Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew 22:34-46)
And one of the Pharisees, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”… Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ?”
Cu ram kɛl kä kɛ mi la gua̱n ŋuɔ̱tni jɛ thiec, ɣɔ̱nɛ jɛ i̱, "Ŋi̱i̱c, ɛ ŋut in mi̱th di̱tɔ rɛy ŋuɔ̱tni?"... Kä täämɛ min te ji̱ Pa-ri-thii guäth kɛl, cu Yecu kɛ thiec, wee i̱, "Carɛ ni ŋu kɛ kui̱ Mɛ-thia?"
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m not religious, but I lead a good life”? Or, “I don’t believe in God, but I think everyone needs to do good.”
What do you think about that sort of thing?
Everyone wants to be saved by works. You do x, y and z, you tick all the boxes, and St Peter will let you in the pearly gates. Is that how it works?
Jesus commands us to do good things. He wants us to do good deeds and show love and kindness to people. And everyone throughout the world of all different religions basically agree that that’s a good thing to do.
But here’s the question: Do those things save you?
Jesus says: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Now in our gospel reading today, we have a situation where some people come to ask Jesus a question.
We read: When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees didn’t like each other very much. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection and in angels and all sorts of things like that, but the Sadducees didn’t. They were a bit like the Labor and Liberal parties of Jesus’ time. They had major disagreements. And just before our gospel reading, the Sadducees put a question to Jesus about the resurrection to stump Jesus. But Jesus puts them in their place, and they are silenced. They are speechless.
So you could imagine that the Pharisees were a bit pleased with Jesus about this! Maybe they thought, “Good for you, Jesus! You tell those Pharisees what’s what!”
And so they gather together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question to test him.
You can see here that the Pharisees want to put something to Jesus to see whether or not he’s on their side. So what’s the question that they ask him?
He says: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
The Pharisees were very much experts in the Law. But they also didn’t distinguish between what was a law of God, and what was a tradition instituted by human beings. For example, in the Jewish Law, if a priest entered the temple, he had to wash himself in the basin in the temple. But the Pharisees made up a law to wash hands before every meal, and they made a law out of it. The Pharisees weren’t wrong in that they were fussy about the law. God wants us to be fussy, and he wants us to be faithful. But the problem for the Pharisees was that they didn’t distinguish between God’s law and human traditions.
And so, a Pharisee, a lawyer, asks Jesus: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And Jesus said to them, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and the first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This is a great answer! And do you notice that Jesus catches the lawyer out. The lawyer wants to know what the great commandment is. He wants to know what is the one and only most important commandment. But Jesus doesn’t tell him one. He tells him two!
The first commandment has to do with loving God. The second commandment has to do with loving your neighbour as yourself. And Jesus doesn’t want to break these two things up. If you are a person who loves God, then you also need to love your neighbour. If you a person who loves people, you should also love God. These two things go together.
St John says in his first letter: “If anyone says, “I love God”, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
The same problem happens today. There are people who want to love God, but don’t want to love their neighbour. There are people who want to love their neighbour, but don’t want to love God.
For example, there are many people who come to church who say, “I come to church, I pray”, and all that sort of thing, but then take no notice of the needs of others. There are all sorts of people who have all sorts of bodily and spiritual needs, and when they are put in your path, don’t walk by on the other side of the road. Do for them what they need. Sometimes in the church, people are very faithful to the teachings of Jesus, and to the doctrines of Christianity, which is a very good thing. But Jesus doesn’t just teach doctrines, he also teaches us how to live and what God expects of us. We need to take both of these things just as seriously. What Jesus teaches about faith and about living a holy life are just as much the Word of God as each other. St John also says in his first letter: “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
But then, there also the problem where people want to love their neighbour but don’t want to love God. There are many people who make it their principle in life, “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” And this is a great principle in life. Jesus said it! But it’s funny that so many people would make the words of Jesus their motto, but the fact that he rose from the dead means nothing to them!
But as I said before, everyone wants to be saved by works, and by doing good deeds. But the problem is, everyone knows that they don’t do it properly either. And anyone who thinks that they are perfect is an absolute fool! They know nothing about life, they have learnt nothing from their life experience, and they must think that they are some sort of God.
And Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
And Jesus says to our lawyer in the gospel reading today: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
And these things shows us what is good for the world and how people should live. But it also is a mirror to us, which we look into and see that we haven’t kept the commandments. We don’t keep the law perfectly. We don’t do what we should, we don’t say what we should, we don’t think what we should. And when we do do what is right, even that is tainted, and we do it for the wrong motives, or we do it to get something for ourselves, or something like this.
When you listen to these words of Jesus, and when you read the Ten Commandments, listen to them with joy and gladness, and strive to do what Jesus requires of you. But at the end of each day, each week, look back on them, and honestly look where you have failed. That’s the way we should use the law of God, the commandments of God – we should use them as mirror, to show us our sin so that we can approach God with honesty, not hiding from him, behind some fig-leaves.
St John says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he his faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
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Our gospel reading today doesn’t end with Jesus answer to the lawyer’s question. Jesus says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
But the story doesn’t finish there. He goes on. He’s not finished with the Pharisees yet.
We read: Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Christianity doesn’t finish with the words, do this, or do that. But it goes on to say, “What do you think about Jesus? Who is he? Is he just a man, or is he also true God?” Was he just a good teacher, or did he die for your sins?
This is so important – because the Law of God, our good works, don’t save us. Only Jesus, true man, born of the Virgin Mary, and true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, saves us. We know Jesus is a true man: He is the Son of David. At the beginning of the New Testament in Matthew chapter 1, you can read about Jesus’ genealogy and see that he was a member of King David’s family. He was a human being, who was born of a mother in history, and lived a life like all of us. But he wasn’t just a descendant of King David. He also created King David. Together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, created the world. And Jesus, who is also perfect true God, then died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead as a proof that all those who die believing in Christ will also rise from the dead with him.
So what do you think about Jesus? If he isn’t your God, your Lord, then he won’t forgive you, because you believe that he can’t forgive you. So you see in our reading, how Jesus treats the Pharisees in the same way. He preaches to them law and gospel. He tells them the law, but all it will do is show them their sin. It won’t save them. Then he teaches them about himself: because he is the only one who can save them. He is the only one who can die for them and rise again for them and forgive them with the authority of God the Father.
So trust in Jesus. He is the true son of David, but he is also David’s maker, he is also true God. He sets you free and opens up the doors of heaven for you. He baptises you, he gives you his body and blood, not because you have done everything that you should have done, but because he is your Saviour, and your Lord, and all his enemies are under his feet.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we have not loved you with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves. We have not done what your holy law requires of us. But Jesus Christ, your Son, had made the one, true, perfect sacrifice on the cross for us, he has fulfilled the law for us, and we come into your presence with him, and covered in his blood. Send us the Holy Spirit and strengthen us with everything we need in the coming week ahead, so that we always do what is right. Amen.
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