Sermon for Trinity 18
All
Matthew 22:34-46
Trinity 18
October 11, 2009
Why did the Pharisees ask their question? The text says that it was to "test" Jesus. What would the "right" answer have been? Was his response a matter of academic interest? Did they want Jesus to settle an argument? Were they curious about how to go about winning the maximum number of brownie points from God with the minimum amount of effort?
All of the above, probably. Though they would have been surprised to hear it, the Pharisees were sinners, just like the rest of us. The Old Adam in each of us misses the point of the Law. It wants to rank the Commandments, as if the violation of the even least of them, being an affront to God, were not of ultimate seriousness. The Old Eve in each one of us wants to excuse our own sins by telling itself that, after all, they're not as bad as somebody else's. The fallen nature in every ever human being- Christians included- wants, first of all, to be accepted by God because we're such spiritually hot stuff, while at the same time winning that acceptance with the minimum possible amount of effort.
No, the Old Adam just doesn't get the Law. It clings to the illusion that it can, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase, "stand before God and say, 'I have done my duty.'" And if its sin is pointed out to it, no problem. It can always try harder next time.
Dr. Hein back at River Forest used to call the kind of Law the Old Adam goes in for "watered down Law." An awful lot of it gets preached in Christian circles, and even more of it is practiced. "Watered down Law" is the kind that elicits a resolution to roll up one's spiritual sleeves and try harder.
We don't know the exact motivations of the Pharisees who asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment, other than that it was "to test Him." But Jesus did. He knew the human heart. He knew its fondness for trying to tame and domesticate God's Law to serve the needs of the ego, or to get by with offering God less than is His due, and keeping the difference for oneself. And so Jesus declined the gambit. He refused to rank the commandments, so as to justify offering God less than total obedience. And He refused to preach watered-down Law to the Pharisees.
The opposite of watered-down Law, Dr. Hein used to say, is full-strength Law. It does not elicit a determination to try harder. It does not flatter the Old Self's ambition to stand before God and claim to have done its duty- if possible on the cheap. Instead, it crushes us. It brings us to the point of despair. It makes it absolutely plain that when it comes to meeting God's minimum demands, we haven't, we don't, and we can't.
Jesus let them have it with both barrels! Which is the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."
All. Every single bit. Jesus doesn't tell them that God has to simply come first. He points out that He comes last as well as first- and everything in between, too. God, He points out, deserves every last bit of their allegiance, and every last scrap of their loyalty. His due is nothing less than every last bit of us. Every thought, every word, and every deed must be taken captive to His glory and His will.
No matter how well you obey, it's not enough. God is entitled to better obedience. No matter how well you serve Him, it's not well enough. God is entitled to better service. He's entitled to every scrap of our intellect, every crumb of our devotion, and every bit of our very selves.
And we don't give it to Him, do we? Oh, of course the Pharisees might have claimed that they did. Pharisees always do. Denial, as a certain freshman United States senator used to point out on Saturday Night Live, isn't just a river in Egypt! But the more honest and self-aware a person is, when confronted with the heart of the Law as Jesus confronted the Pharisees, the closer to the surface is our knowledge that when we claim to serve God with all our heart, all our souls, and all our minds, just as He commands us to, what we are really doing nothing is more or less than trying to stave off the despair that would arise from the honest realization that we haven't, we don't, and we can't meet His minimum demand of us.
It's that despair to which the Law seeks to drive us. It's that despair to which Jesus sought to drive the Pharisees. That's the most important role of the Law: to show us that our best just isn't good enough.
But wait- He wasn't done yet! They'd asked him what the greatest commandment of the Law was. Well, He was going to tell them what the second greatest commandment was, too. And it was not calculated to lessen that rising sense of despair.
Skeptics about the Faith often pont out that many unbelievers and followers of other religions have lived noble lives of self-sacrifice, and served humanity with great dedication. "Do you mean to tell me," they ask, "that God would refuse a place in heaven to such people just because of their religion?"
But even if we ignore their failure to keep the first and greatest commandment- we, who are pf the Faith, also fail it- the greatest philanthropist who ever lived fails the second, too- and that regardless of his religion.
The second commandment is not merely that one must love one's neighbor. It's not even that one must, on occasion, subordinate one's own welfare to that of one's neighbor. No, the second commandment Jesus lays before the Pharisees is that they must love their neighbor as themselves. And not merely occasionally, or even usually or customarily. No more than we are only occasionally or ordinarily expected to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds does God demand that we only occasionally or ordinarily love our neighbor as ourselves.
What would it look like if we did? That man standing along the expressway with the sign, "Will work for food." What would be do for that man if we truly loved him as we loved ourselves? Could we drive on without being sure that he had a place to sleep tonight? The hospitals are full of people who never get visitors. The nursing homes are still fuller. How would we spend our leisure time if we truly loved our neighbors as ourselves?
How many times do we find ourselves acting selfishly and thoughtlessly even toward our closest neighbors- those of our own household? As it is with loving God, so it is with loving our neighbor: no matter how complete our devotion and self-sacrifice, it will always fall short of all- and "all" is the minimum God demands.
My vicarage supervisor was fond of pointing to Micah 6:8- "He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly,to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?-" and calling it "the John 3:16 of the Old Testament." But it's not. We know all too well what is good. God has written it on our hearts, and not even the ravages of sin have erased it. What is good is that we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and our neighbors as ourselves. But that's just the problem: we haven't, we don't, and we can't.
No, there is only one John 3:16. And it's the only answer for our utter and abysmal failure to meet God's minimum standards for us, for our sad and sorry failure to love God with every moment with everything we are and everything we have, or our neighbors remotely as much as we love ourselves.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." God loved us with all His heart, and all His soul, and all His mind. He loved us enough to become one of Us, and to love us even to the point of death. And He loves us that way still.
We do not love our neighbors as ourselves, even when we love them the most deeply and sincerely. But God loved us more than He loved Himself- loved us and gave Himself for us. We love Him because He first loved us. We love our neighbor because in loving our neighbor, we love Christ. And if our love for God and neighbor always remains a sad and paltry thing- and it does- then our knowledge that in His love He stood in the breech and made up for what was, what is, and what in this life always will be lacking in our own by His total and complete and reckless giving of Himself inspires in us a gratitude and a love and a desire to be like Him that leads us to love Him and our neighbor ever more in this life, until in the next life our love is like His.
What does it look like to love God with all one's heart, and soul, and mind? What does it look like to love one's neighbor as ourselves? It looks like Jesus. It looks like our God and our dearest Neighbor hanging in absolute love and total self-abandonment on the cross for our failure to love. Through the dying to sin and rising to life that is the substance of the baptized life, through the Word of the Gospel, and through the Meal in which He comes to live in us that we might live in Him, leach day- inperceptable though it may be to our own eyes- He is formed in us, and through us more and more loves the Father as He deserves to be loved, and loves our neighbor as He loves us- with the absolute and total and all-sufficient love of the One Who daily is being formed in us, and who is our only righteousness.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Matthew 22:34-46
Trinity 18
October 11, 2009
Why did the Pharisees ask their question? The text says that it was to "test" Jesus. What would the "right" answer have been? Was his response a matter of academic interest? Did they want Jesus to settle an argument? Were they curious about how to go about winning the maximum number of brownie points from God with the minimum amount of effort?
All of the above, probably. Though they would have been surprised to hear it, the Pharisees were sinners, just like the rest of us. The Old Adam in each of us misses the point of the Law. It wants to rank the Commandments, as if the violation of the even least of them, being an affront to God, were not of ultimate seriousness. The Old Eve in each one of us wants to excuse our own sins by telling itself that, after all, they're not as bad as somebody else's. The fallen nature in every ever human being- Christians included- wants, first of all, to be accepted by God because we're such spiritually hot stuff, while at the same time winning that acceptance with the minimum possible amount of effort.
No, the Old Adam just doesn't get the Law. It clings to the illusion that it can, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase, "stand before God and say, 'I have done my duty.'" And if its sin is pointed out to it, no problem. It can always try harder next time.
Dr. Hein back at River Forest used to call the kind of Law the Old Adam goes in for "watered down Law." An awful lot of it gets preached in Christian circles, and even more of it is practiced. "Watered down Law" is the kind that elicits a resolution to roll up one's spiritual sleeves and try harder.
We don't know the exact motivations of the Pharisees who asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment, other than that it was "to test Him." But Jesus did. He knew the human heart. He knew its fondness for trying to tame and domesticate God's Law to serve the needs of the ego, or to get by with offering God less than is His due, and keeping the difference for oneself. And so Jesus declined the gambit. He refused to rank the commandments, so as to justify offering God less than total obedience. And He refused to preach watered-down Law to the Pharisees.
The opposite of watered-down Law, Dr. Hein used to say, is full-strength Law. It does not elicit a determination to try harder. It does not flatter the Old Self's ambition to stand before God and claim to have done its duty- if possible on the cheap. Instead, it crushes us. It brings us to the point of despair. It makes it absolutely plain that when it comes to meeting God's minimum demands, we haven't, we don't, and we can't.
Jesus let them have it with both barrels! Which is the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."
All. Every single bit. Jesus doesn't tell them that God has to simply come first. He points out that He comes last as well as first- and everything in between, too. God, He points out, deserves every last bit of their allegiance, and every last scrap of their loyalty. His due is nothing less than every last bit of us. Every thought, every word, and every deed must be taken captive to His glory and His will.
No matter how well you obey, it's not enough. God is entitled to better obedience. No matter how well you serve Him, it's not well enough. God is entitled to better service. He's entitled to every scrap of our intellect, every crumb of our devotion, and every bit of our very selves.
And we don't give it to Him, do we? Oh, of course the Pharisees might have claimed that they did. Pharisees always do. Denial, as a certain freshman United States senator used to point out on Saturday Night Live, isn't just a river in Egypt! But the more honest and self-aware a person is, when confronted with the heart of the Law as Jesus confronted the Pharisees, the closer to the surface is our knowledge that when we claim to serve God with all our heart, all our souls, and all our minds, just as He commands us to, what we are really doing nothing is more or less than trying to stave off the despair that would arise from the honest realization that we haven't, we don't, and we can't meet His minimum demand of us.
It's that despair to which the Law seeks to drive us. It's that despair to which Jesus sought to drive the Pharisees. That's the most important role of the Law: to show us that our best just isn't good enough.
But wait- He wasn't done yet! They'd asked him what the greatest commandment of the Law was. Well, He was going to tell them what the second greatest commandment was, too. And it was not calculated to lessen that rising sense of despair.
Skeptics about the Faith often pont out that many unbelievers and followers of other religions have lived noble lives of self-sacrifice, and served humanity with great dedication. "Do you mean to tell me," they ask, "that God would refuse a place in heaven to such people just because of their religion?"
But even if we ignore their failure to keep the first and greatest commandment- we, who are pf the Faith, also fail it- the greatest philanthropist who ever lived fails the second, too- and that regardless of his religion.
The second commandment is not merely that one must love one's neighbor. It's not even that one must, on occasion, subordinate one's own welfare to that of one's neighbor. No, the second commandment Jesus lays before the Pharisees is that they must love their neighbor as themselves. And not merely occasionally, or even usually or customarily. No more than we are only occasionally or ordinarily expected to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds does God demand that we only occasionally or ordinarily love our neighbor as ourselves.
What would it look like if we did? That man standing along the expressway with the sign, "Will work for food." What would be do for that man if we truly loved him as we loved ourselves? Could we drive on without being sure that he had a place to sleep tonight? The hospitals are full of people who never get visitors. The nursing homes are still fuller. How would we spend our leisure time if we truly loved our neighbors as ourselves?
How many times do we find ourselves acting selfishly and thoughtlessly even toward our closest neighbors- those of our own household? As it is with loving God, so it is with loving our neighbor: no matter how complete our devotion and self-sacrifice, it will always fall short of all- and "all" is the minimum God demands.
My vicarage supervisor was fond of pointing to Micah 6:8- "He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly,to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?-" and calling it "the John 3:16 of the Old Testament." But it's not. We know all too well what is good. God has written it on our hearts, and not even the ravages of sin have erased it. What is good is that we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and our neighbors as ourselves. But that's just the problem: we haven't, we don't, and we can't.
No, there is only one John 3:16. And it's the only answer for our utter and abysmal failure to meet God's minimum standards for us, for our sad and sorry failure to love God with every moment with everything we are and everything we have, or our neighbors remotely as much as we love ourselves.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." God loved us with all His heart, and all His soul, and all His mind. He loved us enough to become one of Us, and to love us even to the point of death. And He loves us that way still.
We do not love our neighbors as ourselves, even when we love them the most deeply and sincerely. But God loved us more than He loved Himself- loved us and gave Himself for us. We love Him because He first loved us. We love our neighbor because in loving our neighbor, we love Christ. And if our love for God and neighbor always remains a sad and paltry thing- and it does- then our knowledge that in His love He stood in the breech and made up for what was, what is, and what in this life always will be lacking in our own by His total and complete and reckless giving of Himself inspires in us a gratitude and a love and a desire to be like Him that leads us to love Him and our neighbor ever more in this life, until in the next life our love is like His.
What does it look like to love God with all one's heart, and soul, and mind? What does it look like to love one's neighbor as ourselves? It looks like Jesus. It looks like our God and our dearest Neighbor hanging in absolute love and total self-abandonment on the cross for our failure to love. Through the dying to sin and rising to life that is the substance of the baptized life, through the Word of the Gospel, and through the Meal in which He comes to live in us that we might live in Him, leach day- inperceptable though it may be to our own eyes- He is formed in us, and through us more and more loves the Father as He deserves to be loved, and loves our neighbor as He loves us- with the absolute and total and all-sufficient love of the One Who daily is being formed in us, and who is our only righteousness.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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