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Those “religious authorities”…it seems the closer Jesus got to the cross the more they just started to swarm after him as if he’d bumped their hive. They were all after him - Pharisees, Sadducees, the Herodians, the Scribes, the priests, the elders of the people. They all came out to test him hoping he’d say something deserving of death. Why? Well, they are “religious authorities”. That’s what they do. In a day when almost all the people had “messiah-fever” and messiahs were a dime a dozen, it was the “religious authorities” who determined a false messiah? They alone knew the Law. They alone knew the traditions. They alone led devout lives…well, at least the Scribes and Pharisees believed that about themselves. They alone were the ones who could determine a false messiah. Yes, they were pretty good at spotting the false messiahs, but the true Messiah…well…hmm.
So, here’s this Jesus of Nazareth and his considerable following of misfits hanging around Jerusalem particularly the Temple. It’s a crowd that like consisted mostly of people whom Jesus had healed of diseases or set free from their demons. They weren’t armed like an army. Jesus had never taught violence or revolt. On the contrary, Jesus had made it quite clear he was coming to Jerusalem to be treated like a buffoon and to die and be raised and somehow this would give worth and life back to humanity which was wastefully dead due to its disease we call sin. They probably looked like a very enthusiastic sect following a profoundly compassionate and quite peaceful rabbi. The Romans wouldn’t have been concerned about him, yet the “religious authorities” were. You see, Jesus had a certain authority about him that threatened their privileged position. So, as “religious authorities” do when God threatens their position and privilege, they went looking for a way to get rid of the threat. They were going out to kill the prophet. Wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last.
Our passage from Matthew comes at the end of a long series of tests these “religious authorities” put to Jesus. Oddly, these tests were not really about anything crucial to Israelite faith. They were about peripheral issues that were hot topics in their day, topics used to define whose side you were on in the political spectrum actually. They tested him on divorce, on what constituted working on the Sabbath, on where he got his authority, on paying taxes to the emperor, and (this one’s pretty deep) on whose wife a woman would be at the resurrection if she had more than one husband in her lifetime. These are some very petty things to argue about yet we should take a lesson from them. Whenever you have Christians up in arms about the peripherals rather than really trying to learn and understand the essentials, what you have is indeed a bunch of “religious authorities” trying to force an agenda in the name of God.
Anyway, back to Matthew, here was this lawyer, a “religious authority” but not like the others. After hearing how well Jesus had shut down the others on the peripherals, he decided to get to the heart of the faith with a textbook question any rabbi, and any true Israelite for that matter, would have known the answer to: “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus’ answer was not as we would expect. We would expect the first of the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no gods before me.” Instead, Jesus proves himself quite apt at the scribal or rabbinical discipline of simplifying what is at the heart of the commandments. Jesus goes with the creedal statement known as the Shema. “Shema, Yitzrael! Adonai elohenu! Adonai eckhod! Ahavtah et Yahweh elohecha b'cal l'bavkha v'b'cal naphsh'ekkah v'b'cal m'odehkah!” “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord alone! You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with your whole personhood, and with all your mind.”
I think Jesus went with the Shema, the creed, rather than the first of the Ten Commandments so that he could point out the fundamental flaw of the “religious authorities.” They had beliefs and obedience but they had no love – no love of God and no love for neighbour. They were apparently just in it for the show, the power and prestige of social position. The problem with the Ten Commandments is that they tell us what not to do and leave what we’re supposed to do out in the open. The Shema, on the other hand, tells us right off the bat to love the Lord our God with all our heart, personhood, and mind. The Ten Commandments assume that the Israelites would be thankful and love God because he delivered them from slavery. Unfortunately, 900 years later when slavery in Egypt and the Exodus were long behind them and forgotten, the “religious authorities” had lost their love for the Lord. Their idea of faithfulness was simply obeying rules, and particularly obeying them for others to see.
The word for love here in the Greek is our old friend agape; love that is unconditional, love that is shown in selfless action, love that continues to love even when it is not returned, even when it is resented. It is a love learned by coming to know God’s unconditional love. The love he showed us by bringing salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the love of God the Father for God the Son poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit so that we are also included in their relationship as God’s own beloved children. In response to knowing and encountering this love we love the Lord first by loving him with all our hearts. In Jesus’ culture the heart was the seat of our motives not just our emotions. We are to discipline ourselves to make love for the Lord the motive of everything we do be. It may also be helpful here for us to think of love as being faithfulness or loyalty compelled by thankfulness.
We are to love the Lord with the totality of our personhood. We are probably used to hearing the world soul here. I try to get away from that word because one of the problematic beliefs that has crept into the Christian faith from Greek Paganism is that we have an immortal soul, a whiff of energy that blips off into eternity when we die. The Bible portrays the soul as the entirety of a person’s identity which includes the body. We are to love the Lord by letting his love shape our identities as persons to be in conformity with the image of Christ Jesus. The question here is, “Does who I am at heart and in action look like Jesus? Do I reflect the nature of Jesus to the people in my life?” As persons are we kind, patient, forgiving, refraining from judging, generous. Do we give hope? Are we prayerful? Do we listen?
We are to love the Lord with our minds. The mind can be understood in two ways. One, it is the part of us that thinks and learns. It’s that part of us behind our eyeballs and between our ears that filters what comes out our mouths. We’ve a responsibility to learn and grow in the faith. We think the things of God rather than the things of man. With the mind we pray, study the Bible, read theology, and teach the faith to our children. With the mid we choose, we strive to replace worry with prayer. With the mind we tell ourselves and others to hope in the love of God. The mind can also mean what we’re minded on in life? What do we orient ourselves towards? What do we pursue in life? What are our goals? To love the Lord with our mindedness is simply to say “Did I this day, in this moment, this situation do my best to please God?” Is pleasing God our life’s motive.
Jesus adds a second commandment to the Shema. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is a tricky one. We cannot love our neighbors rightly if we do not love ourselves rightly. So also, if we love ourselves wrongly, we will not love our neighbours as we should which happens to be the current problem we humans suffer from by nature. Healthy self-love begins with knowing the unconditional love of God and thus, we are back to needing to know God’s love so that we may gratefully return that love by loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, persons, minds.
Looking further in our reading, after pointing out the hypocrisy of the “religious authorities”, Jesus offers us a means of loving God and loving neighbour that pretty well covers the bases. He said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.” Appropriate love of God is humility. Appropriate self-love is humility. Paul wrote of what humility looks like in 1 Corinthians 13 when he wrote of what love looks like. He says, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:4-6). To serve one another humbly, rather than seeking our own gain is our way.
We’ve a hymn in our hymnal that sums this up pretty well. It’s Brother, Sister Let Me Serve You written by Richard Gillard. I’ll just read the lyrics:
1. Brother, sister, let me serve you; let me be as Christ to you; pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.
2. We are pilgrims on a journey, and companions on the road; we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.
3. I will hold the Christ-light for you in the nighttime of your fear; I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.
4. I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh, I'll laugh with you; I will share your joy and sorrow, till we've seen this journey through.
5. When we sing to God in heaven, we shall find such harmony, born of all we've known together of Christ's love and agony.
6. Brother, sister, let me serve you; let me be as Christ to you; pray that l may have the grace to let you be my servant too.
Amen.
