Mid-Lent 4
Mt
22:34-46
3/18/15
This past season was the first time
that college football used a playoff format to decide the national
champion. For years people complained
about the way the football national champion was crowned, and pointed to the
NCAA college basketball tournament as a much better model. That tournament
which begins tomorrow includes a large field of teams. The crowning of a national champion is
decided on the court by the players, not by media or coaches voting.
NCAA March Madness is a fun way to
decide who is number one. Each
conference gets to send their champion – their number one team – to play in the
NCAA tournament. However, because of the
manner in which this is decided, every year an injustice takes place, and this
year it impacted a school nearby.
Every conference has a regular
season in which the conference champion is decided. Yet that team is not the one that has
an automatic bid to the tournament.
Instead, when the regular season is done, the teams play a conference
tournament and the winner of the tournament gets the bid. The regular season determines the seeding in
the tournament, but nothing else.
And so every year it happens that
some team that has been dominant over the course of the entire conference
season – the best team in the conference – gets upset in the tournament. Since the small conferences will only get
their champion into the tournament, this means that one loss prevents the
number one team in the conference from playing in the NCAA tournament.
It happened this year to Murray
State. The team finished with a 27 and 5
record. They were the undefeated regular season Ohio Valley Conference
champion. In the conference tournament
championship game they played Belmont – a team that had easily beaten by
fifteen points during the regular season.
Yet in the championship game they suffered a heartbreaking upset by a
score of 88 to 87.
For my part, I think that is just
wrong. I despise the whole conference
tournament development. It’s all just
about making more money for the conferences. And since sports reflect culture, it’s just
another example of the lack of accountability in our world. So, it doesn’t matter how poorly you did over
course of the whole conference season.
You still have a shot to make the NCAA tournament if you can just get hot
and win a couple of games. In the end,
the regular seasons means nothing. That’s no way to decide which team is number
one.
In our text for tonight the
Pharisees ask Jesus about which commandment is number one – about which one is
the great commandment. They want to hear
his decision and we are told that they ask in order to test him. They hope that his process for deciding will
yield an answer that will open Jesus to accusation.
Our text tonight concludes the
running dispute that Jesus has with the Jewish religious leaders during Holy
Week. The different groups in Judaism –
the Sadducees and the Pharisees – each take their shot at Jesus. The Sadducees, who did not believe in the
resurrection of the body, had just asked Jesus a question about the
resurrection that was meant to stump him by making the belief seem silly. Jesus answered in a way that stopped them in
their tracks.
Our text says, “But when the
Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And
one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?’”
Now to be honest, this question
seems rather puzzling. It’s not entirely
clear why the Pharisee thought it was a test of Jesus. In Jesus’ authoritative teaching that we hear
in the Sermon on the Mount he had said repeatedly, “You have heard that it was
said, but I say to you….” He rejected
much of the interpretation of the Pharisees.
He had said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Perhaps because of the character of Jesus’
teaching, the Pharisee thought he might get a controversial answer that could
be used against Jesus.
If so, he was certainly disappointed
for Jesus replied: “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 first
commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Our Lord uses two statements from
the Old Testament to summarize the Ten Commandments – what we usually describe
as the first and second table of the Law.
He said that first, we are to love God with all that we are. And second, just like this, we are to love
our neighbor as ourselves. Then he
added, that ultimately, all of the law and the prophets in the Old Testament
comes down to this.
We don’t hear about a response from
the Pharisee. And what could he
say? How could one object to this? It sounds like it was one of the moments when
a person thinks he or she is being really clever, and then in the way things
turn out they just look foolish.
Jesus’ answer is simple: love God
with all that you are; love your neighbor as yourself. It’s really easy to understand. It’s also really hard to do. The reality is that you love yourself
more than anyone or anything. Martin
Luther described fallen man as “curved in on himself.” Our unholy trinity is “me, myself and
I.” Oh sure, God and my neighbor are
cool when there is something in it for me.
Then we are all for loving them.
But when we examine that word “love”
we find that its content has often been defined by the world. For the world,
“love” is a feeling. It’s a positive feeling
that I like. And if at some point I stop feeling good … well, then, the love is
gone.
That is not what Jesus means by
love. Instead, love is an action that
seeks the good of another; that puts another before oneself. Love puts God
first, and me second. Love puts my
neighbor first, and me second. Love does
this even when it doesn’t feel good - when in fact it involves service and
sacrifice.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus
said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have
not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
Here in our text he says about loving God and loving the neighbor, “On
these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Jesus Christ was in Jerusalem during
Holy Week in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets by loving God the Father
with all that he was, and by loving us more than himself. In the garden of Gethsemane he would pray, “My
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I
will, but as you will.” Jesus put the
Father’s will before himself. He put
your forgiveness and salvation before himself as he drank the cup of God’s
wrath against your sin. And then on the third day, God the Father raised him
from the dead in order to defeat death for you.
Because Jesus loved God and you more than himself, you now have
forgiveness and the assurance of eternal life as the baptized child of God.
This is the gift that Christ has
given to you. And now through his Spirit
Jesus prompts you to live as what he has made you to be. The old Adam - the fallen sinful nature –
will never allow you to do this perfectly.
But Christ enables you to begin to see life in these terms. He opens your eyes to see the choices in life
for what they really are – decisions about whether you are going to love God
with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself. And his Spirit makes it possible not only to
see things clearly, but also to make correct choices as you follow Jesus in the
way of service and sacrifice for others.
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