Trinity 18
Mt
22:34-46
9/30/18
It took me longer than it should
have, but eventually I learned the lesson that you should not attempt to
discuss anything of substance on social media.
Facebook, Twitter – it’s all the same.
The impersonal interaction that lacks clues of intonation and non-verbal
communication; the limitations inherent in writing a response; the fact that
multiple people are all trying to talk at the same time – all of these things
contribute to the outcome that not much good is going to come out of it.
In particular something I have
noticed is that in discussions on social media, you feel the need to have the
last word. Even when it is obvious that
you and another person simply have antithetical worldviews, it is hard to let
the last statement in a thread be that of the other person; the other side. I
guess this is because the conversation remains there for everyone to see, and
we don’t want to give the impression that we didn’t have a reply. We don’t want to give the impression that we
just gave up because the other side won.
In our Gospel lesson this morning we
see that the Lord Jesus does get the last word.
Recorded in the Gospel, this conversation now remains for everyone to
see. We find that Jesus silences the opponents by asking a question about the
Christ. It’s a question they can’t
answer. Today, we know the answer to his
question. Because we do, we have
forgiveness and peace. And we also have
the means by which we begin to do what our Lord speaks about at the beginning
of our text.
Our Gospel lesson this morning takes
place during Holy Week. During this
time, the Jewish religious leaders engaged in an ongoing series of attacks
against Jesus. The Pharisees and the
Sadducees may have been rivals, but in Jesus they found a common opponent. They
both challenged Jesus with questions that they hoped would harm his reputation
… or worse. In this chapter, the Pharisees had asked Jesus about whether it was
lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, but the Lord answered it in a way that left
everyone marveling. Next the Sadducees
had asked a question about the resurrection and marriage, but Jesus answered in
a way that astonished the crowed at his teaching.
We hear in our text: “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.” Jesus had shut down the Sadducees. So the
Pharisees decided to take another run at him.
The
Pharisee asked, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” In the semitic idiom, he was asking, “What is
the greatest commandment?” This was the
kind of question that Jewish scholars debated for centuries. And so now the
Pharisee addressed it to Jesus, apparently in hopes that he would provide an
answer that could be attacked.
Jesus said
to him, “‘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 made short work of the
question. It was easy. Love God with all that you are. That is the
great and first commandment – a summary of the first table of the law. And the second that follows from this is,
love your neighbor as yourself – a summary of the second table of the law. Jesus said that on these two commandments
hangs – or depends – all the Law and the Prophets. Everything in the Old Testament comes down to
these two things: Love God with all that you are. Love your neighbor as yourself.
It would be so simple … if it just
wasn’t so hard. Love God with all that
you are. But that means God must come
first, and I must come second. As fallen people, that’s not the way we want to
run things. If I fear, love and trust in
God above all things, I won’t get to do some of things I want to do. I won’t get to have some of the things I want
to have. I won’t have some of the time
for me, that I want to have.
And love your neighbor as
yourself? Are you kidding me?!? Do you
have any idea how much I love myself?
There can’t possibly be enough love to go around by the time I get done
with me. To love others in that way would mean sacrificing something for me, and
I’m not about to do that.
This is the sin that is present in
our life. There’s no denying it. There’s no excusing it. And if our text ended
there we wouldn’t have any Gospel. We would have only law. We would find only a
word of God that shows us what we are not. We would have a word of God that
only shows us our sin.
But that’s not where our Gospel
lesson ends. Instead we hear: “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.’”
It was, of course, a widely held
belief in Judaism that the Christ – the Messiah sent by God – would be a
descendant of King David. But Jesus then followed up by asking 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?”
Our Lord quoted Psalm 110:1, a psalm
attributed to King David and understood to be about the Messiah. Jesus explicitly says that David wrote the
Psalm under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And then he calls attention to
a puzzling feature. David, writing about his son – his descendant, the Messiah
– calls him “Lord.” In the ancient world
the father was always superior to his son. And the farther removed in time the
patriarch was, the more superior he was as well. So humanly speaking, there was no way David
should ever call his descendant “Lord.” What was going on here? The Pharisees
had no answer. We are told, “And no one
was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any
more questions.”
However, we know the answer to the
question. Jesus was David’s son – his descendant. He was a human being, born of Mary. Joseph, who was from the line of David, had
taken him to be his own son when he accepted the pregnant Mary as his wife.
Through Joseph’s action, Jesus was a son of David.
Yet Jesus was not conceived through the union of Joseph and Mary. Instead he was conceived through the work of
the Holy Spirit. He was born of the virgin Mary. And he was David’s Lord
because he is the Son of God. He is God – the second person of the
Trinity – now incarnate as true God and true man.
This individual – the son of David
and the Son of God; David’s son and David’s Lord – was unique. He was uniquely
suited to carry out a completely unique mission. And for this reason he was in
Jerusalem during Holy Week. He was there to give his life as a ransom for you
because you are a sinner. He was there
to redeem you from sin and the devil by dying on the cross. And having accomplished this on Good Friday,
he then defeated death by rising from the dead on the third day.
Jesus did this for you. His Spirit brought you to faith through his
word. He baptized you for the
forgiveness of sins. Now, God the Father
sees you not as what you are, but as what Jesus Christ has done for you. He sees you as forgiven – as a saint. In Christ, he does not see you as a person
who loves yourself more than him. He
does not see you as a person how loves yourself more than your neighbor. Rather
he sees you as a person who loves him with all that you are. He sees you as a person who loves his
neighbor as himself.
But this is not all that Christ has
done. Through his Spirit he has made you
a new creation. When Martin Luther
preached on this text he said: “Then he also promises to give you the Holy
Spirit, so that our hearts begin to love God and to keep his commandment. God is not gracious and merciful to sinners
so that they will not keep the Law nor so that they would remain as they were.
Rather, he gives and forgives both sin and death for Christ’s sake, who has
fulfilled the whole Law, in order in this way to make the heart fresh and
through the Holy Spirit to kindle and move the heart to begin again to love him
from day to day more and more.”
Until you die or Christ returns you
will always be plagued by sin. You will not perfectly love God with all that
you are. You will not perfectly love
your neighbor as yourself. Yet because
of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that means nothing before
God. Through the work of the Spirit you
are forgiven. You are a saint.
And instead of worrying about what
you can’t do perfectly, you are free to seek to do all you can. Christ’
Spirit provides the inclination, the motivation, the power to put God first in
ever greater ways. The Spirit provides
the inclination, the motivation, the power to love your neighbor as yourself.
So because of Jesus, trust in God’s
care and love, even though as far as you are concerned things are not going well. Make time for prayer and give thanks to God. Read
God’s Word during the week and come to Bible class on Sunday. Obey your parents
… the first time they tell you to do something.
Help you neighbor who needs assistance with something. Tell your spouse
about how much he or she means to you, and then show them by what you do in the
the living room and the bedroom. Speak in ways that help a person’s reputation.
Jesus Christ makes this possible
through his Spirit, just as he makes your forgiveness and salvation
certain. His death and resurrection is
the source for both. Your life will
never be perfect, but because of Christ God views you that way. Nourished and strengthened
by the Means of Grace, the faith that receives this status, is the faith that
seeks to love God with all that you are and to love your neighbor as yourself.
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