Jesus is asked that and he replies, ‘You know the commandments, do that’. ‘Well, yes, but what more should I do?’ Offered the gospel of life we want the footnotes. Given the keys of the kingdom we want to know who else will be there. Religious people always want to know the rules, the boundaries. That’s why we keep arguing about who is in and who is out—protestant or catholic, gay or straight, the polite or the poor? It’s why we debate whether or not the Almighty prefers guitars or Gesualdo, is it Canon Birch in brocade, or the Dean in denim? God forgive us we so love to bicker over the details. Don’t tell me to love my neighbour? Tell me what I should do, to whom, how often and where. 

Do you know Little Dorrit?

I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence - professors of a stern religion,

To weigh all the detail is a temptation, a fundamental temptation, and it needs to be resisted. Jesus asks us to live fully, love without condition, and we just reach for our diaries.

This is what we learn today from that gospel reading. A Pharisee asks Jesus,

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Jesus replies with a classically orthodox Jewish statement, the Shema. 

He said to [the Pharisee], "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'

We should notice how often Jesus reaches for the Jewish law. How he inhabits it. We should know that he cites the Jewish law. We should remember that he was Jewish. It is fundamentally important we know that Jesus assures that God is constant, it was always the same summons to life with God and neighbour. And then we should take the time to understand what that means.

The Pharisee was asking a question that had been asked before—‘Which commandment in the law is the greatest? And like those endless debates about the best batsman ever, or the finest female singer, this was familiar territory. There was an argument about this. Some Jewish scholars would tell you that all the law was sacred and essential. They thought this was the wrong question. To disobey is simply sinful, so don’t do it. Other teachers said that, ‘Well, of course all the law matters, but there is something central’. 

There is a famous Jewish story about this argument. A ‘heathen’, a Gentile, wanted to convert to Judaism. He was confident, cocky even and he declared that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Law while he stood on one leg. First, he went to the scholar Shammai. Shammai was insulted by this ridiculous challenge and threw him out of the house. Then the man went to another scholar, to Hillel. He was a rather different man, he accepted the challenge, and said:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary—go and learn it!"

You can teach the whole law in a moment says Hillel. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ that is the law.

Jesus, in todays’ gospel, answers the Pharisee’s question with that: ‘You must love God and love your neighbour as yourself’. That the great commandment. Or, if you prefer, that’s what it is all about. Love God, love your neighbour—the very heart of our faith. But, of course, we clamour for the detail, what does that really mean? The answer we want is the one that tells me precisely what I have to do, what I must be? What’s it all about and how do I join in; how do I succeed? 

But we really have gone wrong, fatally wrong, as soon as we begin with our questions. You see, the answer that Jesus gives does not start with me and what I must do. Jesus is telling us to begin with God and my neighbour.

Faith demands that we still the storm inside us and recognise that the truth we seek begins in God and in our neighbour. The truth is not me. 

We think religion might make us busy. It reminds me of the terrifying woman C S Lewis describes, who lives for others—and you can tell the others by their hunted expression. To truly know God is not to think about what we could do for God, as if God could need anything from us. To really know God - in his love and beauty—would be to fall on your knees and worship. The truth is out there, what is asked of us is not work, but wonder.

That is what it means to love God. It is to understand that God is our creator and our redeemer, our beginning and our end. He does need us to be busy. He does not need us at all. God loves and the invitation is to know that love, accept it. Remember the story of Adam and Eve. In Eden they lived in an earthly paradise; they took the apple because they wanted something more, something they could call their own. They wanted possessions. It is a very sophisticated story. They forfeited all things for a tiny bit of control. They made it about themselves. We go wrong, so badly wrong when we make the story about ourselves.

It is precisely the point about loving our neighbour. We will be saved together, or not at all. If we stand in the way, busy, trying to impress, preoccupied with our questions, we will cast shadows across the light of Christ. We must not stand between our neighbour and God’s love, as we try to do good and be good. We must see that sees that our noisy self obsession deafens others and imprisons us.

What’s it all about? It’s not about what we can do, it’s what we might become if we have the wisdom and the grace to turn to God and our neighbour. That’s where love will find us and that is where love will redeem us.