Readings:
I was a
teacher for 27 years. For the first fifteen years of my teaching career, I
taught middle school English, reading, and world history. Now, usually when I
say that, people have one of two reactions, or a combination of them both—they
either draw back in horror, or they think I am a bit nuts, especially when I
tell them I LOVED those kids in all their adolescent angst and craziness. I
loved that so many of them were still wide open to the world, and I ached for
those who had already started to close themselves off from the world.
It could
get hard at time, though, especially when they would schlump over their desks
during a lesson and dramatically moan, “Will this be on the test??? Do we hafta
write this all doooooowwwwwwnnnn???” Real learning and growth is hard, and some
kids just wanted the study guide, something like Cliff’s notes, rather than to
have to learn the whole thing. And there’s real value in being able to
understand and articulate the underlying principles behind what we are learning,
as well as the specifics.
So we did
both. Ha ha ha ha.
Once, in a
discussion on early law codes, I had a student ask me how many laws there were
in the state of Missouri. There may be someone out there that knows the answer
to that, but it’s not me. So I did a little searching, and DID find a
spreadsheet with all the numerical charge codes used by the Missouri State
Highway Patrol. I thought, “How bad can this be?”
We quickly
found out. And just to make sure I was remembering it correctly, I went back
and looked this week. Friends, let me tell you, if you were to go and look, you
would find that there are, currently, 2,215 different codes used to differentiate
between 2,215 different offenses that the Highway Patrol might cite someone for
violating, and they include just about what you’d expect—different kinds of
theft, assault, murder and other really appalling crimes are all there. But
there’s more! These codes also include things such as “Parasailing violation
without observer between sunset and sunrise,” “altering lottery tickets,” and
even “administering unauthorized drugs to a horse.” There’s even a violation
code specifically about beer bongs being prohibited on or near certain rivers.
That’s a
LOT of laws. And that’s only the ones that the Highway Patrol here in Missouri
may need to enforce.
I don’t
know how anyone would ever know them all. I do know that I have a great deal of
respect for whoever made that spreadsheet.
Any time
people live together in community, they require expectations outlining their
common life together. When the group is small, there are probably only a few
laws that are needed. As the group gets larger and more diverse, however, what
usually happens is that the number and specificity of laws has to increase, as
well.
It was the
same thing in Jesus’s time. The Jews were known as being people of The Law,
going all the way back to Moses, the greatest prophet, who also was the supposed
author of the Torah. Ever since August 27, we have been hearing the story of
Moses. Today’s reading ends with Moses’s death, and thus the end of the Torah. Another
name for the Torah, of course, is “the Law.”
One of the
biggest accomplishments within the Torah was the enshrinement of what ended up
being 613 separate laws to govern how the people of Israel were to worship God
and live with each other. Now, 613 is easier to remember than 2,215—but not
much better. So the rabbis and the lawyers were always trying to find some way
of summarizing the laws so that, for everyday use, there would be some broad
general principles that COULD be easily remembered, especially for the common
folk who couldn’t sit around all day studying the law the way the rabbis and
lawyers did. Especially given that most people could not read or write.
The rabbis
argued about what was the minimum number of principles that provided the
foundation for those laws. And what was the greatest law of them all? This was
the question Jesus gets asked by a lawyer. Now, since Jesus is also someone who
has just spent several weeks defending his authority to act in ways that
sometimes seemed to violate some of those laws, it’s clear that this question
also contains a trap.
In other
words, just like my students throughout my career, the lawyer asks Jesus for
the Cliff’s Notes version of the commandments, and hopes Jesus’s answer will
make it easier for the people he sides with, the religious and secular
authorities of Israel, to prosecute Jesus for violating the law, which is what
THEY believe he has been doing.
There had been other attempts to make
summarize them even further. The prophet Micah had boiled down the law into
three things, which we actually just sang in the hymn before the gospel. Hymn
605 quoted Micah 6:8, which is one of MY favorite summaries because it is
written in action form:
“God has told you, O mortal, what is
good; and what does the Lord require of you?
But to do justice,
And to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God.”
So here in
Matthew’s gospel, we have this lawyer asking Jesus what the GREATEST
commandment is—and once again, Jesus shakes up the rules. He gives TWO answers.
First he cites a commandment every good Jew would know, because they recited in
two times a day at morning and at evening: “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind.” And then, without pausing for breath, he goes on: “Also, ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets.”
As Jesus repeatedly emphasizes throughout the Gospels, the point of the
Law was not to follow every literal word and comma, but to understand that the
Law was, at its base, about relationships. The rules in the Ten Commandments
had two kinds of orientations: the first four were about one’s relationship
with God, and the last six were about one’s relationship with others.
Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that everything in the Law and Prophets is
meant to create a community in which justice and peace prevail—what we would
call the “kingdom of heaven” in Matthew’s terminology. The heart of God’s
kingdom on earth and in our hearts, which was considered to be the seat of a
person’s will, is LOVE. That is what makes Jesus’s message so compelling, then
and now. And Jesus was talking about a specific kind of love for which we lack
a perfect word. The word in Greek was agape,
which isn’t based on romance or fleeting desire but about an outward
orientation of compassion and enacting shalom—wholeness, contentment, wellness
as well as peace—for the sake of others.
The kind of love Jesus is talking about is the glue that holds
communities together. It seeks to overcome divisions. This kind of love, not
romantic love, is the subject of Paul’s famous celebration of love in 1
Corinthians 13, no matter how many times it gets recited at weddings—it is, as
Paul puts it, patient, kind, not boastful or arrogant or rude. It is flexible
and giving instead of insisting on getting its own way, and doesn’t take
pleasure in the pain, suffering, or bad behavior of others. It is an action not
an emotion—for it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and
endures all things. It is the stuff of eternity, for it never ends. It is the
love that we encounter in Jesus—and which Jesus calls us to embody in word and
truth. It’s an abundant love, draped in mercy and healing, that seeks to build
up.
It is not the kind of love you are helpless against—just the opposite.
That might be why it is sometimes in such short supply, even in our Christian
communities. The paucity of the English language in being able to articulate
this kind of love might be somewhat to blame—after all, the words we have or
don’t have shape how we think. Yet that’s not the whole story. Our entire
culture tries to convince us that love shouldn’t be hard work for us fallible
humans. The mere fact that Jesus has to keep telling us to do it tells us that
it IS. But that
doesn’t mean it isn’t also beautiful and wondrous—and we experience it when we
still our hearts and souls so that we can hear and know God’s presence in our
lives. It’s the kind of love that sings out, wonderingly, about amazing
grace—both given AND received. And we are blessed and called to be vessels of
that grace!
This love to which we are called is a lasting love grounded in joy and wonder—that helps us hear the
praise of God in a baby’s cry and a bird’s song as it takes to the sky. This
kind of love helps us see the beauty that surrounds us that God has placed in
each other and the world around us. This is a lasting love that does not wax
and wane with the seasons but endures all things BECAUSE it sees with eyes of
compassion and hope.
This love is a conscious decision we make each day as disciples of Jesus
in our mind as well as our hearts to love our neighbors, especially those who
are different from us—God’s image is embedded in everyone. It is the love we
practice as we draw together in the Eucharist every time we celebrate it
alongside saints and all the company of heaven. This love is as countercultural
as anything can be, because it doesn’t seek to sort people into winners and
losers but seeks the welfare and repair of the world. It calls us to give of
ourselves for the good of the community in a way that is deliberate and
open-hearted.
So where do we begin? One tangible way to step toward this kind of love
is by practicing justice for others—to stand alongside those who are often
denigrated or seen as “less than” in our society, and to treat them as we ourselves
would wish to be treated.
It can even be simpler than that. It’s the kind of love that calls us to
reconsider the kind of off-hand cutting remarks that are poisonous to
communities. It’s about giving people the benefit of the doubt and offering the
grace we would want to receive when people aren’t being their best selves. We
can acknowledge our own woundedness, and instead try to see the pain behind others’
actions, rather than lash out ourselves.
This love is about turning aside a harsh word with a word of compassion.
It’s about letting go of the resentments of the past that threaten to drag us
under and instead trying to find it within ourselves to break the cycle of
retribution that wounds us as much as others.
This is the kind of love we see Jesus exemplifying not just for our
benefit but as our template. And when we ask how much love we are called to
give, he answers us as in John 13:34: “A new command I give you: Love one
another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” And that’s a LOT
of love.
It’s the kind of love that calls us joyfully into the fields of the
Lord, where we dedicate our time, talent, and treasure to the building up of
the abundant harvest of this community, which is what true stewardship is
about.
We cannot build our happiness by inflicting pain or vengeance, or even
deliberate carelessness, on others. And the amazing thing that we learn by
embracing this path of discipleship is that in seeing through eyes of
compassion and mercy, we stop the cycle of injury and move toward wholeness and
contentment in a way that vengeance and pettiness will never accomplish.
The 20th century saint, humanitarian, social justice
activist, and devout Catholic Dorothy Day loved the poor and oppressed that she
worked alongside so much that she inspired countless others to follow in her
footsteps. She noted, “Love and ever more
love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other
enough, we will bear with each others’ faults and burdens. If we love enough,
we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others… It is love that will
make us want to do great things for each other.”
This is love that doesn’t end in gratitude, but instead starts with gratitude and
open-hearted generosity. It is love that can change the world one community at
a time. Starting with each one of us, seeking to do justice,
and to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with our God every moment.
For this Love the most powerful force in the world.
Love
that conquered death, rolled back the stone of oppression, injustice, and
violence to bring us to new life and new hope in our risen, living Savior.
Love
that knocks at the doors of our hearts and asks to be allowed in.
Love
that is based on real peace and abundance for all.
Love that calls us to act to heal our world in place of the violence
that continues to wound it.
Let’s step forward in
faith and hope, seeking to embody the only law that matters-- the Law of Love.
(Preached at Christ Church Cathedral, 8:00 and 10:00 am, on October 29, 2017.)
