October 26, 2008

Matthew 22:34-40

 

Living Small

 

            For the last few weeks we have seen Jesus during the week of his arrest and crucifixion under a relentless barrage of attack questions from the religious authorities in Jerusalem. They have been trying to trick Jesus into saying something treasonous to Rome or blasphemous to God so that they could have a reason to kill him. These questions are like time bombs ready to explode with one little misstep by Jesus. And you know he is tired of their attacks, but he continues to respond and teach the essentials of faith that God seeks for him to share. Let us now listen to the Pharisees attack.

 

Read Matthew 22:34-40

 

This attack question on the surface seems gentle, but don’t let it fool you. Religious leaders had been debating this question of the greatest commandment for a very long time. The Jewish religion did not have just 10 commandments, they had 613 commandments:  365 were things you were not supposed to do and a good Jew would be sure to practice one of the don’ts for each day of the year; 248 “do” commandments equaled the number of body parts of the human body. Some day when you feel a little bored, you might test this out and count up your body parts. But let’s don’t do it now, OK?

 

Well, Jesus made it simple for his testers and reduced all of these laws down to two - love God and love your neighbor. Now there is nothing new here that Jesus introduces to the Pharisees. When you reflect on the 10 commandments. you will find the first four dealing with love for God and last six dealing with the love for man. The first commandment is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5 and is part of the Shema that a Jew says daily. “The Lord your God is one God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind.” 

 

The second commandment is from Leviticus 19:18 which says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” In Matthew Jesus explains your neighbor is not limited to just people like you but is to even include your enemy. In the Gospel of Luke the writer follows these commandments with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which implies that some religious leaders fail to connect these two commandments like Jesus does. But the hated Samaritan understands.

 

What Jesus has done so simply here is put love of God and love of neighbor on near equal bases. Certainly he put a lot of glue between them. They must hang together and not separately. It all comes down to loving God with all that has been given you by God – your heart, your soul, and your mind and to love others likewise.

 

The Jewish religious leaders had a big problem with this in that Jesus lived what he preached. He is not really a holy man of God because he respected and lived with all people – women, children, sinners, tax collectors, the sick, and the poor outcast. This is not the religious leaders’ understanding of holiness. This kind of love in action is not what they sought from their religion. They sought only purity and piety. Putting love of neighbor with love of God challenged their orthodoxy and their piety. In Jesus, God entered our human lives in all its messiness and loved openly with justice and mercy unto death. And God vindicated this love by raising Jesus from the dead, showing us that he loves us unconditionally just like we see in Jesus. 

 

For Jesus, love of God and neighbor was more than a moral talking point. Love was more than an idea and was more than an emotion. It was a doing. Doctrine and legalisms alone were not enough. This bond of the two commandments is validated beautifully in 1 John:  “Those who say, ‘I love God’. And hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

 

Why is this love so hard for us to understand?  What more could God do to show us his will and nature than to show himself (become Incarnate) in a human that we call Christ Jesus, through which he taught and did love. But throughout history humans have shown that this simple understanding of loving God and our neighbor as a basis of the Christian faith is dangerous. The love of God led to the crusades, the burning of witches, military dominance of the world, and abuse of people and our planet. People even wrap bombs around themselves and kill their neighbors because of love of God. We fight wars for the good of the people we are killing. What a witness religious people have to our loving God who simply asks us to love Him as he loves us and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

 

I think we just live so much in the small doctrine stuff that God’s big picture gets lost. Take for instance the scare night that some churches provide for people on Halloween night this week. The desire for people to find God’s love and salvation is motivated by fear. People will be frightened by images of hell and sounds of torment that God has prepared for them unless they love Him. Give your life to Jesus or you will burn in hell with the rest of the sinners and Jews and Muslims and those others who do not believe as we do. How can we use fear to motivate love? “For God so loved the world he gave his only son…”   You can only love God because of knowing that He first loved us. These two commandments of Jesus have nothing to do with fear. “Perfect love casts out fear.” To love God is to know God.

 

All that we hold dear to us, whether it is personal belief or personal morality or the condemnation of the sins of others, must be held up to these commandments of Jesus. If they do not pass the love test of the commandments, then they must be regulated to the small stuff of our faith and life. 

 

Jesus gives us our two top priorities in life and in death. Let me ask you the two most important questions of Jesus to you. Will you love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind? Will you love your neighbor as yourself?  When something else from the small doctrine stuff of the church doctrine intrudes on this, then step back and look at the big picture that Jesus gives to you. Some of this small stuff can explode on you and cause divisions, hate and fear. That is not of God. Get back to the basics. Love God with all of the gifts he has given you and love your neighbor, even your enemy, as you love yourself. It will involve economics, justice and mercy. Loving your neighbor is a concrete way to love God. The kind of love God is asking of us is not a weak love where we will love if we don’t get hurt or where we will be sure to get something in return. No, it is a love that chooses the good of others no matter what the cost.

 

This coming week you will get a pledge card from your church that will ask of you to get practical and put your money where your love is. A pledge card is an invitation to first commit to God and to your ministry with others in His kingdom. Next Sunday we will meet together for lunch to hear our plans for ministry together in 2009. The following Sunday, November 9, we will bring our pledges to God during our worship service. May God bless you with a commitment that is based in His love for you.