You can’t love God without loving your neighbor: Homily for Thursday, January 8, 2026

There seems to be a lot of harsh language thrown around about who we should care for, who we should love. But Saint John makes it clear, “You can’t love God without loving your neighbor.” Readings for Today.

You can’t love God without loving your neighbor

John is one who really makes it clear that love of God is intimately tied up with love of neighbor. And we’ve heard that a lot, haven’t we? We love God and love our neighbor. But do we allow really that to sink in so that we might actually do it?

It can be easy to say all kinds of spiritual things. We should love our neighbor as ourselves. We should feed the hungry and give food to the poor. But where the rubber meets the road is when we actually have to do something about it.

The temptation can be, well, Jesus certainly didn’t mean that I’m supposed to feed that homeless person over there who’s yelling at me. He’s not very polite. Why should I have to provide him with anything when he seems so ungrateful?

Or I think of my days of teaching. Well, God certainly couldn’t have made me, or wanted me rather, to be patient with that student who has done nothing but cause trouble the entire semester. He only meant those that were displaying some openness to his Word.

But John is very blunt in the gospel, both in his words and then in the implications of what that means for you and for me. John says, “If we say we love God, then we have to love our brother and sister.” Perhaps putting it even a different way, if we can’t love our brother and sister, then it doesn’t matter what we say about God or what we do about God.

We live in a time in our country where it seems like loving brother and sister is something that is seen as optional by some Christians in our country. We don’t really have to be concerned about those who break the law and come into this country illegally. They’re only draining resources meant for us. You know those people who get food stamps. They’re just lazy and don’t want to work. The homeless should go anywhere where we don’t have to see them and look at them.

But John is very clear that we are just like those people I’ve mentioned, because we stand in need of the love of God. We stand in need of the forgiveness of God. And every single person that we encounter is an invitation given to us by Jesus to encounter him.

But I don’t know about you, it’s not easy to do so. Partly because there are prudential judgments that need to be made about what is best in terms of loving our neighbor, or how we should love our neighbor, or what it means for us to be generous.

Jesus gives us a clue to know when we are loving our neighbor. When we do the things that Jesus does, we’re clear that we’re on the right path. And what does Jesus say when he reads this passage from the prophet Isaiah? He brings glad tidings to the poor, proclaims liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, lets the oppressed go free, and proclaims a year of favor to the Lord.

Do we do these things, even in small ways? Or do we find that it’s easier to say we love God, but not do it? Or put another way, we like the idea of loving God, but we don’t really want to do it. I remember a meme that was popular for a while, where it talked about the expectations of Jesus.

I don’t remember exactly what gospel passages is, but I’ll pick Matthew 25, and it says, you know, feed the hungry and visit the sick and visit those in prison and so forth. But the line at the end was, we either have to admit that Jesus meant what he said, or admit that we don’t want to do it. Today, the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me too. Let us ask the Spirit of the Lord today to help us to live more like Jesus.

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