Time again for our Monday Morning Sermon feature, recapping some things that either didn't make it into Sunday's sermon or that we didn't have time for.
The text for this Sunday was Matthew 22: 34-46. You can read it here and the click through (where it says "read more" below) for the reflections.
Matthew 22: 34-46
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied.
43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’
45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Jesus' explains here that the Law hangs entirely on love: loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind plus loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus didn't make up these phrases. He was quoting straight from the ancient scriptures. But those texts had been buried in an avalanche of legalism and self-satisfaction wherein the Law was said to justify some--the religious elite and those in their favor--while condemning others not in their favor.
The path of the Pharisees is deceptively well-paved. All we need to do in order to travel it is to judge some commandments greater than others and thus some people greater than others. Those which appear to favor us and condemn others we accept and trumpet. Those that appear to condemn us and favor others we reject. We get to feel like the good guys. We have a built-in group of "lawbreakers" to tsk tsk about and fight against. Life is good!
Jesus dug back to the root of the Law when he said, "Forget greater or lesser commandments, justification by bits and pieces. The law equals love for God and your neighbor. To the extent you're living your life by love you are fulfilling it. To the extent you're not the entire Law has fallen down on your head and this remains true no matter which legalisms you bring out to justify it." That's powerful, complete, and inarguable.
Many people of faith claim that love and legal judgment can go hand in hand. If the hand is God's, that's probably so. For the rest of us those two roads will diverge and we'll have to discern which is the more faithful. The phrase, "Oh, I love these people but I'm also standing in judgment against them" is a flimsy veil. What, exactly, does love mean here? In the Christian sense it's supposed to mean pouring out one's life for someone, serving them, supporting them even at cost to the self, enduring with them through life's ups and downs, being at peace with them. Clearly none of that is operative in our phrase. Love becomes pious sentiment, the shadowy mist of an ideal divorced from action. The strongest word in the phrase "I love them but I'm standing in judgment against them" is not love, but the "but". The love gets lip service, the judgment gets the power.
Anybody who's ever been married knows what it's like to choose between love and judgment. You've all been in situations where you know your spouse is...wrong. An argument ensues. Nobody wins it. The issue lies simmering between you. How long will the relationship last if you get up each morning and say, "I love you honey but you're wrong about this"? That kind of bubbling resentment not only isn't love, it kills love. Eventually you have to choose. Will you land on the side of being right or the side of being in love? If you choose judgment your relationship will die. Therefore most folks choose to say, "Even though my spouse is wrong that's not as important as the marriage." And somehow, when both parties do that, the wound gets healed and you get to move on together in love even though nobody ever gets to be right.
Congratulations. You just discovered Jesus' lesson about the love and the Law. The Law exists to serve and point to love, not vice versa. Trying to exercise the Law outside of the context of love--without regard for love--destroys both.
The problem is, we have a hard time making that kind of loving sacrifice for people outside of our own marriages, families, or whatever...especially when those people are different from us in some way. Jesus said, "love your neighbor [implication: all of them] as yourself". We fail this task automatically when we say, "I love these certain people but I'm also standing in judgment against them." One way or the other we are forced to choose between the clause before the but and the one after.
How do we make this choice well? Jesus covers that too.
In the second part of this Gospel Jesus goes into some goopy stuff about David and the Messiah. He asked the Pharisees whose son the Messiah would be and, drawing from scripture, they answered "David's". David was the greatest king in their history. Their answer showed that they couldn't conceive of any operation of God's that happened outside of their own culture and mindset. Jesus broke that to pieces when he replied that scripture also says that David will call the Messiah "Lord". He was telling them that the Messiah was greater than David just as God was greater than their own understanding, a realization they steadfastly rejected.
Everything in our treacherous phrase that comes after the "but" is our Pharisaic insistence that the Messiah is the son of David. "This is how we understand it. This is how we have been taught. This is how we read the Law in terms of right and wrong." Jesus reminds us, too, that the Messiah is not just the son of David, but the Son of God. Each one of us has our own understanding of the Law. It may even be an accurate understanding, even as David's rule was good for his nation. But your understanding is not enough to encompass the Law any more than David's kingship was enough to save the world. So when push comes to shove what are you going to follow, David or the Messiah...your interpretation of the Law or that of Jesus?
Another way of asking this: Are you above the Law, judging and dispensing it as if it bowed to your understanding and will? Or instead is the Law above you, something you submit to? If your interpretation is perfect and foolproof then by all means you are qualified to stand above it, choosing the path of David. But then you're no longer dispensing God's Law, but your own wisdom. If instead you realize you are flawed and thus stand underneath the Law then you have taken the first step in following it. But then you also must admit that your own, imperfect interpretation of the Law won't do...that only Jesus' matters.
And what did Jesus say? Oh yeah... "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Also love your neighbor as yourself."
Annoyingly he left out everything after the "but" in our phrase. He told us it's OK to be married to someone even when you know they're wrong. He told us it's less our job to play the righteous gatekeeper with our neighbor than to welcome them. He told us we don't have to worry about fixing the world with our judgments, that our job is rather to love it and serve it. And he told us that this is exactly what the Law says. It always has said that and always will.
I think it's time we stopped regarding people who make the loudest and strongest judgments as the most holy and godly. Those distinctions would belong to those who love the longest and best (people who would probably reject those labels anyway). No longer are we free to hide behind God's robes to justify our condemnation of others. On this day, through this Gospel, God moved. Our only choice is to stand there, now revealed fully to the world as people who don't follow God's Law as he explained it, or to move with him to the wonderful, graceful place where he now stands with all his people, including the ones we wanted to condemn. I don't know about you, but I don't see much of a choice here.
Hi. My name is Dave. I used to think I was right about a whole bunch of things before God set me straight on that. Now I'm not sure I'll ever be right completely. But hey, I know I'm loved. That's way better anyway. And there's plenty of room for you too if you want to join the crowd. I hope you do.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
