Through Our Hands Your Love Impart

Text: Matthew 22:34-46
Date: The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost 10/23/05

  For the fifth week in a row we have been hearing the details of the beginning of Holy Week after Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem and his words with those who were trying to trap him and find something with which to charge him so that they might eliminate him. This has been quite a blessing since when we celebrate Holy Week there isn't time to consider all the details of what took place on that final Monday and Tuesday before our Lord's crucifixion. We have seen how the chief priests and elders of the temple, the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Herodians were working hard to entrap Jesus in his words. In each instance, however, our Lord spoke the truth faithfully and even continued to reach out to his enemies in the faint hopes that they might finally repent and believe. He got them to speak their own condemnation with their own mouths in the parables of the two sons (Matthew 21:28-32) and the wicked tenants (Matthew 21:33-43). Then, in the parable of the marriage feast (Matthew 22:1-14) he was warning them of their need for repentance. Last Sunday we heard about how they tried to trap him with the issue of paying taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-21). Finally, today, we hear the last test regarding “the greatest Commandment” after which Matthew tells us, “from that day no one dared ask him any more questions” [Matthew 22:45 (ESV)].

  Martin Luther wrote, “If you would interpret (the Scriptures) well and confidently, set Christ before you, for he is the man to whom it all applies, every bit of it” (LW 35:247). So do we see in our text the playing out of Psalm 2 that begins, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed” [Psalm 2:1-2 (ESV)], for Matthew writes that the Pharisees “gathered together” to plot one last test. They pulled out the Bylaws, those 613 rules they had spun out of the Ten Commandments to regulate the religious life of the people. Then they sent one, a sort of Commission on Constitutional Matters, to ask Jesus, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Certainly, they thought, no matter which of the 613 bylaws Jesus might cite, he would inevitably leave something else out. When repentance and faith get buried in the bylaws and legalism, all sorts of evil results.

  Up until now Jesus did not answer their nefarious questions directly but with parables and words that revealed their evil intent. This last one, however, he answers directly and immediately. The Pharisees hid behind the Law (the bylaws) thinking that that's the way religion works—salvation by means of keeping God's Law. And that's the way the fallen, sinful nature in all of us thinks. “I will gain God's favor and maybe even salvation and heaven if I try to be ‘good enough' or at least not real bad.” But as long as you play the “works-righteous” game you will never enter the Kingdom of God. For the works-righteous game is all about YOU, isn't it? And that's the real temptation in preaching this text, too, applying the Law of Love toward God and neighbor only to how you ought to love God and ought to love your neighbor, placing the burden of the Law on you and your actions, making Pharisees and hypocrites of us all.

  The parking lots of the reformed community church and the Roman Catholic church that I pass on my way home from here every Sunday seem filled. Does this reflect their theology of the necessity of works? If going to church is either required (Rome) or is a demonstration of your sanctity (reformed) then you better be in church every Sunday! Thank God that “we know better,” that is, that “going to church” doesn't save you. Unfortunately, many seem bent on proving that by darkening the doors of the sanctuary as few times as possible—which results in the opposite problem, namely, despising preaching and God's Word. I feel very jealous for God and embarrassed for those who, for some reason, treat attendance to worship as if it is a somehow “optional” thing or unimportant. When “church” or “worship” is all about you or me, our eyes are blinded our ears are stopped to seeing and hearing the saving Gospel. I'm reminded of the lady that complained to the pastor, “the liturgy doesn't say what I mean,” to which the pastor responded, “Madam, you must learn to mean what the liturgy says.” When worship is all about the love of Christ and love for Christ, however, then is the repentant sinner drawn by faith to the worship of God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

  Jesus answered the test immediately, almost automatically with the words of what served as almost a “creed” of every pious Jew, the words of Deuteronomy 6:5, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” [Deut. 6:4-5 (ESV)]. And when Jesus said, “this is the great and first commandment,” he meant that literally as referring to the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” For, what does this mean? “We should fear, love and trust in God above all things.” All the other commandments flow from this.

  “And a second is like it.” Leviticus 19:18, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “On these two commandments depend”—literally, “hang”—“all the Law and the Prophets.” An accurate estimation of the Law of God and of God Himself discovers the heart of God's Law, which is love. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Love is the fulfilling of the law” [Romans 13:10 (ESV)]; and, “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” [1 Cor. 13:13 (ESV)]. And when he lists the nine fruits of the Spirit, guess what's first? Love (Gal. 5:22)! John, the Apostle of love, wrote in so many ways, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love,” and, “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” [1 John 4:8, 20 (ESV)].

  Love is the first word and the last word. It is the first word and the last word when you talk about God. “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son.” Only Jesus, the Son of God, loved the Father and the neighbor perfectly, and that in our stead, as our substitute. That's what we confess when we say in the creed, “who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven…and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.” Christ was and is “for us.” When the world views the bloody body of Jesus on the cross all it sees is horror and, like the first crowds who had assembled for the spectacle of the crucifixion, “when they saw what had taken place, (they) returned home beating their breasts” [Luke 23:48 (ESV)]. The repentant and faith-filled sinner, however, sees there nothing less or other than the great love of God in Christ, “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” [2 Tim. 1:10 (ESV)] through the forgiveness of our sins.

  Now, the New Command is the same as the old command: love God and love one another. The significant difference, however, what makes the old the new is that it is all wrapped up not in our own works but in Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen. When we talk about love of God and neighbor in the Christian life in our Lutheran Confessions, the Augsburg Confession puts it this way:

  “It is also taught that such faith should yield good fruit and good works and that a person must do such good works as God has commanded for God's sake but not place trust in them as if thereby to earn grace before God” [AC VI].

Love is the fruit of the tree planted in Christ, not the requirement for the planting. And so is it that the fruit of love is produced only as we remain connected and abide in the love of Christ.

  Love is the first word and it is the last word.

  Oh, one more thing. Again, it seems that Jesus cannot just leave them hanging. So he adds one more invitation pointing out how Psalm 110 points to him as David's son and David's Lord. If you really would be a true and faithful Jew, you must receive the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. He came not to abolish the Law (or the bylaws!) but to fulfill it “for us men and for our salvation,” including even those who would now leave him hanging on the cross.

___________________
Rev. Allen D. Lunneberg

Contacts:

deblocascio.stmark@sbcglobal.net

Pastor: Rev. Allen D. Lunneberg
7979 Commerce Rd.      (1/4 mile east of Union Lake Rd.)
West Bloomfield, MI 48324
Phone: 248.363.0741
Fax: 248.363.4755