by Fr. Bill Garrison
Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He 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 greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by 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 David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
—Matthew 22:34-36
Jesus is going to be quoting two scripture passages about love today and so in that vein here is a quick story about Fred, a bachelor seeking a loving relationship.
Fred is 32 years old and he is still single.
One day a friend asked, “Why aren't you married? Can't you find a woman who will be a good wife?”
Fred replied, “Actually, I've found many women I wanted to marry, but when I bring them home to meet my parents, my mother doesn't like them.”
His friend thinks for a moment and says, “I've got the perfect solution, just find a girl who's just like your mother.”
A few months later they meet again and his friend says, “Did you find the perfect girl? Did your mother like her?”
With a frown on his face, Fred answers, “Yes, I found the perfect girl. She was just like my mother. You were right, my mother liked her very much.”
The friend said, “Then what's the problem?”
Fred replied, “My father doesn't like her.”
Before we begin thinking about today’s gospel, I want to make a point, an important point I think about Jesus. And it’s something I would like for us to keep in the back of our minds as we go along. It has to do with the attitude of those “in the know” as they encountered Jesus. Jesus was considered an unlearned, laboring class itinerant teacher from Galilee. His critics, on the other hand, were professionally trained, sophisticated people of high standing in Israel's spiritual/economic life. The Pharisees, and other groups such as the scribes and Sadducees, were studious practitioners of every detail of Torah law. They believed he was on their turf, and that he really had no right to be there. For him to challenge them, or attempt to teach them anything about scripture was unseemly and probably displeasing to them. He was from a lower societal class and had no right to do so. When they called him teacher it was probably said dripping with sarcasm.
And so, we begin. Jesus, as we heard just a few moments ago in the gospel, was asked the following question by the Pharisees. What is the most important commandment in Scripture? He answered the question with these very famous words, quoting passages from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”
His answer to the question is interesting. They asked for one commandment and he gave them two, a primary and most important commandment and another of almost equal importance. Then he commented that “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” All the Law of Moses, as taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, begins with these two commandments about love.
Then he committed what would have been an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the Pharisees. Jesus asked them a couple questions in return. The first was a set up question that armed a trap, and the second was a question they had no way of answering. Here is the set-up question. “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son, is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.”
And now the trap is sprung. He said to them, “How is it then that David by 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 David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?”
The gospel story says no one was able to give him an answer.
Jesus has made the Pharisees look bad, and he has done it in front of a crowd. Just for the record Jesus is referring to himself in the question, and we remember that Jesus is from the lineage of King David, and God has said at his baptism that Jesus was God’s son, of whom God was well pleased. The riddle is solved.
But please, today let’s not get hung up in the riddle. Let’s think about Jesus of Nazareth, a way station to nowhere, who is commonly known to the Pharisees as an itinerate preacher and former common laborer, a man several notches below them socially and scholastically.
And this common laborer has just made them look bad and demonstrated a knowledge of scripture that was more complete than their own. Put yourselves in their shoes. Their anger and self-doubt must have been all consuming. Just who is this guy? How did he come by this incredible knowledge and understanding?
Theologians too wrestled with this question for the next three hundred years or so. And they arrived at a doctrine that describes it. Here is that doctrine. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. No, I don’t know how this could be as it makes no mathematical sense, but it fits. It explains how Jesus could experience everything we experience and yet could handle his life in a way only God could.
I like what is said in the gospel of John. I will paraphrase. God tore the fabric of reality and put on a tent of human flesh, thus becoming one of us and also remaining the spirit of God. Jesus had the spirit of God within him and it radiated from his human form even as he lived a human life and died a human death.
And now my point. Hang on to your hats. The spirit of God is in you too, and within every human being on the planet. Every human being is God’s creation, and every human being has the spirit of God within them. It is not as present or as obvious as it was in Jesus but it is there, make no mistake about it. Think about that for a moment. Let the reality of God’s presence within you sink in. I will give you a moment or two.
How did Jesus become such a tremendous scholar when he was born within a lower-class family and made his living as a person who worked with his hands? It was because the presence of God was within him. It made all things possible for him.
You and I are not like Jesus Christ except in two meaningful ways. One is that we are human as he was. Second, we have the essence of God within us. We were created as holy creatures. He was fully divine. We are not fully divine. But we also must not minimize the gift of God that already exists within each of us.
It means that we too can be more than perhaps we or others think we can be. It means that when we are in relationship with others, we are invited to become aware of the holiness that resides within them and to realize their potential too. It’s a way to view ourselves and each other that can make a difference.
I am not in the habit of quoting people but today I will break my personal way of doing things. I quote Thomas Merton because he said it better than I can on this subject.
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
And this is our invitation. Yes, I tell you. You do shine like the sun. Look around you; so does everyone else. It’s a great time to remember this truth.
Photo by Ingo Joseph from Pexels