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To God What Is God’s
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville, Pastor
Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
October 26, 2008
The Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22:34-46
If you had visited me at
my church in Washington you would have found a piece of paper taped to my office
door with these words on it: “The most important thing in the world is to love
the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy,
and to love others just as much as you love yourself. Nothing is more
important.” It was a quote attributed to Jesus, and it was there to remind me
each morning as I unlocked the door and stepped into my office, that no matter
what I might accomplish that day, nothing was more important than love.
I carried that truth with
me into our worship services, and if you had been there on a Sunday morning you
would have heard me say to the congregation, “Welcome to the First Baptist
Church of the City of Washington, DC, where we are trying to do the most
important thing in the world—love God and love others.” I didn’t have to ask if
it were true or not; I had it on good authority—in fact, the best authority of
all—Jesus himself. But I’ve got nearly 2,000 years of Christian tradition to
back me up. There was a time when Jesus’ authority was not so readily
acknowledged. In fact, this long confrontation between Jesus and the religious
leaders in Matthew’s Gospel begins in chapter 21 with a question about his
authority. Do you remember? Matthew says, “When he entered the temple, the
chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and
said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this
authority?’” Jesus answers with three scathing parables—the parable of the two
sons, the parable of the wicked tenants, and the parable of the wedding
feast—and then the religious leaders come back with three questions: Should we
pay taxes to Caesar? Is there resurrection from the dead? And this one: Which
is the greatest commandment?
Mark tells this story too,
but in his version, the scribe who asks the question is not trying to trip Jesus
up. He just wants to know: Which is the greatest commandment. I’ve always had
the feeling that he was someone who was trying hard to keep all those religious
rules, and was simply exhausted by the effort. Back in those days the scribes
and Pharisees had identified 613 commandments in the Law: 248 positive ones and
365 negative ones—a “thou shalt not” for every day of the year. And there was
this understanding among them that all the commandments were equal in God’s
eyes, that to say one was more important than any other was presumptuous.[i]
How could mere mortals know which commandment mattered most to God? But in
practice, they found it difficult if not impossible to keep all the
commandments, and if they couldn’t keep all of them, wouldn’t it help to know
which ones were the most important? That’s why the scribe in Mark’s Gospel
comes to Jesus. He’s worn out. He wants to know: “If I could only keep one
commandment, which one should it be?”
And that’s when Jesus
says, “The first and most important commandment is
this: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than
these.” And then the scribe in Mark’s Gospel said to him, “You are right,
Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no
other'; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and
with all the strength,' and ‘to love one's neighbor as oneself,'—this is much
more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And
when Jesus heard his response he marveled and said to him, “You are not far from
the kingdom of God” (Mk. 12:28-34).
But this scribe in
Matthew’s Gospel is a different character altogether. He doesn’t ask Jesus
which commandment is the most important because he really wants to know. He
asks the question as a way of trapping Jesus, of tripping him up. If he can get
him to say that one commandment is more important than all the others it will be
like getting him to say the other commandments really don’t matter all that
much, and that’s all it would take for the religious authorities to lock him up.
Matthew lets us in on the scribe’s motive by saying that one of the Pharisees,
an expert in the law, stood up to test Jesus. As I think I told you last
week the Greek word translated as “test”—peirazo—can also be translated
as “tempt,” but what I didn’t know until this week is that in Matthew’s Gospel
the only subject of this verb is the Pharisees and the Devil.[ii]
So, once again, as Matthew tells this story, it is not just someone asking for
help, but someone trying to test Jesus, to tempt him, to bring him down. As in
last week’s sermon we are witnessing here a cosmic conflict, with the forces of
good and evil drawn up against each other with all of Jerusalem holding its
breath, waiting to hear Jesus’ answer.
Looking at that sneaky
scribe Jesus said: “‘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.” Which
must have come as a surprise to the Pharisees because they had been hanging the
law and prophets from another commandment, the one that said, “You shall be
holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy.” For them the most important thing in
the world was not love, but holiness, and, as Marcus Borg writes, for them
“Holiness was understood to mean ‘separation from everything unclean.’ Holiness
was thus the same as purity, and the passage was thus understood as, ‘You
[Israel] shall be pure as God is pure.’”[iii]
This was the Pharisees’ motto, their “mission statement” if you will. In fact,
the name Pharisee, comes from parash, a Hebrew word that means “to
separate,” to come apart from an unclean world, to live a life of purity. My
favorite example is that very strict group known as the “black-and-blue
Pharisees,” nicknamed for their custom of closing their eyes whenever they
passed a woman on the street so as not to lust after her, often bumping into
doorposts and buildings as a result.
So, here is Jesus, telling
the Pharisees that the most important thing in the world is love when they had
thought all along that the most important thing in the world was purity. But
before they can protest he asks them a question: “What do you think of the
Messiah? Whose son is he?” They say: “David’s.” He says, “How is it then that
David, by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’”? And then he quotes from Psalm 110:
“‘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?” Whether or
not the Pharisees get it Matthew wants us to see that the one standing there in
front of them was not only the Son of David, but also and always the Son of
God. Even if they didn’t see it they must have felt, because from that time on
no one dared to ask him any more questions, but that other question is still
hanging in the air, even in our time: Which commandment is the greatest? And
sometimes, even though we know the answer, we get confused.
Historically, Baptists
have been known not only for their tireless efforts in missions and evangelism,
but also for their many puritanical prohibitions. To be a Baptist has meant not
only going into all the world and making disciples, but also making sure those
disciples didn’t drink, smoke, dance, cuss, chew, or play cards. Those things
were worldly vices, sure to drag a freshly baptized believer through the mud of
sin. So as we taught disciples to obey everything Jesus had commanded we added
some of our own commandments, just to keep them on the sinless side of the
street. And, in some cases, those things became the most important things. In
days gone by Baptists were regularly excommunicated from their churches for
breaking these small commandments. Were they ever kicked out for failing to
love?
But let’s be fair: along
with all those negative commands there were also some positive ones, and when I
think about that I think about that six-point record-keeping system. Do we
still use it? I remember seeing offering envelopes with six little boxes on the
back: one for attendance in Sunday school, one if you had brought your Bible,
one if you had read your Bible daily, one if you had studied your lesson, one if
you had brought an offering, and one if you “stayed for preaching.” So,
everybody here would get to check at least one box. Good for you! You stayed
for preaching! Maybe some of you brought your Bibles along with you, and
some—the most righteous among you—may have brought an offering, too. Do you see
how easy it is to do this? To start keeping track of our virtues and vices, to
start thinking that if we could just do these things, if we could stop drinking,
smoking, and cussing and instead start bringing our Bibles to Sunday school we
would fulfill all of God’s commandments?
But Jesus says the
greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to
love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Not only that, but he says that on
these two pegs hang all the law and the prophets, which means that all 613 of
those commandments the scribes and Pharisees had come up with, and the catalogue
of vices we Baptists have put together—even our six-point record keeping
system—hang from the law of love. That’s hard to imagine, but not impossible.
I can imagine how bringing your Bible to church, or studying your lesson, or
giving an offering could be a reflection of your love for God. I can imagine
how begging someone to give up smoking, or drinking, or gambling could be a
reflection of your love for them. I’m sure those scribes and Pharisees, when
they first started searching the Scriptures for all the commandments, only
wanted to be sure they did what was pleasing in God’s sight. The possibility is
there that we could see all these small things as ways of loving God and
neighbor. The problem is that these small things too easily become the main
thing, and we confuse checking the boxes with keeping the Law of Love.
Twenty two years ago today
I was ordained. It was on a Sunday evening, at the First Baptist Church of New
Castle, Kentucky. Those good people had just called me as their pastor and they
were brave to do so. I was 27 years old, and looked like I was 12. But they
asked me to kneel at the front of the church, and then they all came by, and one
by one laid their hands on me and whispered their blessings over me. Tears
leaked from my eyes. I didn’t feel worthy of their trust. I didn’t know how to
do that job. But I threw myself into it wholeheartedly and over the years I
learned. I learned that it takes a long time to prepare a good sermon. I
learned that a pastor spends a lot of time in hospitals and nursing homes. I
learned that it helps to have some administrative skills. But I couldn’t shake
the feeling that I hadn’t learned enough, that I still wasn’t a very good
pastor, and the thing that irked me was the mail. Every day these promotional
flyers would come in suggesting that if I really wanted to be a good pastor, if
I really wanted to serve my church, I would attend this seminar or buy this
curriculum; I would go to this workshop or follow this plan. If I had counted
up all the offers in a single year there would have easily been 613. But I
couldn’t do them all. Which ones should I do?
Maybe you struggle with
similar problems. In your work life, your church life, your home life, there
are always more things to do than you can get done. You have to make choices,
but how do you choose? That answer became a little more clear to me when I left
that church in New Castle. At the farewell luncheon people lined up to tell me
goodbye. They came by one at a time to shake my hand or give me a hug. I was
hoping someone would tell me how much they were going to miss my preaching. I
was hoping they would say something about my excellent leadership or creative
new programs. But do you know what they said? They said things like, “I’ll
never forget that time you came to see me in the hospital before I had surgery,”
or “I remember your call on the night my mother died,” or “I remember that time
you stopped by and just sat on my porch for an hour.” In other words, what
these people appreciated most was those times when it was evident to them that I
loved them, and that’s been true in every church since. I think it’s true for
God, too.
So, at my church in
Washington I taped a piece of paper to my office door with these words on it:
“The most important thing in the world is to love the Lord your God with all
your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy, and to love others just as
much as you love yourself. Nothing is more important.” The words of Jesus,
there to remind me each morning as I unlocked the door and stepped into my
office, that there are always going to be too many things to do, but the
greatest of these…is love.
—Jim
Somerville, © 2008
[i]
M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” The New Interpreter’s Bible
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 424.
[iii]
Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (HarperSanFrancisco,
1994), p. 50.
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