The Last Word
October 23, 2011
Matthew 22:34-40
For the past several Sundays we’ve been following the lectionary cycle of readings through the latter part of the gospel of Matthew. While we haven’t dwelled on it – or, really, even mentioned it – the stories we’ve read this month all come from Matthew’s account of Holy Week.
I haven’t raised that until now because doing so felt, to me, like making this a bit of a “word out of season.” I lift up this context now, still clearly out of season in terms of the liturgical calendar, primarily to underscore the stakes.
Jesus has been engaged in a running argument with the religious authorities over such questions as the source of Jesus’ teaching authority, whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes to Rome, and who gets to marry whom in resurrection life. In each case, Jesus has resisted being pinned down to an easily dismissible – and arrestable – response.
Finally the authorities pose what turns out to be their last question: “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Like all of the rest of the questions, this is a trick and a trap, though it doesn’t seem so to our 21st-century Christian eyes or ears. But one of the reigning Jewish legal theories of Jesus’ day held that all of the laws – all 600-some of them – were of equal weight and importance. To lift one above the rest was impertinent, at the least, and blasphemous at the worst.
After all, who was Jesus to say which law mattered most? He was not in the learned class of the Pharisees, and he was certainly not qualified to speak decisively on God’s law – to, in effect, speak for God on which law mattered most to God.
And yet, that is precisely what he sets out to do.
What’s the most important law? Jesus offers the last word; the word to end the debating; the word on which to hang everything that has been at stake from the very beginning for Jesus.
The word is love.
You shall love the Lord your God with … with everything that you have, and, at the same time, you shall love your neighbor.
On this, Jesus says, hangs all of the law and the prophets. That phrase is crucial in the text. It echoes the phrase that inaugurates Jesus’ ministry in Matthew. At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, back in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus utters its parallel – “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
Now, as his teaching draws to a close, he gives the final word, the word that fulfills the law and the prophets: love God and love neighbor.
Simple enough, except that Jesus has spent his entire teaching ministry deepening our ideas about love and complicating our ideas of “neighbor.” By this point in the story it’s clear that, as Douglas John Hall puts it, “really to love others is far more demanding than just ‘doing good deeds’ or ‘being nice.’ For most of us, to be honest, it means that we have to stop loving ourselves so much, putting ourselves first; and that is a transformation neither easily nor quickly achieved.”
By this point, moreover, it’s clear that Jesus not only includes pretty much everyone in the definition of neighbor but also that he puts clear priority on the neighbor who is poor, who is vulnerable, who is powerless, who has been cast out and looked down upon. What’s more, he has also included enemies within the circle of neighborliness. In other words, “neighbor” includes a lot of folks who seem to ruin the neighborhood.
Thus, “love God and love neighbor,” means a bit more than piously affirming one’s position in the pew, one’s rank in the hierarchy of the temple, one’s standing in the sanctuary. Indeed, Jesus doesn’t seem the least bit interested in any of that. He seems a lot more interested in hanging out with folks in the streets.
In the streets, loving God and loving neighbors becomes a matter of life and death, and of grace and forgiveness.
In his book Choosing Against War, John Roth tells of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that many credit with averting the bloodbath that was widely expected in the aftermath of the collapse of apartheid.
Roth tells of an elderly woman whose son and husband had been murdered by white policemen, who had burned the bodies and celebrated around the flames. In 1994, the woman faced the leader, Mr. Van de Broek, in court. Roth writes:
Those involved had confessed their guilt, and the Commission turned to the woman for a final statement regarding her desire for an appropriate punishment.
“I want three things,” the woman said calmly. “I want Mr. Van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband’s body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
“Second, Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot to give. Twice a month, I would like him to come to the ghetto and spend the day with me so I can be a mother to him.
“Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him, too. And, I would like someone to come and lead me by the hand to where Mr. Van de Broek is so that I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real.”
I think that’s what Jesus would do. I think that’s what Jesus what have us do. I think that’s what it means to love God and love neighbor.
Of course, it’s incredibly complicated, and never easy. “Love God and love neighbor” may fit neatly on a sign, but it’s hardly a political program. If you raise it up – “love God and love neighbor” – then critics, the realists, will complain that you’re not offering any real solutions, that it’s not clear what you want. If, like Jesus – especially since he’d just turned over the moneychangers’ tables – you say it in the context of pressing for social changes, critics will insist that you’re just creating a public spectacle without offering a program or a plan to address people’s problems.
And, of course, the critics would be right.
Jesus does not offer a program or a plan. Instead, he articulates a core conviction by which all programs and plans are to be judged.
You have a plan to reduce the nation’ budget deficit? OK. Does it stand first on the side of the poor, who are my neighbors?
You have some detailed thoughts on national security? Fine. Do they reflect, truly and authentically, love for those whom we have called enemies, whom I now call my neighbors?
You have some proposals for financial reform? Great! Do they serve first the interests of the least of these, my neighbors, my sisters and brothers and only then trickle up?
You have a plan for feeding and housing the least of these? Fantastic! Does it reflect real love for them even with all of their messy and broken lives?
Love, Jesus insists, must be the true and final measure of all that we do. Love of God and love of neighbor.
In the end, Jesus suggests, it’s the same thing: to love neighbor – fully and authentically – is to love God; to love God – fully and authentically – is to love neighbor.
That’s the last word. Amen.
Matthew 22:34-40
For the past several Sundays we’ve been following the lectionary cycle of readings through the latter part of the gospel of Matthew. While we haven’t dwelled on it – or, really, even mentioned it – the stories we’ve read this month all come from Matthew’s account of Holy Week.
I haven’t raised that until now because doing so felt, to me, like making this a bit of a “word out of season.” I lift up this context now, still clearly out of season in terms of the liturgical calendar, primarily to underscore the stakes.
Jesus has been engaged in a running argument with the religious authorities over such questions as the source of Jesus’ teaching authority, whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes to Rome, and who gets to marry whom in resurrection life. In each case, Jesus has resisted being pinned down to an easily dismissible – and arrestable – response.
Finally the authorities pose what turns out to be their last question: “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Like all of the rest of the questions, this is a trick and a trap, though it doesn’t seem so to our 21st-century Christian eyes or ears. But one of the reigning Jewish legal theories of Jesus’ day held that all of the laws – all 600-some of them – were of equal weight and importance. To lift one above the rest was impertinent, at the least, and blasphemous at the worst.
After all, who was Jesus to say which law mattered most? He was not in the learned class of the Pharisees, and he was certainly not qualified to speak decisively on God’s law – to, in effect, speak for God on which law mattered most to God.
And yet, that is precisely what he sets out to do.
What’s the most important law? Jesus offers the last word; the word to end the debating; the word on which to hang everything that has been at stake from the very beginning for Jesus.
The word is love.
You shall love the Lord your God with … with everything that you have, and, at the same time, you shall love your neighbor.
On this, Jesus says, hangs all of the law and the prophets. That phrase is crucial in the text. It echoes the phrase that inaugurates Jesus’ ministry in Matthew. At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, back in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus utters its parallel – “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
Now, as his teaching draws to a close, he gives the final word, the word that fulfills the law and the prophets: love God and love neighbor.
Simple enough, except that Jesus has spent his entire teaching ministry deepening our ideas about love and complicating our ideas of “neighbor.” By this point in the story it’s clear that, as Douglas John Hall puts it, “really to love others is far more demanding than just ‘doing good deeds’ or ‘being nice.’ For most of us, to be honest, it means that we have to stop loving ourselves so much, putting ourselves first; and that is a transformation neither easily nor quickly achieved.”
By this point, moreover, it’s clear that Jesus not only includes pretty much everyone in the definition of neighbor but also that he puts clear priority on the neighbor who is poor, who is vulnerable, who is powerless, who has been cast out and looked down upon. What’s more, he has also included enemies within the circle of neighborliness. In other words, “neighbor” includes a lot of folks who seem to ruin the neighborhood.
Thus, “love God and love neighbor,” means a bit more than piously affirming one’s position in the pew, one’s rank in the hierarchy of the temple, one’s standing in the sanctuary. Indeed, Jesus doesn’t seem the least bit interested in any of that. He seems a lot more interested in hanging out with folks in the streets.
In the streets, loving God and loving neighbors becomes a matter of life and death, and of grace and forgiveness.
In his book Choosing Against War, John Roth tells of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that many credit with averting the bloodbath that was widely expected in the aftermath of the collapse of apartheid.
Roth tells of an elderly woman whose son and husband had been murdered by white policemen, who had burned the bodies and celebrated around the flames. In 1994, the woman faced the leader, Mr. Van de Broek, in court. Roth writes:
Those involved had confessed their guilt, and the Commission turned to the woman for a final statement regarding her desire for an appropriate punishment.
“I want three things,” the woman said calmly. “I want Mr. Van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband’s body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
“Second, Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot to give. Twice a month, I would like him to come to the ghetto and spend the day with me so I can be a mother to him.
“Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him, too. And, I would like someone to come and lead me by the hand to where Mr. Van de Broek is so that I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real.”
I think that’s what Jesus would do. I think that’s what Jesus what have us do. I think that’s what it means to love God and love neighbor.
Of course, it’s incredibly complicated, and never easy. “Love God and love neighbor” may fit neatly on a sign, but it’s hardly a political program. If you raise it up – “love God and love neighbor” – then critics, the realists, will complain that you’re not offering any real solutions, that it’s not clear what you want. If, like Jesus – especially since he’d just turned over the moneychangers’ tables – you say it in the context of pressing for social changes, critics will insist that you’re just creating a public spectacle without offering a program or a plan to address people’s problems.
And, of course, the critics would be right.
Jesus does not offer a program or a plan. Instead, he articulates a core conviction by which all programs and plans are to be judged.
You have a plan to reduce the nation’ budget deficit? OK. Does it stand first on the side of the poor, who are my neighbors?
You have some detailed thoughts on national security? Fine. Do they reflect, truly and authentically, love for those whom we have called enemies, whom I now call my neighbors?
You have some proposals for financial reform? Great! Do they serve first the interests of the least of these, my neighbors, my sisters and brothers and only then trickle up?
You have a plan for feeding and housing the least of these? Fantastic! Does it reflect real love for them even with all of their messy and broken lives?
Love, Jesus insists, must be the true and final measure of all that we do. Love of God and love of neighbor.
In the end, Jesus suggests, it’s the same thing: to love neighbor – fully and authentically – is to love God; to love God – fully and authentically – is to love neighbor.
That’s the last word. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:25 AM
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