Who's Testing Whom?
Texts: Matthew 22:34-40 - Micah 6:1-8
It is the golden rule, the great commandment, that one thread that draws it all together. When asked “which of the commandments is the greatest,” Jesus replies with this now famous statement:
“‘You are to love the Lord your God with all of you heart, and all of your souls and all of your mind.’” This commandment is first and foremost. And the second is like it: ‘You are to love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hangs everything in the Law and the Prophets.”
This was part of the normal debates that one could expect inside the religious establishments. The Law was such a central part of the Jewish faith. The act of discussing and debating the Law as it stood was seen and understood as an act of prayer and study. In Matthew, we have this dialogue between skilled debaters and Jesus, one of many such discussions. Matthew seems to have a thing for them…
But there’s more going on here than what we realize. Jesus is not being particularly original with his reply… When asked which the greatest commandment is, he simply repeats a creedal statement that has been around for centuries. It’s called the Shema… straight out of the book of Deuteronomy. What seems to be newer is this whole bit about loving one’s neighbour… but even that is not particularly revolutionary, because Jesus is even repeating back to his challengers words that would actually be quite familiar. They echoed those of a well respected teacher in their own ranks who had died some 20 years before. Rabbi Hillel had been asked the a similar question, and he replied in a very similar way…
As the story goes, a student once approached the wise Rabbi asking him to teach him the whole of the Law while they stood there on one foot. Hillel’s response was very brief:
“What you find hateful, do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn that!.”
--(Shabbat 31a, Babylonian Talmud)
The point here is that Jesus was not trying to be original and profound. He was reminding those people that he was debating with that much of what God expects of us is stuff we already know… and has been around for centuries. What is the greatest commandment? What does God expect of us? It’s really not that complicated! There is this constant struggle in the Biblical stories between the complexity of scripture, and its simplicity. It’s a double ring, that one can spend a lifetime probing the depths and debating the finer points of sacred writings, and yet at its core can be summed up in such a simple way:
Love God, Love your neighbour… everything else is commentary…
A few centuries earlier, Micah reminded us that God only requires of us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Again, a simple message… but we still love to debate it. We begin to wonder who’s testing whom?
For those of you who heard me preach at Sarah’s covenanting service in September, some of this is going to be very familiar… but the message is worth repeating.
Jesus reminds us “Love God, Love your neighbour…” –everything else hangs on this. Everything else is commentary. Don’t complicate things… keep it simple.
But we like to make things complicated, don’t we? A message may be simple, and we take it… add to it, speculate around it, write our own commentaries. Why just have one law, rule, or guideline when five hundred will do? In almost everything, we complicate matters far beyond what we should. As humans, we have a natural tendency to overdo it… even with good things.
When it comes to religion, we write the book on how to overdo it.
For instance, Jesus said “where two or three are gathered my name, I am there.” So what do we do? Build ‘em BIG! Massive worship spaces that can hold hundreds, if not thousands of people… throw in theatre seating while we’re at it! The gospel of Matthew says “go therefore and make disciples of all nations….” so we pile off to the latest Billy Graham mission. Psalm 100 says “make a joyful noise” so we pull together great choirs accompanied by massive pipe organs. We convince ourselves that bigger is better… even if it is a good thing… We overdo it…
Yet that isn’t where God calls us to be. We can build massive churches, we can erect huge monuments, we can gather thousands of people together… but when it comes down to it, what real difference does that make to our faith?
Micah asks the same questions… granted in a bit more melodramatic tone:
“With what shall I come before the God?
Will God be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousand rivers of oil?”
“Shall I hand over my first born, my own child, to make up for the sin of my soul?”
Is this what God has in mind? Bigger is better?
“Hardly,” says Micah, “It’s simple:”
God has shown you, O mortal, what is good…
You already know. You don’t need the cattle on a thousand hills to satisfy God. You don’t need the profits of our national banks to make God happy. Don’t complicate it. It’s as simple as this:
“And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
We don’t have to be lavish about our faith. It isn’t complicated. We don’t have to build huge monuments or be elaborate in any way… just do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
When we experience Jesus in the temple, he is saying the same thing. He is reminding the very people he is debating of their own tradition… he is reminding them of one of their own teachers. I don’t suppose they would have taken very kindly to being upstaged by this outsider who knew their own tradition better than they did. Love God; love your neighbour as yourself. Everything else is simply commentary. Don’t complicate it, don’t overdo it. Do Justice, love Kindness, Walk humbly with God… they say the same thing.
Leaning a bit more into Micah, I’d say that most of us would agree that doing Justice is a good thing. I understand that this congregation sees that social justice is a strong part of its ministry. That’s good… The emphasis that Micah reminds us is on the word “do.”
Do justice. It is best as an action, not as an ideal. Keep it simple. It applies to each of us… The word is “you” –singular. You there, in the third pew, you do justice. You, in the back row of the choir, you do justice. You who like that back pew over there… you do justice. It’s a call to each one of us to actively play a role in doing justice in our world. Start with honesty and integrity –do the justice you can do. From there, the “you” singular can work on the “we” plural in a society that has more than its share of injustice.
It is a short command, “Do justice,” but it is a long list to cover.
That’s why there’s that next part: love kindness. This is a whole lot more than simply giving the poor our table scraps. It’s funny, each English translation of the Bible puts a different word here. Sometimes it’s kindness, sometimes it’s mercy, sometimes compassion, sometimes forgiveness… It’s one of those words in Hebrew that’s untranslatable because it can mean many different things. It comes from a word for the kind of love that God shows for us. It’s what God does… You’ve got to love that, says the prophet. If you are seriously going to do justice in an unjust word, you are going to have to find a way to love kindness.
Yet the challenge for us is to find the balance between the two... without complicating it either. There are times when doing the just thing will not be the kind thing, and times when the kind thing is not the just thing. There are no hard and fast rules. As much as we would like to think, there is no black and white when it comes to this. It’s when we start drawing up rules and regulations that we begin to complicate things… when we slide into that tendency to overdo it. One rule quickly turns into hundreds… expanding and becoming unmanageable. What’s missing is that whole sense of trust, to hold things in balance. It is opening our eyes to God being there when we do justice, when we love kindness. After all, Jesus condenses all of the commandments of the Hebrew Bible into something simple. It wasn’t revolutionary at all, but it people needed to be reminded… Micah does the same thing… A reminder to not complicate things: Love God, love your neighbour… everything else hangs on these two… everything else is just commentary.
Now go and learn that!
It is the golden rule, the great commandment, that one thread that draws it all together. When asked “which of the commandments is the greatest,” Jesus replies with this now famous statement:
“‘You are to love the Lord your God with all of you heart, and all of your souls and all of your mind.’” This commandment is first and foremost. And the second is like it: ‘You are to love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hangs everything in the Law and the Prophets.”
This was part of the normal debates that one could expect inside the religious establishments. The Law was such a central part of the Jewish faith. The act of discussing and debating the Law as it stood was seen and understood as an act of prayer and study. In Matthew, we have this dialogue between skilled debaters and Jesus, one of many such discussions. Matthew seems to have a thing for them…
But there’s more going on here than what we realize. Jesus is not being particularly original with his reply… When asked which the greatest commandment is, he simply repeats a creedal statement that has been around for centuries. It’s called the Shema… straight out of the book of Deuteronomy. What seems to be newer is this whole bit about loving one’s neighbour… but even that is not particularly revolutionary, because Jesus is even repeating back to his challengers words that would actually be quite familiar. They echoed those of a well respected teacher in their own ranks who had died some 20 years before. Rabbi Hillel had been asked the a similar question, and he replied in a very similar way…
As the story goes, a student once approached the wise Rabbi asking him to teach him the whole of the Law while they stood there on one foot. Hillel’s response was very brief:
“What you find hateful, do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn that!.”
--(Shabbat 31a, Babylonian Talmud)
The point here is that Jesus was not trying to be original and profound. He was reminding those people that he was debating with that much of what God expects of us is stuff we already know… and has been around for centuries. What is the greatest commandment? What does God expect of us? It’s really not that complicated! There is this constant struggle in the Biblical stories between the complexity of scripture, and its simplicity. It’s a double ring, that one can spend a lifetime probing the depths and debating the finer points of sacred writings, and yet at its core can be summed up in such a simple way:
Love God, Love your neighbour… everything else is commentary…
A few centuries earlier, Micah reminded us that God only requires of us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Again, a simple message… but we still love to debate it. We begin to wonder who’s testing whom?
For those of you who heard me preach at Sarah’s covenanting service in September, some of this is going to be very familiar… but the message is worth repeating.
Jesus reminds us “Love God, Love your neighbour…” –everything else hangs on this. Everything else is commentary. Don’t complicate things… keep it simple.
But we like to make things complicated, don’t we? A message may be simple, and we take it… add to it, speculate around it, write our own commentaries. Why just have one law, rule, or guideline when five hundred will do? In almost everything, we complicate matters far beyond what we should. As humans, we have a natural tendency to overdo it… even with good things.
When it comes to religion, we write the book on how to overdo it.
For instance, Jesus said “where two or three are gathered my name, I am there.” So what do we do? Build ‘em BIG! Massive worship spaces that can hold hundreds, if not thousands of people… throw in theatre seating while we’re at it! The gospel of Matthew says “go therefore and make disciples of all nations….” so we pile off to the latest Billy Graham mission. Psalm 100 says “make a joyful noise” so we pull together great choirs accompanied by massive pipe organs. We convince ourselves that bigger is better… even if it is a good thing… We overdo it…
Yet that isn’t where God calls us to be. We can build massive churches, we can erect huge monuments, we can gather thousands of people together… but when it comes down to it, what real difference does that make to our faith?
Micah asks the same questions… granted in a bit more melodramatic tone:
“With what shall I come before the God?
Will God be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousand rivers of oil?”
“Shall I hand over my first born, my own child, to make up for the sin of my soul?”
Is this what God has in mind? Bigger is better?
“Hardly,” says Micah, “It’s simple:”
God has shown you, O mortal, what is good…
You already know. You don’t need the cattle on a thousand hills to satisfy God. You don’t need the profits of our national banks to make God happy. Don’t complicate it. It’s as simple as this:
“And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
We don’t have to be lavish about our faith. It isn’t complicated. We don’t have to build huge monuments or be elaborate in any way… just do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
When we experience Jesus in the temple, he is saying the same thing. He is reminding the very people he is debating of their own tradition… he is reminding them of one of their own teachers. I don’t suppose they would have taken very kindly to being upstaged by this outsider who knew their own tradition better than they did. Love God; love your neighbour as yourself. Everything else is simply commentary. Don’t complicate it, don’t overdo it. Do Justice, love Kindness, Walk humbly with God… they say the same thing.
Leaning a bit more into Micah, I’d say that most of us would agree that doing Justice is a good thing. I understand that this congregation sees that social justice is a strong part of its ministry. That’s good… The emphasis that Micah reminds us is on the word “do.”
Do justice. It is best as an action, not as an ideal. Keep it simple. It applies to each of us… The word is “you” –singular. You there, in the third pew, you do justice. You, in the back row of the choir, you do justice. You who like that back pew over there… you do justice. It’s a call to each one of us to actively play a role in doing justice in our world. Start with honesty and integrity –do the justice you can do. From there, the “you” singular can work on the “we” plural in a society that has more than its share of injustice.
It is a short command, “Do justice,” but it is a long list to cover.
That’s why there’s that next part: love kindness. This is a whole lot more than simply giving the poor our table scraps. It’s funny, each English translation of the Bible puts a different word here. Sometimes it’s kindness, sometimes it’s mercy, sometimes compassion, sometimes forgiveness… It’s one of those words in Hebrew that’s untranslatable because it can mean many different things. It comes from a word for the kind of love that God shows for us. It’s what God does… You’ve got to love that, says the prophet. If you are seriously going to do justice in an unjust word, you are going to have to find a way to love kindness.
Yet the challenge for us is to find the balance between the two... without complicating it either. There are times when doing the just thing will not be the kind thing, and times when the kind thing is not the just thing. There are no hard and fast rules. As much as we would like to think, there is no black and white when it comes to this. It’s when we start drawing up rules and regulations that we begin to complicate things… when we slide into that tendency to overdo it. One rule quickly turns into hundreds… expanding and becoming unmanageable. What’s missing is that whole sense of trust, to hold things in balance. It is opening our eyes to God being there when we do justice, when we love kindness. After all, Jesus condenses all of the commandments of the Hebrew Bible into something simple. It wasn’t revolutionary at all, but it people needed to be reminded… Micah does the same thing… A reminder to not complicate things: Love God, love your neighbour… everything else hangs on these two… everything else is just commentary.
Now go and learn that!
Amen.
Special thanks to Will Willimon's "Pulpit Resource" for some elements of this sermon.
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