Good Question!
October 22, 2017
Rev. Stephanie Ryder
Matthew 22:34-46:
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with 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.”
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question:“What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.”He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’?If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?”No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
I drove to Windsor on Thursday, for a monthly meeting held there for a small group of pastors in our Presbytery. I passed the spot where the fire crossed the highway. I saw the burned hills, the scorched trees, the decimated neighborhoods. The smell of smoke was still strong as I passed. It was eerie to witness the indiscrimination of the fire’s path – how some buildings stood badly burned next to others untouched; how blackened areas of destruction bordered neighborhoods completely intact.
Today’s Psalmist, attributed to the voice of Moses, asks a question. “How long?” In fact, the entire psalm can be read as a question; the question of how to live life in light of the certainty of death and the fleeting nature of human existence. We wondered how long the fires would burn, how long they will continue to burn. Some wondered how long until they could return to their homes. Still some 8,500 others wonder how long it will take to rebuild. Rebuild homes, rebuild businesses, rebuild schools. How long?
One of the pastors in our group from Santa Rosa notified us that she wouldn’t be attending the meeting. Because her children were not yet back in school and she was dealing not just with having been evacuated, but working in crisis mode along with having no childcare and she had just returned to her home. How long?
The gospel passage today is also centered in a question. The religious leaders in Jerusalem are trying for the 3rd time to trap and ensnare Jesus to have him killed for heresy. He is causing too much trouble with all the healings and exorcisms and feedings and crowds following him. The first two attempts in questioning Jesus to trap him, about resurrection and paying taxes, were left unsuccessful because Jesus had outwitted the questions.
This time, a lawyer asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is greatest?” He is essentially asking Jesus for a ranking of the commandments. If one is greater than the next, then, perhaps, can some be disregarded? Are some commandments more important than others? There were 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s a good question, and sure to provide the essential trap they are looking for to have Jesus arrested.
Jesus answers by quoting from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, the most prominent prayer in the Hebrew tradition, the cornerstone of the Jewish faith, which begins, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One,” proclaiming the monotheistic God. Jesus quotes the second part of the verse, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.” (“That’s everything, folks,” Debbie told the Compassionate Kids on Wednesday.) Jesus then adds an addendum, a second is like it, and quotes a lesser known command from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus suggests, then, that they are not two commandments, but one unified commandment, like two sides of the same coin. They are equal. You cannot do one without the other – you cannot love God with all your heart, soul and mind without also loving your neighbor and loving yourself. There is no love of God without love of neighbor; love of neighbor IS love of God. And love of neighbor is tied directly to love of self.
Our protestant tradition cultivates this triadic practice of considering God, neighbor and self, by forming us spiritually in a grace-filled community of faith where we sing and pray and embody God’s love over and over and over again, practicing and reinforcing our values of loving God and neighbors as ourselves. Jesus proclaims that the center of his life, ministry and mission, and the center of the kingdom he has been sent to proclaim and build, is love.
Theologian Karl Barth says the essence of Christianity can be summed up in the children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me.” Perhaps the most important step in loving God and loving our neighbor is first recognizing how much God loves us. We are all, each and every one, the center of God’s love and attention. It is when we realize how much we are loved, that we can share that love with others, and give that love back to God.
In the recent book,The Great Spiritual Migration, author Brian McLaren discusses how love was always part of the Jewish religious tradition, but in Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s question, he makes love the most important part of the tradition, decentering rules, temples, sacrifice, and hierarchies, and re-centering on love. McLaren advocates that today, Christianity must no longer be defined by unchanging beliefs, but rather by the dynamic pursuit of love, by the primacy of compassion—by a way of life centered in love, as embodied by Jesus. We must shift, he says, from teaching correct beliefs to practicing the way of love as Jesus taught, so that our whole understanding and experience of the church can be transformed.
His “school of love” contains a 4-part curriculum that begins with loving neighbor, or Love 101. 1 John 4:20 says, “if you don’t love your neighbor whom you have seen, you can’t love God whom you have not seen. Only through loving neighbors, then, do we prepare our hearts to love God. The way to God runs through our neighbors, especially those who are vulnerable. Christian love embraces not just those closest to us, family and friends, but also the outsiders, outcasts, strangers and even the enemy, who are usually dehumanized. All people are brothers, sisters, neighbors.
When we love them as ourselves, this is Love 201. Many of us suffer from self-hatred, self-rejection, which can be healed when we learn to love ourselves for God’s sake, regarding ourselves with divine compassion. Just as you love another person, wanting to understand them and accept them as they grow and change; loving oneself involves a never-ending process of self-understanding and self-acceptance through life’s ups and downs.
Love for neighbor and love for self lead to love for the earth, which is McLaren’s 3rd course in his school of love. If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we want them and us to be able to breath, drink, and eat amidst a beautiful environment, and thus we must love and advocate for clean air, pure water, climate change, soil, fisheries, fields, farms and forests, conservation and ecology. Just as each work of art is precious to the artist, each bird, tree, fish, plant, river, mountain, wetland, ocean and ecosystem is precious to God the Creator, and should thus be precious to us.
People learning to love neighbor, self and earth will inherently learn to love God, because God will not be a doctrine or theory separate from what they already love. In love 401, people learn to recognize and love the familiar light they see radiant in everything they already love. They learn to inhabit God as the loving reality in which they “live and move and have their being.” Each experience of love is an experience of God. Loving God, who is experienced in love for neighbor, self, and creation,then, comes as naturally as breathing.
I’d like to highlight that love of self is not as natural as it may seem. One of the pastors at the meeting I attended this week said that many in his congregation were faced with survivor’s guilt. Their homes had been spared while others in neighboring communities were destroyed.
Our Presbytery is offering a retreat in November on Self-Compassion. One of the presenters, Rev. David Stoker of First Presbyterian Church in Napa, says that learning self-compassion has been life-changing for him: I am learning to give myself the same caring-support I would give a friend. I am learning to be mindful of what is occurring around me. I am learning to treat myself as I wish to treat others. I believe each of us needs to heal some destructive emotional patterns in our lives so that we can be healthier, happier and more effective in the places God has called us to serve. Loving ourselves, being kind and compassionate to ourselves, is loving God.
I was awestruck by the devastation of the fires as I drove up to Windsor, but it was the signs on the freeway overpasses that moved me to tears. “Thank you, Firefighters!” the banners proclaimed. “You are our heroes,” “Firefighters, we love you, (heart, heart, heart),” “Thank you emergency personnel and first responders,” “Sonoma Strong” the banners read as I drove through the fire-ravaged territory.
This display – this colorful celebration hanging in the sky amidst the ash and soot and blackness – this display of signs symbolized the greatest commandment asked of Jesus in the gospel passage today. It symbolized the hope that comes from despair. It symbolized the work of God – of rebuilding, of renewal, of resurrection, of reaching out, of revitalization, restoration, redemption, recovery. This is who God is, this is what God does, and this is the God we are to love.
Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus says.
This is not the end of the questioning in the gospel passage. There are still more questions. Jesus has answered theirs, and while he has the Pharisees attention, he asks them, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They immediately answer, David’s son. Jesus then references Scripture, a Psalm written by David where he sings, “The Lord said to my Lord…” Jesus questions why David would refer to his son as Lord, why David dared to expect someone greater than himself to whom he would submit?
For Jesus, the test of legitimacy is not one’s family line or genealogy, but the fruit of one’s faith. The true Son of David is the one who embodies the faith of David, not necessarily someone in the royal lineage. The core teaching of God, Jesus wants us to know, is not based on status or privilege, but in love.
The religious leaders came to trap Jesus with their questions, and instead, he leaves them stumped with his question. We are told that no one was able to give him an answer, and consequently, we read, they stopped asking Jesus any more questions from that time forward.
This I find unfortunate. Jesus loved questions. He often answered questions with a question. Questions engage. Questions keep us moving forward. Questions keep us seeking. How long? Which is the greatest commandment?
It is good that we remember the questions, and that we keep asking them. Of God, of ourselves, of one another. It is perhaps in the questions, in the awaiting of the answer, that God reveals to us God’s everlasting love. May we all experience today this love of God, that we may accept it, take it in, and offer it to others.
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