Pentecost 24
The Reverend Martha Frances
Year A, Pentecost 24, Proper 25
26 October 2008
Text: Matthew 22: 34-46
Other: I Thessalonians 2: 1-8; Psalm 90: 1-6, 13-17; Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
When I first became an Episcopalian, every Sunday the Eucharist service began with recitation of the 10 Commandments, an option we still have during penitential seasons. In our Rite I service usually held at 8:00 on Sundays, we still hear Jesus' summary of the Law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, & with all thy soul, & with all thy mind. This is the first & great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law & the Prophets."
For the past several chapters, & the past several Sundays, Jesus has been confronted by Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees & Sadducees, increasingly hostile as they try to trap him into contradicting Jewish law. In this final controversy with them, Jesus rebuts with their own law & then asks them his own question about the identity of Messiah that they cannot answer. After this encounter, Jesus' opponents withdraw, & he converses only with the crowds & his disciples until the Passion begins.
The Jewish leaders conspire to trap Jesus, to show how he cannot possibly be a law-abiding Jew. The lawyer, a professional theologian, drips with sarcasm when he calls Jesus "Teacher." The Pharisees' purpose is to "test" him just as Satan "tested" Jesus in the wilderness. They say, "Name the most important of the 613 laws Jewish people are to follow." Can you imagine trying to keep up with 613 laws, the 248 positive ones corresponding to the parts of the body, & 356 negative, one for each day of the year? Gives me a headache—so many things to do & not to do.
According to Rabbinic law, all the laws are equally important, so the question itself is a trick question. Jesus answers not with one law, but with two interdependent ones. However, the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5, actually says "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, & with all your soul, & with all your might," reminiscent of the first of the 10 Commandments, "You shall have no other gods before me."
How is a Jew to love God? With all one's heart, the center of knowing & willing as well as feeling; thus, to turn one's whole desire to loving God. With all one's soul, as in "Soul Food" or "Soul Music;" to give all the energy & passion of our lives to God. So how can Pharisees or this particular lawyer disagree with Jesus as to this part of the greatest commandment?
Jesus changes the 3rd word from the original Shema, however: loving God with all one's mind rather than might. Herein lies a change for Jesus in our love of God, for we are to use our minds—using our heads, figuring things out. Loving God requires thinking, not just sentiment, good will, religious feeling—though those things are good. This may be another signal from Jesus that the reign of the Messiah will not be a military victory but one over sin & death, one which involves our engaging our brains. Reminds me of the expression you may have picked up at a confirmation class: in the Episcopal church, we don't leave our brains at the door.
Jesus doesn't stop there, does he? He also says the 2nd most important law is like—equal to—the 1st one: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," a law found in Leviticus 19:18. Obviously, this law is not new to the Jewish leaders but another of the 613. Jesus neither contradicts the Jewish law nor combines them for the 1st time for that has been done in Wisdom literature. He says there is nothing wrong with these laws but they must be applied in relation to each other. The way we love God totally is expressed in how we love our neighbor. We can't have one command without the other; they are interrelated. Furthermore, these two commandments make all the scriptures we know as the Old Testament make sense, even the 613 laws. Our love for our neighbor is the way we show our love for God.
I've used an image before in how we live out these two great commandments—that of the cross. We have crosses in churches & cemeteries. We wear crosses around our necks. Streets & telephone poles are shaped like crosses. Many of us make the sign of the cross on our own bodies to affirm what we hear or say like at the end of the creed. Attention to this familiar symbol can help us fulfill the 2 commandments in our lives.
First, the vertical arm can remind us to love God with all our hearts, minds, & souls. The north/south arm of the cross is like the connection which we have with God. In praise & worship, in private & corporate or public prayer, we strengthen that upright arm of the cross. Bible study & study of other good literature engages us to expand our minds after God's will. Even when we don't hear God respond clearly to our spoken or silent prayer, we are assured that our waiting on the Lord shall renew our strength.
We each yearn for our personal relationship with Christ to be more visible, clearer, specific enough that there's no doubt in our minds what God wants us to do. I don't know about you, but neither God the Parent nor Christ the Son speaks to me that clearly very often. Much of my life is spent praying to do the next right thing & then stepping out in faith that Christ will redeem my best efforts. My awareness of that vertical connection with God is one of blind trust more often than the "blessed assurance" I occasionally receive.
We have a key in today's Gospel for how to worship God with all our hearts, minds, & souls. Jesus says to love our neighbors as ourselves is equal to the first one. Here is the horizontal arm of the cross: how to strengthen that vertical relationship with God. We love our neighbors—acting out our love of God by taking our neighbors' needs seriously. The whole rest of the law is understood by loving our neighbors as fully as possible. The horizontal arm of the cross reaches out to others, makes us all neighbors, puts us all in community with each other.
Remember the story Jesus told us about who our neighbor is? That's right: the Good Samaritan. Another lawyer had asked, "Who is my neighbor?" He wanted to limit his responsibility to a certain group of people so his conscience could be clear beyond his own circle of friends, but Jesus had the nerve to tell him that even the Samaritans, those folks whom the Jews thought were hypocritical & lower-classed, could act more like neighbors than the Jewish lawyer himself.
Who are the neighbors Jesus would have us love today? The mentally ill? The physically handicapped? The homosexuals? The Jews? The Middle Easterners who might look to us like terrorists? Those in prison for hideous crimes? Those who serve prison time & move back into our neighborhood? Please, Jesus, you mean we have to love all those folk? Yep, Jesus says, we're to love these people just as we love ourselves. We're to treat them with the same dignity & respect that we yearn to be treated, as brothers & sisters in Christ, even when they don't deserve it.
Not only that, but Jesus tells us it is in making a decision to love our neighbors, treating them as we want to be treated, that we live out loving God with all our heart, mind, & soul. We can't just go into our closet & pray & read our Bible & sing "O how I love Jesus" & that's enough. In order to love God, we've got to love all those people whom we don't even like & who often don't like us? The two arms of the cross go together; they can't be separated. The arms of the cross upon which Jesus stretched his arms & died embrace all of us: Jew & Greek, male & female, slave & free, young & old, homeless & warm & comfortable, executive & job-seekers, homosexual & hetersexual, businessman & bag lady. Nobody is excluded. We're all each other's neighbors, & we all need each other in order to love each other as God's precious creations.
Yesterday's fall festival was one such opportunity to extend Christ's love to our neighbors in substantive ways. How we follow up to invite them & others into our midst, to learn from others as well as reach out to them, is the beginning of the radical hospitality which Diana Butler Bass & others include in whether neighborhood churches can be relevant in the 21st Century. How we embrace diversity, form community, practice justice, & practice stewardship of the gifts which God gives us are further ways we will be a vital partner in our community & world. Are we willing to make these efforts throughout the year?
Jesus' answered the lawyer with two commandments, & we can remember them & their interdependence every time we see the cross, the vertical arm connecting God with us earthlings, & the horizontal arm binding us as sisters & brothers in a loving community of neighbors. Jesus gave us the essence of the law both in combining two ancient Jewish laws & in interlocking them inextricably in each other. By doing this, he teaches us how to live, loving God with all our heart, mind, & soul by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.
Year A, Pentecost 24, Proper 25
26 October 2008
Text: Matthew 22: 34-46
Other: I Thessalonians 2: 1-8; Psalm 90: 1-6, 13-17; Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
When I first became an Episcopalian, every Sunday the Eucharist service began with recitation of the 10 Commandments, an option we still have during penitential seasons. In our Rite I service usually held at 8:00 on Sundays, we still hear Jesus' summary of the Law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, & with all thy soul, & with all thy mind. This is the first & great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law & the Prophets."
For the past several chapters, & the past several Sundays, Jesus has been confronted by Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees & Sadducees, increasingly hostile as they try to trap him into contradicting Jewish law. In this final controversy with them, Jesus rebuts with their own law & then asks them his own question about the identity of Messiah that they cannot answer. After this encounter, Jesus' opponents withdraw, & he converses only with the crowds & his disciples until the Passion begins.
The Jewish leaders conspire to trap Jesus, to show how he cannot possibly be a law-abiding Jew. The lawyer, a professional theologian, drips with sarcasm when he calls Jesus "Teacher." The Pharisees' purpose is to "test" him just as Satan "tested" Jesus in the wilderness. They say, "Name the most important of the 613 laws Jewish people are to follow." Can you imagine trying to keep up with 613 laws, the 248 positive ones corresponding to the parts of the body, & 356 negative, one for each day of the year? Gives me a headache—so many things to do & not to do.
According to Rabbinic law, all the laws are equally important, so the question itself is a trick question. Jesus answers not with one law, but with two interdependent ones. However, the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5, actually says "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, & with all your soul, & with all your might," reminiscent of the first of the 10 Commandments, "You shall have no other gods before me."
How is a Jew to love God? With all one's heart, the center of knowing & willing as well as feeling; thus, to turn one's whole desire to loving God. With all one's soul, as in "Soul Food" or "Soul Music;" to give all the energy & passion of our lives to God. So how can Pharisees or this particular lawyer disagree with Jesus as to this part of the greatest commandment?
Jesus changes the 3rd word from the original Shema, however: loving God with all one's mind rather than might. Herein lies a change for Jesus in our love of God, for we are to use our minds—using our heads, figuring things out. Loving God requires thinking, not just sentiment, good will, religious feeling—though those things are good. This may be another signal from Jesus that the reign of the Messiah will not be a military victory but one over sin & death, one which involves our engaging our brains. Reminds me of the expression you may have picked up at a confirmation class: in the Episcopal church, we don't leave our brains at the door.
Jesus doesn't stop there, does he? He also says the 2nd most important law is like—equal to—the 1st one: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," a law found in Leviticus 19:18. Obviously, this law is not new to the Jewish leaders but another of the 613. Jesus neither contradicts the Jewish law nor combines them for the 1st time for that has been done in Wisdom literature. He says there is nothing wrong with these laws but they must be applied in relation to each other. The way we love God totally is expressed in how we love our neighbor. We can't have one command without the other; they are interrelated. Furthermore, these two commandments make all the scriptures we know as the Old Testament make sense, even the 613 laws. Our love for our neighbor is the way we show our love for God.
I've used an image before in how we live out these two great commandments—that of the cross. We have crosses in churches & cemeteries. We wear crosses around our necks. Streets & telephone poles are shaped like crosses. Many of us make the sign of the cross on our own bodies to affirm what we hear or say like at the end of the creed. Attention to this familiar symbol can help us fulfill the 2 commandments in our lives.
First, the vertical arm can remind us to love God with all our hearts, minds, & souls. The north/south arm of the cross is like the connection which we have with God. In praise & worship, in private & corporate or public prayer, we strengthen that upright arm of the cross. Bible study & study of other good literature engages us to expand our minds after God's will. Even when we don't hear God respond clearly to our spoken or silent prayer, we are assured that our waiting on the Lord shall renew our strength.
We each yearn for our personal relationship with Christ to be more visible, clearer, specific enough that there's no doubt in our minds what God wants us to do. I don't know about you, but neither God the Parent nor Christ the Son speaks to me that clearly very often. Much of my life is spent praying to do the next right thing & then stepping out in faith that Christ will redeem my best efforts. My awareness of that vertical connection with God is one of blind trust more often than the "blessed assurance" I occasionally receive.
We have a key in today's Gospel for how to worship God with all our hearts, minds, & souls. Jesus says to love our neighbors as ourselves is equal to the first one. Here is the horizontal arm of the cross: how to strengthen that vertical relationship with God. We love our neighbors—acting out our love of God by taking our neighbors' needs seriously. The whole rest of the law is understood by loving our neighbors as fully as possible. The horizontal arm of the cross reaches out to others, makes us all neighbors, puts us all in community with each other.
Remember the story Jesus told us about who our neighbor is? That's right: the Good Samaritan. Another lawyer had asked, "Who is my neighbor?" He wanted to limit his responsibility to a certain group of people so his conscience could be clear beyond his own circle of friends, but Jesus had the nerve to tell him that even the Samaritans, those folks whom the Jews thought were hypocritical & lower-classed, could act more like neighbors than the Jewish lawyer himself.
Who are the neighbors Jesus would have us love today? The mentally ill? The physically handicapped? The homosexuals? The Jews? The Middle Easterners who might look to us like terrorists? Those in prison for hideous crimes? Those who serve prison time & move back into our neighborhood? Please, Jesus, you mean we have to love all those folk? Yep, Jesus says, we're to love these people just as we love ourselves. We're to treat them with the same dignity & respect that we yearn to be treated, as brothers & sisters in Christ, even when they don't deserve it.
Not only that, but Jesus tells us it is in making a decision to love our neighbors, treating them as we want to be treated, that we live out loving God with all our heart, mind, & soul. We can't just go into our closet & pray & read our Bible & sing "O how I love Jesus" & that's enough. In order to love God, we've got to love all those people whom we don't even like & who often don't like us? The two arms of the cross go together; they can't be separated. The arms of the cross upon which Jesus stretched his arms & died embrace all of us: Jew & Greek, male & female, slave & free, young & old, homeless & warm & comfortable, executive & job-seekers, homosexual & hetersexual, businessman & bag lady. Nobody is excluded. We're all each other's neighbors, & we all need each other in order to love each other as God's precious creations.
Yesterday's fall festival was one such opportunity to extend Christ's love to our neighbors in substantive ways. How we follow up to invite them & others into our midst, to learn from others as well as reach out to them, is the beginning of the radical hospitality which Diana Butler Bass & others include in whether neighborhood churches can be relevant in the 21st Century. How we embrace diversity, form community, practice justice, & practice stewardship of the gifts which God gives us are further ways we will be a vital partner in our community & world. Are we willing to make these efforts throughout the year?
Jesus' answered the lawyer with two commandments, & we can remember them & their interdependence every time we see the cross, the vertical arm connecting God with us earthlings, & the horizontal arm binding us as sisters & brothers in a loving community of neighbors. Jesus gave us the essence of the law both in combining two ancient Jewish laws & in interlocking them inextricably in each other. By doing this, he teaches us how to live, loving God with all our heart, mind, & soul by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.
posted by
Hope Episcopal Church
at 12:43 PM
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