October 26, 2008    Matthew 22:34-46

For the Jewish people the law is a gift of God, a guidepost for holy living, reflecting the image of God.  The psalmist says that God’s laws are true and righteous, more desired than gold . . . sweeter yet than the drippings of the honeycomb.” (Psalm 19)   But the young cantor makes it clear that God’s laws, God’s commandments are merely hollow words if not laid upon a foundation of justice and righteousness. 

    In the scripture we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew, other passions about the law are told.  Here are the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the first century champions of the sacred law of Israel.   They passionately study and passionately guard the holiness of all 613 commandments of the Torah.  Their passion about the law is raised through the roof when confronted with the likes of Jesus - the young, popular teacher who seems to take liberties with God’s law with abandon
. . . who works on the Sabbath . . . who plucks grains on the Sabbath . . . who heals on the Sabbath . . . who teaches a radically new approach to such basic ethics as murder and adultery . . . who even says we are to love our enemies.  He appears to them as scandalous!  So what do they do with the likes of Jesus?   “We’ll see if we can’t entrap him,” they decide.  Yes, we will try to entrap him . . . first by feigning our own innocence and good intentions and then by asking him questions that surely will perplex him.

    The first question . . . “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?”  They are dumbstruck by his answer.  So they try a second question . . . “If a woman has more than one husband in her lifetime, in the resurrection whose wife will she be?”  They are made speechless again.  Still they are unwilling to give up.  So feigning innocence yet again, they ask a third question . . . “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

    Jesus’ answer may be so familiar to us that we don’t even hear it anymore.  Most of us probably know it by heart.  “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  If the Pharisees and Sadducees are hoping to entrap Jesus on the basis of his answer, they are sorely disappointed.  Both the commandment to love God and to love your neighbor are as ancient as the hills and nothing new to anyone who heard Jesus that day.  So . . . once again his adversaries find themselves speechless.

    When it comes to the law, people can get very passionate, and nowhere is this more true than in the Bible.  Loving God, however, may be another matter.  First of all, imagining God may be for many of us a bit of a challenge, and God may appear in our mind’s eye more like an oblong blur than anything else.  Secondly, the matter is complicated by the very kind of love that is being demanded of us.  Jesus is not talking about physical love, and Jesus is not talking about friendship. He is talking about that kind of love which Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says is patient and kind, without arrogance or selfishness . . seeks joy and truth, is complete and eternal . . . puts aside our needs and puts God front and center . . . gives praise and honor to God alone.  As beautiful as Paul’s hymn to love may be, that love in many ways seems hopelessly impossible.

    So how does one respond to a commandment that, first, is so familiar we are apt to tune it out?  Then how does one go about loving an oblong blur?  And finally, how does one ever hope to manage the impossible kind of love that is explicitly demanded?  Oh, we may get inklings of such love before the grand mysteries of creation, but such feelings are usually fleeting and can quickly erode in the face of personal disappointment or the bitter reality of many things going on in our world today.  So what are we to do?  I think the problem arises when we forget there is a second commandment directly alongside the first one.  “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind” . . . AND . . . the second IS LIKE IT . . . Love your neighbor as yourself.”  There is our clue!  The second commandment is like the first!

    In Luke’s gospel the lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?”  And Jesus responds by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Our neighbor is each and every person we encounter.  A friend of mine once was walking a downtown street and saw a man asleep by a bus stop with an empty gin bottle in his hand.  His legs were hanging over the curb, and my friend, concerned that the bus would come and run over his legs, leaned down and moved the man’s legs up onto the sidewalk.  Then as my friend walked away, the drunk man shouted at him, “Mind your own business!”  We may be appalled by the drunk’s response, but thanks and appreciation are not the point.  The point is that we are ALL neighbors to each other and called to put the well-being of our neighbor first.

    For Matthew, however, the burning issue is not so much WHO is my neighbor but how love informs the law on which his Jewish audience puts so much store.  Love God and your neighbor.  On these two commandments the law depends.  But if the law says I should not lie, then if the Gestapo asks if I’m hiding Jews in my house, shouldn’t I say, “Yes?”   “No!  Absolutely not!” is the young cantor’s reply.  The law is just empty words if there is no justice.  “I agree,” says Jesus. Without love we cannot ever understand the law, for love must be the criteria by which we judge the correct thing to do.

    A couple of years ago the New York Times published an article by John Danforth, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and U.S. Senator from Missouri who is also an ordained Episcopal priest.  In the article Danforth says that “it would be an oversimplication to say that America’s culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers.  People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research . . . or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics.”  In this election year I think some of his further comments about faith and politics are worth hearing and internalizing.  Danforth considers himself what he calls “a moderate Christian” and in the article speaks on behalf of this constituency.  In doing so, he says, “The only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws.    We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christian can be codified by legislators . . . Far from claiming to possess God’s truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth.  We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base.  We believe it is God’s work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today’s politics.  For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people.  We do not exclude from worship those whose opinions differ from ours.  Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord’s table all who would come.  Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love.”

    Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind . . . the second is like it . . . love your neighbor as yourself.  As the Samaritan helped the wounded man along the side of the road, so God comes to our rescue no matter who we may be.  As the father welcomes home his lost son who abandoned his family and squandered his money, so God welcomes us home no matter what.  As the shepherd searches for the lost sheep even in the dark and hidden shadows until that sheep is found, so God will never let us go.  As Jesus feeds the hungry, heals the sick, receives the outcast, and shuns no one, so we are called to do the same, for - as Jesus reminds us - when we do the same, we do it to him.

    The great mystics of the church witness to a profound love of God.  Nowhere has such love been so exquisitely illustrated than in Bernini’s marble sculpture of the “Ecstacy of St. Teresa.”  The saint’s eyes roll back in her head; she falls back in a swoon; and she appears to teeter on the edge of a platform from which her foot dangles and her drapery flows in sensuous, light-filled folds.  Upon her ecstatic union with God an angel pierced her heart, and in her writings Teresa describes it this way.  “I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God . . . It is a caressing of love so sweet . . . that I pray God of His goodness to make [all] experience it who may think that I am lying.”

    For most of us, however, I suspect such a complete experience of personal love and union with God seems for most of us to verge on the impossible.  To love God on the side of those in need, however, is another matter altogether.  That is within our grasp.  To love our neighbor is to love God.  To love God is to love our neighbor.   May our passion for legal matters become a new passion for loving matters, for it is upon loving God and loving our neighbor that the law depends.