Matthew 22: 34-46
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Ordinary Time
First United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela
Simmons Wood
One of the odd things about working
in a church is that you start thinking about Christmas before the stores even
deck their aisles. This week, I’ve been thinking ahead to how we will celebrate
Advent and it’s also got me thinking about how we will celebrate Christmas in
our home. Last year, our son wasn’t old enough to really know what was
happening at all. This year, he’ll begin to absorb what Christmas is really
about.
We’ll go to church, of course. We’ll
talk about the baby Jesus. And, like most of you, we’ll have a Christmas tree
with presents under it. But what kind of presents and how many is where it
starts to get a little complicated for me. I grew up in a home where we were lavished
with gifts on Christmas morning. We were not a family with a ton of extra
money, since both of my parents were public educators and, later, my mom was a
single-mom raising us on a teacher’s salary. But, at Christmas, you would have
thought we were incredibly wealthy by the amount of stuff we had waiting for us
under the tree.
I just don’t know if I want our kids
to have that kind of Christmas. I think, more than anything, I want Christmas
to be simple. I want them to remember things like the time we spent together as
a family and the gifts we gave to others to be what they remember – not
necessarily how much stuff they got.
But I’ll confess to have a small
problem when it comes to making this a reality. And maybe this is what happened
to my parents, too. I just want to buy my son things! I want to see his little
face light up. I want to get him toys that I know he’ll really enjoy. And,
since we are financially comfortable, I have the additional problem of actually
being able to afford to do this!
Presenting someone I care deeply
about a gift that I’ve picked out just for them is one of the many ways I can
show them love. Love is powerful. Love trumps everything else. It’s hard to say
no to love.
Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t seem to
hesitate for long when he answered the Pharisees question about the greatest
law. The law with the greatest power, the one that trumps every other law, is
the law to love. It Jesus’s mind, it wasn’t rocket science. And we certainly
have no reason to believe that the Pharisees would have found it scandalous,
either.
Nor is the very idea of boiling down
the Law to one simple idea scandalous. Lots of other contemporary Jewish
leaders were doing it. Sometimes, we Christians are so enamored with Jesus that
we like to pretend like he was doing something totally off-the-wall and
different than every other Jewish leader of his time. But that’s often not the
case.
There are lots of stories about
Jewish leaders simplifying the Law. Here’s just one. “A heathen came to Shammai
[a contemporary of Jesus] and said to him, ‘Accept me as a student on the
condition that you teach me the whole Law while I stand on one foot.’ Then
Shammai drove him away with the measuring rod that he held in his hand. Then he
went to Hillel [another contemporary of Jesus], who received him as a student,
and said to him, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the
whole Law; all the rest is commentary; go and learn.”[1]
So the fact that Jesus gives an
answer doesn’t make this passage stand out as special. In fact, it’s kind of
amusing that Jesus doesn’t even pick one answer! The Pharisees, who are looking
to trick Jesus, make it very clear that they want to know the ONE law that is
greatest. But when Jesus picks not one, but TWO, laws, they don’t seem bothered
in the least. Seems to me that if they were trying to discredit him, they could
have said “Ah, ha! He picked two answers, not one. Nanny nanny boo boo!”
But they don’t. Why not?
I think part of why they don’t is
because what Jesus is saying – that we are to love God more than anything and
also love our neighbors – I think that thoe statements are so deeply true, so
simply powerful, so incredibly pure and reasonable that they trumps everything
else. Jesus’s answer trumps that fact that these Pharisees are trying to trap him.
It trumps the fact that he doesn’t answer the question with just one answer.
It. Just. Is.
It’s true. There’s no arguing with
it.
And after Jesus says this, they have
another little debate about whether Jesus is the Messiah. And, finally, after
scene upon scene of arguments with the religious authorities, it’s over. They
walk away. Nobody ever asks him questions like this again in the gospel of
Matthew. They’ve given up on debating this guy.
Now, there is one thing that Jesus
does with his answer that I think is pretty intriguing.
The first answer he gives, the one
that says we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind – that would
have been a no brainer. It’s part of the Shema – that great piece of religious
heritage that Jews taught even the youngest children. They were to recite it at
least twice daily. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. You
shall love the Lord with all your soul, all your strength, all your might.” It
comes from Deuteronomy 6, if you’d like to look it up. It’s not new. It
wouldn’t have been shocking.
But we he adds the second commandment
– to love your neighbor as yourself – that would have been a little more avant
garde. Not that anyone would have debated that loving your neighbor was
important. It was at the core of their faith. But, at least in Matthew’s
version, Jesus says that this second law is like the first one. In other
words, loving your neighbor is just as important as loving God.
That means it’s a pretty big deal. A
really big deal. In fact, the biggest deal you can think of.
What does Jesus know about loving
your neighbor that makes him elevate it to this level of importance?
Well, these are words coming from a
guy who is about to die for love.
For love of God, and for his love of
what God can do in the world, Jesus is about to make the ultimate sacrifice.
For love of the people – to show them
that he means business; to show them that there is more to life than just
living; to show them that they can continue to make the Reign of God a reality
even after he is gone; to show them that the evil, corrupt powers of their day
really were bad, bad, bad…for all of these reasons, and – most of all – for
love, Jesus gives up his own life.
Jesus knew some stuff about loving
your neighbor. And I think one of the things that Jesus really understood at
his core was this: loving your neighbor IS loving God. You can’t separate the
two. God is not some abstract thought that exists out in the ether. God is not
some kind, grandfatherly old man who sits on a cloud.
God is here and now. God is in every
person you encounter. Every deed that is done. Every song that is sung. Every
meal that is prepared. Every fight that is fought. Every candle that is lit.
Every opportunity that is missed.
God is absolutely everywhere and in
everything. There is no way to love God without loving all of creation.
And when Jesus spoke of love, let’s
be clear: he was not speaking of flowery love poems or romantic passions or
duty towards your family. Those were types of love, yes, but Matthew would have
used the words eros or philia to describe these. Instead, he
uses the word agape – an active,
striving love. One that is contemplative, yet always moving. A love that is so
deep it is unconditional.
Agape only exists when it is acted
upon. You cannot have agape for your neighbor if you pass them on the street
while they are in need. You cannot have agape for God if you fail to take time
to bow in worship.
And this takes me back to my
Christmas dilemma.
If I want to teach my children about
agape at Christmas, do I do that by showering them with gifts that will break?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sharing a few gifts that help them
know that I listen to them, I understand what will make them happy, and I want
them to enjoy life. But I think that, if I fail to also teach them about the things
Jesus talks about here – loving God and loving our neighbors – then I’ve missed
the boat.
The allocation of our resources is
one of the simplest and most profound ways we love. When we make a decision to
give someone money or a gift that cost money, we are giving them part of our
resources. When we give someone time – whether that’s me sitting down on
Christmas morning to read books for a half-hour with my child or you coming in
every Monday night to work the shelter – that’s giving someone a part of our
resources.
Giving is loving. Active loving. It
is the greatest thing we can do.
I don’t think Jesus tells us to love
God and our neighbor because he’s trying to tell us how to stay out of hell
when we die. I think he’s telling us something much more precious than that.
I think he’s telling us the secret
finding salvation right here and now and for the rest of our eternal lives. I
think he’s telling us how to be transformed through our living.
This tradition of loving through
giving is alive and well in our congregation. Even our kids are catching on to
it.
You might remember that after
Vacation Bible School, the kids brought the offering that they had collected
all week up to the front of the church to have it dedicated.
While we were standing at the back of
the church, waiting to come forward, Nolan Soderquist pulled a five dollar bill
out of his pocket and gave it to me. I said, “Nolan, what a generous gift! What
should we do with it?” And he said, “I want to give it to God.” I said, “Let’s
put it in the plate, then, and it will get to God.”
I learned from Nolan’s dad, Paul,
that Nolan had decided to give this money to God because he had been taught to
divide his income up into three parts. Nolan had earned $15 participating in as
research study, so he saved five dollars, spent five dollars, and gave five
dollars to God.
When Paul asked Nolan how he would
get the money to God, Nolan said, “I’ll take it to church. They’ll know what to
do with it.”
What we do with our money, as a church,
matters because there are kids like Nolan counting on us to make sure their
money gets to God. We are challenged to love God and love our neighbors –
actively – with our resources.
Nolan didn’t look sad at all when he
gave me his five dollars. In fact, he looked pretty darn pleased as he put it
into the plate. Sometimes you hear people say we should “give until it hurts.”
I prefer to think that we should “give until it feels good…and then give a
little more.”
Loving feels good. Loving with our
resources feels great. Coming together with a group of people who are committed
to loving God and loving their neighbors feels awesome.
Now you may think that giving is
supposed to hurt. You may have been taught that it’s an unsavory duty that must
be done. You may think I’m being a little too newfangeled when I say that it
can, and should, feel good.
Lest you think that, I want to share
something St. Thomas Aquinas said in the 13th century:
Capax universi, capable of the universe are your arms when they move with love.
As
capable as God are we.[2]
When we love with all our heart, all
our strength, all our mind; When we remember that loving our neighbor this way
is how we love God; When we remember that there is no such thing as passive
love – only love that is fully giving and active….when we remember these
things, we are capable of the universe. We are as capable as God.
Not a bad deal, right?
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