26 October 2008

Matthew 22:34-46

In the Hebrew scriptures, what we’ve come to commonly call the Old Testament, there are many, many laws, over 600 I’ve heard, though I haven’t counted them all myself. We don’t hear about most of them; they don’t often come up in our lectionary readings and few of us sit down to read through them. And I’m not convinced that’s not really a bad thing. I’m not going to try to convince you, for instance, to go home and read Leviticus, as I did recommend you do with Philippians a few weeks ago. These were laws given to the Israelites that ordered their society. Some of them we twenty-first century North Americans can make sense of; some we can’t. But that’s why we have Biblical scholars to help us along when we need them.

Of course, and unfortunately, some notable laws get dragged out when it’s convenient to some people to do so, such as the thirteenth verse of the twentieth chapter of Leviticus. This one is certainly getting plenty of play at the moment, I’m sure. It’s the one that says: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. (NRSV) In the past few weeks, I’m rather certain that this one has been quoted in churches around our state as good Christians are told how to vote, I mean of course urged to vote, on Proposition 8. [Note to non-California readers: Proposition 8 is the ballot initiative on which we shall be voting in less than two weeks which would take away the right of same-sex couples to marry.] Now, if you’re expecting me to launch into a defense of a liberal understanding of Leviticus 20:13 and the Holiness Code of the Israelites, it’s not going to happen today. But (and this is a blatant advertisement in the middle of my sermon) do be sure to attend the screening of the film “For the Bible Tells Me So” next Sunday, 2 November at four p.m. which we are hosting with Community UCC of San Carlos, CA in the sanctuary . It goes through the scriptures that are often used to justify prejudice and discrimination against lesbian and gay people and gives good answers about how we might read them in a different light.

There are many laws that called the Hebrew people to holiness. A few weeks ago, in our lectionary readings, we read the Decalogue: those 10 laws from which all the others sprang, which we know better as the ten commandments. Among them are laws about who can offer a food offering in the temple: no one who has a blemish, any physical condition could make one impure, even a broken foot or hand, can do so. There are laws about how to plow the fields and what kind of cloth one can wear. Laws about how to treat foreigners and sojourners. Laws that cover the highs and the lows, the grand and the mundane. And the Jewish faith, through the centuries we call b.c., kept these laws, writing them down; committing them to the written word.

And Jesus, our Jesus, was a good Jew. Though under Roman rule at this point in history, after being under various other conquering empires over the years, the rules purportedly given to Moses, the same great Moses whose death we heard of in the Deuteronomy passage today, carried on and were known by these Jews among whom Jesus taught and lived some 2,000 years ago. And Jesus knew them. As a teacher, a rabbi, he would have known them well and thoroughly.

So it’s not surprising that this is the tack that the Pharisees, those keepers of the faith, the ones who guarded the law zealously in their day, would use to try to trip him up with the question that we heard posed to him in today’s gospel passage. They had been after him with various questions before this and always Jesus confounded them with his knowledge and radical understanding.

So, out of all those laws, those rules, those regulations, the Pharisees wanted to know which single, solitary one did Jesus think was most important. And they sent their biggest guns to get him; someone who was clearly well-versed in the law and knew it in and out.

Jesus gave them his answer and then went on to give them the next one in line. And they were both about love: love God; love your neighbor. And, Jesus added, every other law in the scriptures hangs from them like clothes hang from a clothesline. And like a clothesline, those clothes won’t stay up without the support that a clothesline gives. All the laws need those two basic laws in order to stand.

And that’s the genius of Jesus. He pegs all the laws on love. Now, we’re not talking about what so often we think of as love here. Jesus was not referring to some warm feeling, a gushy emotion that is represented these days by lace hearts, cupids and chocolates. (Don’t get me wrong though—there’s absolutely nothing wrong with chocolates!)

No, Jesus’ love was all about commitment, which is why he pegged all those other laws to these: You have to be committed, to God and to your neighbor, in order to be faithful to those laws. Commitment, love, is needed to follow everything that God demands of us.


And that brings us to the twin emphases that we’re trying to remember in our worship today: the reformation and ministry. [Note to readers: This Sunday is Reformation Sunday when Protestants remember our roots. In the Disciples of Christ, our congregation's denomination, October is "Ministerial Appreciation Month" and this is the last Sunday of that. Instead of the congregation just appreciating their clergyperson (me), there will be a time later in worship in which we recognize and celebrate the ministries of everybody.] For the early reformers, those guys on the front of our bulletin this week, calling the church back to what they believed God called it to be was an act of love. The commitment required to stand up to a powerful institution, in this case the church, that had gone awry and astray was tremendous; commitment that could only be described and understood as love. It was a love and commitment that took Jan Hus, the Czech reformer who predated Martin Luther, to the stake to be burned as a heretic. It was a love and commitment that pounded Luther’s nails into his 95 theses on that castle church door in Wittenberg that challenged the status quo then and forever. It was a love and commitment that each person pictured, including our own Disciples of Christ founders Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, and many others not pictured, to look at the church of their day and confess “we have gone off course and we need to be set right; let’s try something new, relying on God.” And love, in the truly, deeply religious sense of that word, is what impels any good person of faith of any age including ours to look seriously and critically at what we do in the name of God. And sometimes, that very same love moves us to action and voicing our critiques and seeking justice in the name of God.

And that is what ministers do; that is what we all do. For indeed, in the then new belief that Luther put forth and Campbell and Stone among others deeply affirmed, we are a “priesthood of all believers.” That is, we are all ministers. Each of us, sitting here today, is indeed a minister. Don’t try to hide and don’t attempt denying it. It’s not just me; I’m not the only minister in this place. It’s not just those of us who have found themselves in the midst of some special worship service during which hands have been laid and charges have been made who are ministers. It doesn’t take that. It just takes baptism; it just takes listening to God; it just takes love: love of God and love of neighbor.

Which brings us back to Jesus. Jesus silenced his critics in this interchange from Matthew that we heard this morning; they didn’t come after him again, we’re told. They stopped trying to trap and discredit him with their questions. We do know though that they didn’t stop there; they did come after him and, thinking they had won, got him put to death. But love won out in the end, didn’t it? God’s love for us, God’s commitment to us God’s creation, shines through and calls us to mirror that very same love, that very same commitment, to God and to our neighbor.

Thomas Merton, the great 20th century brother and mystic had some thoughts about love that I’d like to end with. He said:

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. If, therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy. To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. (A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, ed.).