A
Sermon based Upon Matthew 22: 34-40:
Exodus 20:6; Leviticus 19:28
By
Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, D.Min., Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Year C: Proper 21, 19th
Sunday After Pentecost, September 25th, 2016
One day a seeker
approached a great Jewish Rabbi named Hillel, who lived until the time Jesus
was born. The seeker said to the great Rabbi, “If you can teach me your whole religion
standing on one leg, I will become your disciple.” And Rabbi Hillel answered him, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to
another. That is the whole Law; the rest
is commentary; and learn.“ (http://www.humanjourney.us/JesusInHistory.html).
Jesus did not
invent the golden rule; but he did promote it.
Jesus promoted the golden rule because the main rule is love. Every rule is about love and begins with
love: “This is the first and great commandment… Jesus said. “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart,…? Where did Jesus get something like this? Jesus
also said: ‘A new commandment I give to you’ which is ‘to love one another’ (John
13:34), but just how ‘new’ was it, really? It might have been ‘new’ to those disciples
and could be ‘new’ to us too, this law of love was definitely was not ‘new’ to
God.
Today, we
come to the concluding message on the Ten Commandments. Here, at the end, we come to the commandment rightly
called the 11th commandment, which might even include a 12th
commandment. In other words, Christians
don’t just settle for ten, but we make it 11, or perhaps 12. We may even reduce all the Ten Commandments down
to these two.
If this
sounds confusing, it’s really not. The
‘greatest’ commandment we encounter today, from Jesus, points out that all of
God’s commandments are about love. As
the gospels present Jesus’ unique message, “love” is the final interpretation of what the commandments mean
and how they should be implemented
into our lives. No matter how you count them, it’s love that
counts most of all. It’s all about love.
LAW IS NEVER ALL
In today’s
text we have the well-known gospel story, told by both Matthew and Mark, where
a Scribe (Mark) or Lawyer (Matthew) who was an expert in the Jewish Torah (or
Law). Whereas in Mark, it appears that
the Lawyer is asking a sincere question (Mk. 12:34), Matthew names this a trick
to ‘test’ (NRSV), ‘tempt’ (KJV), or maybe even to trap Jesus into giving a
wrong answer (22:35). In the same way
Jesus has just silenced the Pharisees about the question concerning
Resurrection (Mt. 22:23-33), now Jesus silences this Scribe concerning the
Law. This follows Matthew’s own agenda
to assert Jesus as the one who is greater than Moses, who has come as the ‘preeminent’
interpreter of the Law.
The Greatness of the Law When the Scribe asked Jesus, “Rabbi, which is the
great commandment in the law?’ (v. 36), Jesus gave an answer the Lawyer did
not expect. Jesus does not simply give one law, but Jesus
gave two laws that made one single point. When you love God and you love your neighbor only
then can you understand the whole point of the law. The whole Law is now reduced to one single
act: Love.
Without a
doubt, Jesus believed in the greatness of the law. Jesus quoted the Psalms often, and he had to
have known those great lines from Psalm 19, saying; “The Law of the LORD is
perfect…The Decrees of the LORD are sure….The precepts of the LORD are
right…The commandment of the LORD is clear….(Ps. 19:7-8). But taking his cue from Deuteronomy, what
was clear to Jesus was that the Law was about “love”: “You shall love the
LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might” (Deut. 6:5). Deuteronomy is
the ‘second’ interpretation of the Law and it is an interpretation that has ‘love’
written all over it (Deut. 6:5; 7: 9-13; 10: 12-19; 11: 1; 13:3; 30:6). The point of Deuteronomy was not to correct
or rewrite the Law, but it was to put the whole law into better focus because
already, many had forgotten what the law is really all about.
But the Law Can't Be All
It is
important that God’s people know that the Law is about love, about a covenant relationship,
and about having a loving community.
This is important because even the Law can’t do it all or mean
everything all by itself. As again,
going deeper into what the Psalmist wrote, “The Law of the LORD is perfect”
because it “revives the soul”.
“The decrees of the LORD are sure” because they “make the
simple wise”. “The precepts
of the LORD of the LORD are right” because they “cause the heart to
rejoice.” And finally, “The
commandment of the LORD is clear” because “it enlightens the eyes.” What is this reviving, wisdom, rejoicing, and
enlightening all about? It is all about
something the law can only point to, but it not something the Law can do.
When you get
to the New Testament, the apostle Paul made it clear what the Law can and
cannot do. Paul, a professional Pharisee
and promoter of the Law came to realize that the Law has its limits. “The Law is holy, and the commandments
are holy, just and good” Paul wrote (Rm. 7:12), but he also wrote that “the
commandment which promised him life proved to bring death” (Rm. 7:
10). The problem in the Law was not the
Law itself, but the problem was what the Law, even God’s law cannot do. The Law can reveal sin, but the Law cannot
deal with sin, especially the kind of sin that stays hidden deep down in the
human heart (Rm. 7: 7-9).
The only hope
true salvation, as Paul saw it, is a different kind of “law” that God has released
into the world, which Paul called the “Law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus” (Rm. 8:2). This is the kind
of Law that has ‘no condemnation’ (Rm. 8:1) that ‘sets you free’
(Rm. 8:2), and that ‘sets your mind on ‘life and peace’ (Rm. 8:6). Do you know what kind of “law of the Spirit”
doesn’t condemn, sets your free, and focuses your mind on ‘life’ and ‘peace’? “The only thing that counts,” Paul
told the Galatians, “is faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). “The greatest of these is love”, he
told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:13). He
told the Philippians that they are to ‘be of the same mind, having the same
love…that was in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2:2-5). “Above all,” Paul told those at
Colossae; “clothe yourselves with
love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of
Christ rule in your hearts…. (Col. 3:14).
The long list
of Paul’s discovery of love over law could
go on, which is quite remarkable, since Paul was once trained as a
legalist. But perhaps the final word
from Paul should be how Paul instructed young Timothy to “hold to the
standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2Tim. 1:13). The ‘sound teaching,’ which was
undoubtedly the main teaching of Paul, was not about greatness of the ‘law,’
but it is about our human need for ‘grace’---the grace of Jesus Christ,
that is, which was, and still is, the kind of grace that can only be built upon
the foundation of “the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom.
8.2), flowing from this ‘the God of love’ (2 Cor. 13:11) who has
revealed himself fully in the ‘love of Christ’ (Eph. 3:19).
The only
thing left to say about Paul’s discovery of the priority of love over law is to
repeat what the preacher King Duncan once said. In a sermon he remembered a moment in the
“All in the Family” TV series, where Archie Bunker is arguing with “the
Meathead”, his son-in-law’, who was a professed agnostic. The son-in-law asks, “Archie, if there is a God, why is there so
much suffering in the world?” After a
long, awkward silence, Archie finally yells, “EEEDITH, would you get in here
and help me? I’m having to defend God
all by myself.”
Archie was
wrong to think that he needed to defend God.
While there are always have been, and always will be questions we don’t
have answers to in his life, there is
one answer that always works: Love. While none of us can answer ‘why’ people
suffer, we all know that God’s response
to our pain is love---and that is the only response that really matters or
makes sense. It is this love that comes
into our human sin and pain, to bring healing and hope, that the message of
Jesus is all about.
“It is
impossible to improve on the teachings of Jesus” King Duncan goes on to say. And this is,
I say, is right at the heart of what Paul realizes too, not by theory,
but in practice. When, as a legalistic,
murderer of God’s true people, Jesus appeared to Saul on the Damascus Road as
his judge on the. But Jesus did not stop
there, but went on forgive Saul and to call him to mission in Jesus’ name as
Paul, who now discovered, in that moment, that there is no way that you can ever improve
on the love and grace of God that revealed to him in Jesus Christ. Christ’s love will not answer every question,
but it does answer the great question.
“Why” will only be answered by the reality of divine and human love.
THE LAW IS ABOUT LOVE
Since, the
Law can’t do or be everything, to be worth anything at all, it must point to
something greater. This is why the
whole law, and the greatest law, as Jesus explains, must point to love, or it
means nothing. Because, as Paul enlarged
on Jesus’ teaching, “If you don’t have love, you don’t have anything worth having, haven’t said anything worth saying, nor have you ever ‘done anything worth doing’ (My paraphrasing of 1 Cor. 13: 1-3),
the law must be all about love. Isn’t
this how Jesus got the idea from Deuteronomy? When Moses was going over the Law again, for
the very last time before his death, he must have realized, that without ‘love’
the law does not, will not, and cannot work—at least, it won’t work as it was intended
to work. The law can’t be perfect, can’t
be sure, can’t grant wisdom, and can’t even be right, unless it points us to
the greatest law of all---the law of love—which
is the law ‘observed with the whole’ heart (Psa. 37:31; 119:34). It is the law of love that all the reviving,
wisdom, rejoicing, and enlightening, is supposed to be about.
But it is not
just enough to say that the Law, even the Ten Commandments is all about “love”. In clarifying what that the ‘greatest’ law
is about love, Jesus is very specific, just as the Ten Commandments are very
specific. Here, in our text, Jesus heads
in two directions to clarify what the great law is about: the great law is about how to ‘love’ God; and
the great law is about how to ‘love’ our neighbor.
Loving God is what the first 4 commandments
are about---Having no other gods, making no idol or image, no misuse of God’s name, and honoring the
Sabbath, are laws that all have to do with ‘loving God with your whole heart,
soul, and mind.
Loving Neighbor is what the last six commandments are
about---honoring parents, no murder, no adultery, not stealing, no lying, and taking
control over lustful desires is how you express love to those around you.
In both of
these ‘directions’ the main message is all about love. Love is the common denominator that is not just an idea, a feeling, or a wish,
but love is doing what love will do: act responsibly out of an obligation that
comes straight from the heart. “You
shall love the LORD with all your HEART…. (Deut 6:5). “You shall love your neighbor as YOURSELF….” (Matt. 22:39). The point is that you must love both God and
Neighbor, or there is no proof that love is “realized” or God’s law is ‘obeyed’
by you.
Isn’t this
exactly what John’s letter to his church was saying when he wrote, “Those
who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or 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. The commandment we have …. is this: those who love God must love their brothers
and sisters also.” (1 Jn. 4:20-5:1
NRS). The law, the commandment we have, John
says, is all about love, or it is about nothing.
You can’t say
you honor God’s law, unless you love—you love God, and you show you love God,
by loving your brother, your neighbor, or even the stranger you might meet on
the road.
Ron DelBene
recalls that when he was growing up his mother “had a real thing about
cleanliness.” Anyone have a mother like that? His mother was a nurse.
From an early
age Ron was taught that when he went through a push door to shove it open with
his fist. If the door had a handle he was to pull it open with his little
finger. If he did as his mother instructed, he would not get germs on his
hands. Ron never forgot his mother’s teaching. “At age forty-eight,” he says,
“I probably had the strongest little finger in America.”
One day Ron
was serving a hot meal at a soup kitchen. They were serving chili with two
pieces of buttered bread on that particular day. A man came through the line
who looked even more scruffy and broken than the others. Ron was overwhelmed by
his stench. “Like the pull of a magnet,” Ron recalls, “my gaze went to the dirt
and dried blood on his hands.” Before he realized what was happening, the man
clasped Ron’s hand in both of his. “Brother,” said the scruffy man, “I love
you. Thanks for being here.” “I’m glad you came,” Ron replied after swallowing
hard. Ron tried to smile as the man shuffled over to one of the tables with his
meal.
The next man
stepped up. As Ron handed him a bowl of chili, a little of the chili spilled on
Ron’s hand. Without thinking he licked it off. Then it hit him. That was the
hand the other man had just clasped! Ron momentarily froze, repelled to think
that he had licked something that smelly, dirty man had just touched. It was a
moment of revelation for Ron.
“The light of
awareness changed my vision and my heart warmed with new understanding,” Ron
says. “No longer was Jesus only the handsome man I had pictured in my mind and
seen in paintings,” he continued. “Now he had a scarred, stubbled face and
fingers stained yellow; he was dirty, he smelled bad, and he wore cast-off
clothes. I had just served him chili and bread.” (As quoted by King
Duncan, in a sermon, “Surprised by Love”, from DelBene, from the Heart
(Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1991), pp. 32-33).
There’s a
reason we are to prove our love for God by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
When we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and love by loving our
neighbors, this is when we experience the presence of the risen Christ in the
life of the other, who may most often be ‘the least of these’ (Matthew
25:40). The law is about loving God through loving ‘them’.
LOVE IS ALL THE LAW IS ABOUT
The final
point is not just that the law is about
love, but that love is what the law
is all about. This may sound as if
I’m saying the same thing in different ways, but there is a difference. To say that the law is about love sounds as
if law still has priority in all things.
But to say that “love is what the
law is all about” means love has the final priority. Let me put it this way, when you love, when
you act out of love, and when you are loving toward another as toward God, this
is what it means to be a fully redeemed, restored, and complete and perfect,
human being.
We must make
‘love’ our priority, the priority of our faith too, why? Even in the 10 commandments, we learn that love is what the law is about. Let me conclude with three simple points that
reveal love in God’s law.
God’s Laws are about relationships not
rules. When Moses gave the Ten
Commandments, God was not setting rules for the sake of rules, but God was
laying down the law for the sake of maintaining a saving and sanctifying ‘relationship’
with the living God.
God Laws are about having community not
control. Also, God’s law are not about
forcing people into God’s control, but there were intended to create space so
that a community based upon trust and faithfulness could happen.
Finally, God’s Laws are about being in covenant
not being contentious. The reason the law was given was
not to give rules for the whole human race, but the reason the law was given
was so about promise---God making a promise to be with his people, and the
people making and keeping their promise to God.
At the center of everything God commands is the promise---the promise of
God and the promise of God’s people.
Perhaps the
biggest and too often ‘unanswered’ question about the 10 commandments is why
are they stated in the negative. If they
are meant to be so positive for us—about having a relationship with the true
God and about creating a space for real community to happen between people,
then why are all of them, except one, stated in the negative, rather than in
the positive? Why does God thunder “Thou Shalt Not….”
over and over, instead of giving us more
positive, affirming, statements or commands,
like “Thou Shalt be Honest, Thou
Shalt be Contended”, or “Thou shalt
be Pro-Life”, or “Thou Shalt Respect
God, or Thou shall Love only God,
and so on. Why do these commandments, sound
so little like love, but make it sound as if God is already on our case about
something, making demands rather than creating the boundary of a loving relationship
between us and him?
Besides, when
we say our wedding vows of love, we don’t say, “I’ll not commit adultery, or I’ll not covet my neighbor’s wife, or I’ll
not hate my in-laws if you don’t hate mine. In a wedding ceremony, we make our sacred
covenant by being more positive, saying, “I take you to be my wedding
husband/wife…. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for
worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in heath, to love and to
cherish, till death do us part.
According to God’s holy law; this is my solemn vow.” In our
most sacred wedding vows, we sound much more positive in our speech to each other
than how God speaks to us through these 10 Commandments. How can we say, along with Jesus, that as
they are, mostly stated this very negative fashion, that as the commandments
are really, truly, honestly, fully, and completely about love? How can Jesus say this? How can Jesus say that all the law is really
about love?
The reason God stated the
commandments in this negative form must be for the same reason a parent has
teach a child to understand ‘no’ before they can understand ‘yes’.
Of course, hearing a ‘yes’ is better than always hearing a ‘no’, but as
a parent, you have to start somewhere. If your child is getting ready to walk out in
front of a car, step on a poisonous snake, or take hold something that will
hurt them, the first words out your mouth,
if you really love your child, will be “Don’t…Stop…No!”. This is the very first sign of your love for
your child. Likewise the Ten
Commandments are the first ‘signs’ or ‘words’ of God’s love for us. They are the first, but not the last. They very first sign that God wants us to
live and God wants to live with us. Love will always understand ‘no’, before it can fully understand ‘yes’.
What Jesus
shows us, however, is that when we live in obedience to God’s commands, love
never stays with ‘no’. This is why the
10 commandments end up being transformed in the Sermon on the Mount. After we, as children of God, come to
understand what ‘no’ means, we are on the right path understanding what God’s greater
‘yes’ is all about. The first step from
‘no’ to ‘yes’ is when you come to realize God is love and God loves you. This
same God who says ‘no’ is also the God who said “yes” to you, before the day
you were born. This ‘yes’ was the love
that the law was always, and will always be about. Amen.
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