Psalm 90:1-6,13-17
Matthew 22:34-46
We all have our own ideas of what heaven will be like – comfortable cloud-soft cushions, serenity, beautiful music, and a big party with all the generations gathered together and good stuff to eat. Grandma’s fried chicken – which was the best fried chicken in the world. Mama’s kolaches and butterhorns – her pastries were amazing. No doubt, heaven is all of that.
But I have to admit that my personal thoughts of heaven always go to this: finally, I can get answers to all my questions. That’s probably pretty dull, and ultimately not that important, right? It’s just that I want to know.
I always have. And I have often gone to someone older and wiser for the answers. When I was little it was my sister Annie, because she was a whole year older than me and she knew everything. When I got married it was Kim. And he had a little brother, so he knew the drill.
But still I have unanswered questions. There are so many big mysteries in the world, and sometimes it feels like I am on the verge of revelation, but then, no, it is beyond my reach.
So I am bugged by the last verse in our text today: nor from that day on did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
I think, why would you pass up that opportunity? You have Jesus right before you. He is available to you, ask anything! And you’re going to walk away from that? Walk away from truth? Enlightenment? The chance to grow?
But it turns out enlightenment was not their priority. These guys were more concerned with eliminating a threat. Jesus. They only wanted to defeat Jesus, crush him under their heel.
This comes at the end of a long series of questions and answers, with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Chief Priests, their disciples and their lawyers, all taking turns posing their questions to Jesus – questions not in search of wisdom, questions that are intended to entrap him, humiliate him, disempower him.
Jesus walked into the temple and they went after him. First, they demanded to know who gave him authority to teach. In response, he began to teach, telling them parables: each one delivering a pointed message to these religious authorities. They hear him. They know what he is doing – in public, no less – and now they want more than ever to silence him.
So they begin with their entrapment questions. Is it lawful, or is it not, to pay taxes to the emperor? If a woman has married seven times, who will be her husband in the resurrection? And now this one: What is the greatest law? And he answers: Love God and love your neighbor.
This actually wasn’t a hard question. Many sages both before and after Jesus gave a similar answer. The answer he gives, in fact, comes from the Hebrew scripture. In Deuteronomy 6:5, we read, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And in Leviticus 19:18, we read, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There you have it, chapter and verse.
On this one matter Jesus was probably in agreement with the religious leaders. Now, that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been plenty of arguments and debates about it among scholars. I imagine the Pharisees, in particular, who were a lot like me in this way, loved to sit around all day and dissect the questions, drilling deeper and deeper. In fact, Luke’s gospel tells us about another lawyer on another day who follows up with another question for Jesus: But who is my neighbor? A question that the world is still arguing about.
They didn’t go there on this occasion. As problematic as it is to define who is our neighbor, they let it lie for now. Maybe they are tired, or hungry. Perhaps they have decided they are done for the day, that they’ll return to this game of entrapment tomorrow.
And perhaps they would have – but Jesus is not quite finished. He has a question that he would like to ask them. “What do you think of the Messiah?”
A shift in the tone of the discussion; an odd change of topic. It’s not a matter that comes up every day, certainly, and it has little to do with the greatest commandment or any of the other topics they have been discussing. What do you think of the Messiah? It seems, at first, like another trap. What is the best, or safest, answer for them to give?
But then he gently steers them where he would like to go: Whose son is the Messiah? They know the answer is David. Once again, they can turn to the scriptures, which say that the Messiah will be a descendant of king David. This much is not disputed. But then –
Jesus quotes a Psalm. The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand.” If David wrote the Psalm, as they believed, then why would David call the Messiah “lord?” Why would David call his son, “lord?” It is a term of honor you would only use with one who is greater than you. Whoever calls their son lord?
Now, this was only a small thing. One little verse in one song – trivial. In another conversation on another day, these religious scholars might not have given it a thought. But now that they have been asked, they have no answer to give. Why, indeed – unless the Messiah was more than David’s descendant, more than a man?
They find themselves now in uncharted territory. This matter of the Messiah? The Savior? It is not about going back to the past glory days of Israel. It is not about territory and wealth and control. They don’t know it yet, but it is about a wholly different kind of glory yet to come.
The leaders of Israel may have had a view of salvation that was much too small. Their imaginations limited to only what they had seen before. Once there was a great king of Israel who expanded their territory…who made the people feel safe and strong and proud. The good old days. But how very sad if they only wanted a return to the good old days.
How sad for us and for the world if all we want is a return to the good old days. Which for us might mean when everyone got up and went to church on Sunday mornings because that was the customary, the expected thing to do for all upstanding citizens. Ah, for the good old days when people did what they were supposed to do! If conformity is all we want, then we have set our sights far too low.
There is a film called Women Talking, which is about a small, very strict religious community somewhere in rural America. In this community, the women have been kept illiterate in order to keep them under control. They have been abused and lied to. And one day when they suddenly have the chance to talk freely with one another, they begin to talk about forgiveness. Should they, once again, forgive their abusers?
Should they forgive, as they are expected to, as they are pressured to? Perhaps for the first time, they talk freely about this matter, and they return again and again to the question: Is forgiveness that is forced even worth anything? Is there anything sacred about forced religion?
We don’t believe so. But there are pockets of the church that do believe it. And these pockets seem to be growing larger, and louder. They are stepping into city council rooms and statehouses and demanding that the laws of the land enforce their personal religious beliefs.
If this is what speaks for Christianity in America, it does harm to the church. It makes the church far too petty; it makes Christianity far too small.
Our God is not a leader of a nation, or of a particular religious sect in a nation. Our God is the creator and ruler of the universe, far bigger than we can imagine. Our God is not a god of war, of incursion and acquisition. Our God, we know, is a God of love.
The greatest commandment, the greatest teaching, we hear Jesus say: Love the Lord with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. These two are alike. They speak to the completeness of love.
Holding these two things together, loving God and loving the neighbor, is actually a hard thing to do. Yet this is a form of faith and life Jesus calls us to. And being able to hold this together is so very important for the church, for it will prevent us from worshiping a distorted image of God.
Loving God and loving neighbor are two sides of a coin, the warp and the weft of a woven cloth. Jesus says not that they are number one and number two, but here is one and “here is a second that is like the first.” They must be held together. Jesus wants the Pharisees and Sadducees and Chief Priests and lawyers – and all the people – to see that.
Love God and love the world God made. Ukrainians and Russians. Israelis and Palestinians. Republicans and Democrats. Gay, straight, transgender.
Love God and love God’s world. The sinners and those who hate the sinners. Those who use the Bible to condemn others and those who hate the Bible for the pain they feel it has caused.
Can we see this? Can we do this?
Love God, because this is our foundation. Love God’s world, because this is who God made us to be.
This is the rule of love.
