This was
one of those easy weeks when I knew from the get go from which reading I would
be preaching. This week was so clear
that I am sure blind Bartimaeus could have seen it. As I shared earlier with the Vestry this
week, there were continuing wrestling matches over my sermons. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Quite the contrary. A number of conversations this week were
about the struggles of living as one stamped in the image of God and treating
others as if they, too, are stamped with His image. As the week went on, though, other
conversations confirmed for me that I should focus on Matthew this week. At the Cohort meeting, we talked about the
importance of this passage to the New Testament, with Ron suggesting that it
might be the most important teaching of the New Testament and me wondering
whether the entire Bible. In Bible
Studies, I discussed the torah and how this passage caused a Bible Study six
years ago at St. Alban’s to begin to explore the truth of Jesus’ claim that all
the torah hangs from these two commandments.
We discussed the uniqueness of Jesus’ claim and teaching at Wrestling
with Faith. I even found myself in
conversations with non-Adventers distraught over the current political climate
fascinated or shocked at my confidence or naivete, depending on the person,
that my hope is that I am called into a monarchy.
If you
find yourself a bit lost or scrambling to catch up, don’t worry. To remind you where we are in Matthew’s
story, we are in Holy Week. Most likely
the events described today and last week take place on Tuesday of the week
before our Lord died. If it seems weird
to you that we are reading the stories of Holy Week during October, consider
the end of this season. We are building
to Christ the King Sunday. We will
remind ourselves and proclaim in a month that our Lord is, indeed, King of
kings and Lord of lords. That will be
the culmination of the Church year. And
it makes sense that we remind ourselves again that the path to His throne
included the events of Holy Week and the Cross.
Right
before this passage, last week in our time, the Pharisees and Herodians put
aside their differences to try and trap this itinerant teacher from
Nazareth. As I explained last week,
their divide would make our Republican Party / Democratic Party divide seem . .
. childish. Few modern politicians claim
to speak with the voice and authority of God; fewer still claim the authority
to condemn or release in His name. I
know it happens in some quarters today, but such politicians are generally seen
more on the fringe of good politics than mainstream. In any event, Jesus not only thwarted their
trap last week, He exposed their hypocrisy in front of the crowds at the
Temple. The very people whom they were
trying to impress saw them for who they were, for a few minutes at least. Following that public failure, the Sadducees
step up to the plate. If they can defeat
Jesus after His stinging defeat of the Herodians and Pharisees, the Sadducees
can rise in the public opinion of the crowds and be seen as the leaders they
think they are. They, too, fail.
Now, one of
the members of the Pharisees asks Jesus which law is the most important. This was one of those important academic
discussions in the Temple and synagogues, not unlike the fight among academic
Christians in the Middle Ages trying to figure out how many angles could dance
on the head of a pin. It was also nearly
as important. God had consistently
taught that the torah reflected what a holy, righteous life in full communion
with and pleasing to God looked like.
Failure to keep one was to walk apart from God. Human beings being human beings, though, we
like to figure out which sins are more important than others. You chuckle, but admit it. We like to think our sins cost Jesus a
whisker or maybe some spittle from a soldier.
Some of us might even admit our sins caused Him to take a punch for
us. Few of us like to admit that He really
died for our sins. They aren’t really
that bad, are they? To use a compass, if
God is positioned at 0 degrees, a white lie gets us moving at 1 degree west or
east. We may not be perfectly pointed at
God, but we will certainly graze Him and His glory only off by 1 degree. Compare that to murder or rape or the bad
sins, you know, the ones that cause us to go at 180 degrees.
Jesus
answers by pointing the Pharisee and the crowd to the shema: You shall love the Lord your God with
everything you have and everything you are.
The answer would have startled no one.
In fact, an earlier rabbi whose name escapes me is generally credited
with summarizing the torah in that fashion.
So far so good, right? Not
really, but we will get to that in a moment.
Jesus
goes on to say that the second great commandment is to love our neighbor as
ourselves. Again, such a summary would
not have shocked his audience too much.
In the Old Testament, God reminds His people that He loves the widow and
the orphan, that they are to treat aliens conscious of the fact that they were
aliens in Egypt, and that the righteous poor are special in His sight. Like us, many of the Jews forgot God’s heart,
but most in the audience would have accepted Jesus claim. Some would have wanted to engage Him with
counter-proposals. Nobody would have
been shocked, though.
I wonder
though, how much we miss what Jesus is teaching in this lesson. What does it mean to love God with everything
and love one’s neighbor as oneself?
Post-modern Americans seem to be intent upon equating love with desire
or consent in a sexual relationship. To
be sure, Jesus’ audience would have understood eros far better than we, but
they would have heard Jesus words in a categorically different way. You and I think of love as an emotion, a warm
feeling, that flock of butterflies in our stomachs as a result of our proximity
to or thought about someone else. We
think our emotions reside in our heart, that our reason resides in our brain,
and our will is somewhere in the body.
Jesus’ audience, though, would have drawn no such distinction. The kardia was the locus of emotions, the
locus of reason, and the locus of will.
The kardia was that place where one made rational decisions, where one
made emotional decisions, and then acted on them. What made us who we are was tied to our
kardia. So when Jesus speaks of loving
God and loving the neighbor, He means something far more significant than warm
feelings or butterflies in the stomach.
When God speaks of circumcising our hearts, He is not talking just about
our emotions or passions.
In the
ANE, but especially for the Jewish people, love was a commitment. God’s love, hesed, being the chief
example. Those who have studied the OT
in Bible Studies around here can speak to this as well, but God commits Himself
to Abraham and Abraham’s descendants. No
matter what they do, He is committed to them.
Though they play the harlot and chase after idols, He will still bring
them to Himself. Though they cheat
widows and trick orphans and enslave the poor, He will get them back to the
Garden. Though they dishonor and
embarrass and act as anything but a people redeemed, God will redeem them
because of His love, hesed, for them. He
is committed to them.
The same,
of course, is true for us. We know God’s
hesed fully, unlike the Jewish people.
At least they could claim confusion when they got to the throne after
death; you and I have no such claim. We
know the length to which God will go to save us, to redeem us, to demonstrate
His love for us. When we did not want to
be redeemed, when we did not know Him nor His commitment to us, still He went
to that Cross! Can you imagine that kind
of commitment?
When
Jesus speaks to the Pharisee, the crowds, and to us about loving God and our
neighbors, He’s really speaking about total commitment. Can you imagine being totally committed to
God or another human being in the way Jesus is describing to us today? I joked at 8am that they deserved an extra
gem in their crown in the kingdom to come for showing up this morning. Hopefully, you all were asleep when the woke
up, arose, and got ready for church today.
It was dark. The sun wasn’t just
not up, the clouds were thick. And it was
cold. To put it in other words, it was
perfect weather for sleeping. Yet many
of our 8am Adventers came to church.
Many came, but several did not.
Why? No doubt some were
sick. Maybe a few were feeling the aches
and pains of the weather. Maybe a car
did not start. I’m sure there are good
reasons for absences this morning, but I am equally certain that some just did
not want to fight the urge to stay in warm jammies. The truth is that there is always an
excuse. How many skip church to play
golf? To shop? To sleep in?
Some of us even go so far as to pretend, with indignity, that we can
worship God while we golf, while we shop, while we sleep, while we do anything
other than come to church. I get
it. Some of us multitask. I like to pray while riding a bike. I know lots of ladies who knit while
participating in Bible studies. We can
worship God while doing any number of other activities. But in the immortal words of Bishop Lambert
who spoke to the men back in July “we can, but we don’t.”
We claim
to understand the cost, as best as we are able, that Jesus came down from
heaven, suffered under Pilate and died for our sins, yet how many of us really
live a committed life that reflects that understanding? How many of us are truly grateful, truly
thankful for what God has done for us in Christ? My guess is that if we really understood,
more than 1 in 5 self-identified Christians would go to church weekly. My guess is that if we truly understood, far
fewer Christian women would be telling us their #metoo stories as the hands of
Christian men. My guess is that if we
really understood, Christians would have no tolerance for those who espouse
racist views under the guise of nationalism or religion. My guess is that if we really understood, we
Adventers would not worry that four services on December 24 (Advent IV and
Christmas Eve services) might be too much.
My guess is that if we truly understood, we would be inviting and wooing
all our friends and family members to join us here as we celebrated God’s
redeeming work in our lives. My guess is
that if we really understood, we would be a joyful people, a forgiving people,
a people that would have the world around us wondering what has gotten into us.
Don’t
squirm too much. I know. Truly understanding what God has done for us
in Christ is meant to be life changing, transforming even. Like Jesus’ audience that Tuesday so long
ago, we tend not to be too self-aware, too self-examining. The great thing for us and them is that He
loved us any way! Even though we are who
we are, still He loved us to the end. He
committed everything to show us just how much He loves us, and He demonstrated
that first and second Great Commandment in its fullest sense. Jesus walked this path on earth knowing we
would reject Him and knowing that we would fail to love one another.
Had Jesus
stopped there, the Pharisee and the crowd and we would have had enough to chew
on. There’s a great lesson examining
oneself in light of what God has done in Christ for us. But Jesus, being Jesus, pushes even
further. In some sense, the second half
of this reading deserves its own focus for the week. But I understand the lectionary editors’
decision to lump it in with this week.
On the one hand, it makes narrative sense. Jesus asks the question of the Sadducee who
first questioned Him in front of the crowd.
On the other hand, Jesus’ reminder of who He is really causes us to
struggle with the consequence of His teachings, this one as well as the rest.
In
Wrestling with Faith, participants will struggle with various questions. Consider this your commercial encouraging you
to join Robert and Jim and Tina and Elizabeth and Pam and Gregg and others on
the fourth Thursday of each month. Chief
among those questions asked, though often in the background, is a question of
whether God or Jesus really said something.
Now, sometimes they touch on subjects from the world at large where
sweeping claims are made about what God has said that I, quite frankly, can
find no evidence. But when we get to
things that are included in the Bible, there is a wonder whether God really
meant it, or we got it wrong, or some other excuse. Jesus’ piercing question helps us understand
who it is that is making these statements that seem crazy to the world. Jesus is not just a rabbi with good
insight. Jesus is not just some humanist
with an actualized self-consciousness that allowed Him to grasp teachings that
seem far ahead of their time. Jesus is
not a charismatic lunatic who managed to find gullible fishermen and wealthy
women and laid the foundation for an organization that would make lots of money
and have lots of influence centuries after His death. Who is He?
Jesus
asks that question of the Pharisee and crowds.
When Jesus quotes the Psalmist here, He is citing the axiomatic passage
that caused everyone in the Jewish community to accept that the messiah would
be a descendant of David. Everyone
agreed that the passage written by David was inspired by God and spoke
prophetically of the great son of David who would inherit David’ throne. Make no mistake, the Jewish leaders argued
over whether the messiah would be a political leader, a king, a military
leader, and any other version they thought the messiah might embody. Nobody, however, argued over whether the
messiah would be a descendant of David.
As much as the Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians and Temple priests argued
among themselves, they agreed that the messiah would be a descendant of David!
Even
armed with that knowledge and certainty, though, the leadership of the Jews was
woefully unable to reason their way to Jesus.
God becoming man was outside their research, beyond their teaching, and above
their understanding. Jesus’ question
serves to highlight this. We hate kings
in America. In fact, we rebelled against
a bad one to found our country. You may
not know this, but princes and princesses are never called lord by their
parents. The princes and the princesses
call their parents lord or liege. In the
ANE, of course, there were mostly kings.
Abdications were unheard of. The
king was the lord. Everyone owed him
respect, and he enjoyed the authority to command him. Yet, buried in the Psalter, at 110 to be
exact, was this famous passage that Jesus quotes. It is this passage which caused the Jewish
leaders to know that the messiah would come from David’s lineage. Nobody, it seems, thought to pay attention to
the passage.
Jesus
essentially asks the Pharisee and the crowds and us how this prophesy, if
inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, can be true. How can David be prophesying about his
lord? David could only speak
historically about a lord, were Jesse or some other ancestor a king. Yet here is David speaking of his Lord who
comes after Him. How can this be?
Understandably, neither the Pharisee nor the crowd has a response. Like the Herodians and Pharisees, they do not
know the Scriptures nor the power of God.
It cannot happen that way. David
will always be lord to his successors, from a human perspective. You and I, though, live on this side of Holy
Week and Easter. We understand, as best
we can, the truth of the Incarnation. We
know that Jesus came down from Heaven and by the power of the Holy Spirit was
made man. Though He lived on earth after
David, He was from the beginning and long before David. It is through that understanding that you and
I begin to understand the significance of Jesus. He is not just a teacher, he is not just possessed
of some activated consciousness, whatever the heck that is, He is the Son of
God, the Adon of David’s prophesy! As
such, He has a unique claim on all our lives.
When Jesus instructs us that we are to worship God with everything and
love our neighbors as ourselves, they are not just counter-cultural
teachings. They are the fulfilment of
the very way you and I were created by God.
Were we living in the fullest sense of our humanity, we would be
joyfully giving thanks to God for His saving work in Christ and we would be
sold out to make sure that the rest of the world was experiencing our joy, our
hope, and our wonder. We would be doing
everything could, as winsomely as possible, to get others to know just how much
God loves them, just what great things He intends for them, and just how great
His redemptive power is!
When we
go through life keeping His love for us a secret, when we go through life
miserable and grumpy and serving the same idols as those around us, when we go
through life fearful or vengeful or even without purpose, we testify to the
very opposite of what Jesus calls us to do today. We become compasses that are offset 180 degrees,
to use my earlier imagery, that are incapable of directing others even in the
general direction of God. Make no
mistake, good Christians still suffer in the world. Good Christians experience privation and loss
and disease and every other vicissitude that seems to rule this world. But the sufferings of Christians are tempered
by the certainty that this is not all that there is, that our God can redeem
all things in our lives to His glory, even our very deaths! And so, we stand at gravesides and make
alleluias; we become a crying or silent shoulder as needed by those around us;
we become ambassadors for His sake, telling and reminding others what He has
done and what He has promised.
Sitting
here this morning, you may be wrestling a bit with me. Brian,
it’s too pollyannish. Brian, it’s too
unreasonable. Brian, you need to be
serious. Heck, the Sadducee, just
like the Herodians and Pharisees before him, wrestled with the same thoughts. Matthew even reminds us this day that Jesus’
words were so challenging that no one dared to ask Him any further questions
after this! Brothers and sisters, these
teachings, these two great commandments, are given by none other than our Lord,
our Lord who in just a few days’ time in the Gospel of Matthew will go
willingly to His death that you and I might be reconciled to God our Father,
that you and I might be able to finally become what He intended for each of us
in the beginning. He will live out those
two Great Commandments in the most complete sense. He will trust in His Father’s love and He
will make it possible for you and I and every single person who has ever or
will ever walk this earth to share in His eternal Kingdom! And that we might know that our Lord has the
power to accomplish all that He purposes for us, He raised Jesus that glorious
Easter morning, so that we who died to self in our baptism may share in that
Resurrected life He offers!
My
friends, who is He in your life? Do you
see Him as you want to see Him? As a
teacher? A cool guy with whom to hang
out? A rejecter of the status quo? Maybe just a mythological figure? Or do you see Him as He revealed Himself to
us, the Son of God? How we see Him will
inform how seriously we take His instruction and teaching. Will we be a people indistinguishable from
the world? Or will we be a people
empowered by God grace, serving and forgiving at great cost to ourselves, but
certain and joyful, full of hope, in the plans that He has made for each and
every one of us?
In Christ’s Peace,
Brian†
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