I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Accokeek, Maryland on Sunday, 29 October 2017, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, and based on the Holy Gospel for Proper 25 of Series A: St. Matthew 22: 34-46

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord,

Dear Friends in Christ,

This is the Sunday immediately before the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. Many of our Lutheran brothers and sisters are marking that event this morning rather than on the 31st. I will confess now that I am going to make a nod in that direction during this sermon even though we are not using lessons (or hymns?) that are selected for that day.

Our Holy Gospel for today is the appointed lesson for this 21st Sunday after Pentecost. In it, St. Matthew records an interaction — I hesitate to call it a conversation — between Jesus and some Pharisees. Perhaps we should start by reminding ourselves who the Pharisees were and what they represented.
The Pharisees were a sect of Judaism that tried to pay proper attention to every single bit of the Law of God, accepting all of the Old Testament and applying it to their current situation by way of the oral tradition, the interpretation of generations of rabbis. They practiced ritual prayer and fasting, tithing and keeping the Sabbath. They believed in the existence of angels and in the resurrection of the body. Their certainty that they were following God’s Law so well gave them a tendency toward pride and self-righteousness.

When these Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced their rivals the Sadducees they were happy. (The Sadducees were strict literalists of the Torah, which they held more highly than the Prophets or Writings; they also denied the existence of angels and of the resurrection.) Maybe the Pharisees thought Jesus would be on their side then, under the rubric ‘an enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ So they got together and approached Jesus with a test question. Their spokesman asked Jesus “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus answers simply and directly, quoting a verse they all knew by heart, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then He throws in a bonus answer that the second greatest commandment is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The first commandment is part of the Jewish morning and evening prayers from Deuteronomy 6, so it struck all kinds of chords with them. The second greatest commandment comes from the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, and is the last verse of this morning’s Old Testament lesson. The Pharisees would have know it, too. Good answers both. Gave them something to talk about later. But, of course, Jesus wasn’t done. He turned the tables and asked them a question about the Messiah’s relationship to King David of old. And that little interchange silenced the Pharisees, just as the Sadducees had been silenced.

So that’s an outline of what the text says. If you asked a lot of people what this text is about, many would probably say that it’s where Jesus commands us to love God and commands us to love our neighbors. This is where I’d like to interject the first footnote from the Protestant Reformation I warned you about earlier. One of the well-known catchphrases of the Reformation is that people are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone as revealed in Scripture alone. The last of those “alones” is where I want to focus for a minute. The Reformation wanted to bring the religious and spiritual spotlight back to the Bible, taking it away from the centuries of traditional interpretation and sometimes misinterpretation that had encrusted God’s Word. Let’s take just a moment to try to do that here.

Is this text really about Jesus commanding us to love God and our neighbor? A close reading doesn’t exactly reveal that. A close reading shows us that Jesus is answering the Pharisees when they asked Him what the greatest commandment is, which of the commandments already out there, given by the Lord God to His people centuries before, which of those commandments does Jesus think is the greatest? Yes, of course, Jesus is NOT telling us not to do these things, but we need to understand that Jesus is also NOT bringing us a new Law; He is not laying a new burden on our backs.

Another Reformation emphasis can, perhaps, help us here. It’s a tool we can use when looking at the Scriptures. This is the emphasis on Law and Gospel. The Reformers used this as a pair of eyeglasses, you could imagine, through which to look at verses of the Bible. They wanted to rightly divide the Word of Truth, and they divided it into Law or Gospel. This is how it works: every text of Scripture speaks to us about one of the other, about Law or Gospel, about threat or promise, about death or life, about punishment or forgiveness. And we can get into real trouble if we confuse them; if, for example, we take a passage that is Law and claim that it conveys promise or God’s forgiveness.

So if we look at this passage through Law-Gospel lenses, what do we see? A command, even a command to love, is still a Law. It carries the threat of punishment and condemnation because we know we cannot carry it out fully and completely. We’re sinners to our core and loving either God or our neighbors is not something we naturally do.

Loving God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind. Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Loving our God. Loving our neighbors. Loving God. Loving neighbors.

What happens when we don’t completely fulfill God’s Law, even the Law to love? How can we escape the punishment for breaking God’s Law? How do any of us get free of the threat of eternal separation from God, the threat of being thrown out into eternal darkness, because we haven’t loved God fully or even loved other people as much as we love ourselves?

Loving God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. Loving our neighbor as ourselves. How can we avoid the implicit penalty? OR, even better, is there any way that we can start to love God and love our neighbors?

Use the other lens. Use the Gospel lens. Look for the promise here. Scripture alone carries in it the promise of forgiveness for breaking God’s Law when we sin each and every day. We can’t know that precious forgiveness except that God reveals it to us in His Word. And the central message in the written Word is always the message about God’s living Word, His Son Jesus Christ. That message gives us the only way we can love God and love our neighbor. The central message of the Scriptures is the message of the cross. We can see that here, too.

Look back at the Gospel text. Verse 40 of Matthew chapter 22 gives us Jesus’s own summary statement about these commands to love. He says there that “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.” Interesting word there, “depend”; some translations have it as “hang.” So in Deuteronomy 21, when Moses writes “If a man guilty of capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” And then when Saint Paul gives us the application of that passage writing in Galatians 3, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’.” Their words “hang” are the same word used here by Jesus.

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these commandments to love. Hanging on a tree is to be put to death by crucifixion. The Law and the Prophets are crucified, put to death, by the law to love. The cross removes the threat of our annihilation for disobeying all that Law the Pharisees tried so very, very hard to keep. The cross of Christ is the focal point in space and time from which springs both forgiveness for when we don’t love God with our heart and soul and mind or love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. The cross of Christ also turns out to be the source of any power that forgiven people have to start loving God and neighbor. The strength, even the motivation or desire, to live a sanctified life of love grows out of the cross where Jesus willingly poured out His life for each of us. You and I live under the cross. And by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gives us we can start and re-start lives of love.

You might wonder just how that power transfer takes place. Permit me to bring in yet another Reformation emphasis. The Reformers emphasized what they called “the means of grace”. By this phrase they meant the Word of God and the Sacraments. It’s such a strong emphasis that in some corners of the Church the work of pastors and priests is called “Word and Sacrament ministry.” It’s understood that the proper work of God’s ministers is all somehow tied directly to proclaiming God’s Word and/or administering God’s Sacraments.

The Word and the Sacraments are therefore the means by which God’s grace — His love for us, love which we don’t in any way deserve, but which He so richly pours over us for the sake of Jesus — the means by which God’s grace freely comes to us. The Word of God, our Baptism, the Eucharist, these are the vehicles God uses to bring us His forgiveness. And with His forgiveness — when we are washed clean and fed for the journey — we become able to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind; we become free to love our neighbors as fully and more fully than they deserve.

The measurable goal of success in this is the simple one mentioned in the opening of today’s Old Testament lesson. It’s also unattainable in this life. We are aiming at perfection. We know, and God knows, that our sinful little selves can’t and won’t be holy on our own. So it should be an everlasting comfort that He has given us a way to escape the threat of punishment for falling short. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. And we are in a life-long struggle against our sinful natures, a struggle to claim the gift of the blood of the Lamb as our own covering.

I would pray that you take some of these theological tools with you today to help you in your life’s struggles. You probably already use them to some extent, but getting explicit about it can help us then make them reflexive and automatic. Powered by the Sacraments, equipped with God’s Word – the Word that you read and understand more clearly through Law-Gospel lenses – you will be able to see more opportunities to love people and to follow through on those opportunities. You will be more open to the Holy Spirit’s work in you, moving you to love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind. You will! Amen.

And the peace of God, that passes all human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

S.D.G.

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