SPEAKER_00: Our gospel lesson today comes from the 22nd chapter of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to stand for the reading of the gospel as you are able.
SPEAKER_00: When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had left the Sadducees speechless, they met together.
SPEAKER_00: One of them, a legal expert, tested him.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?
SPEAKER_00: He replied, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first and greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_00: And the second is like it.
SPEAKER_00: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.
SPEAKER_00: All the law and the prophets depend on these two commands.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God for us, the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.
SPEAKER_00: For you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: I am a sports fan.
SPEAKER_00: I've always enjoyed watching games and following my favorite teams.
SPEAKER_00: My favorites are baseball and basketball, but I'll watch most anything.
SPEAKER_00: This afternoon I look forward to the birds chirping and the azaleas blooming as I zone out in front of the masters.
SPEAKER_00: There is no nap like a golf nap.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that technology has brought to sports this century is the instant replay that can be used by officials during the game.
SPEAKER_00: The intention of this is great, right?
SPEAKER_00: To make the game more fair, to catch what the naked eye did not see in real time.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the results of adding replay to a game are really cumbersome.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, when the officials huddle for five minutes during a close college basketball game, only to add 0.2 seconds to the clock.
SPEAKER_00: The momentum of the game is killed all because of technicalities.
SPEAKER_00: We humans are good at technicalities.
SPEAKER_00: We want to catch something, to check on it, and maybe find a way out of doing something that we really don't want to do.
SPEAKER_00: So the legal expert among the Pharisees comes to Jesus today hoping to catch Jesus on a technicality.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees have been trying to get Jesus to stumble into saying something wrong throughout his ministry, something they could convict him on.
SPEAKER_00: And in this story today, which occurs not long before his arrest, they send in their big guns.
SPEAKER_00: The legal expert or the lawyer is a professional theologian from among the Pharisees' ranks.
SPEAKER_00: This is the guy who knows the ins and outs of the Hebrew law.
SPEAKER_00: And he starts down a path with Jesus that would be familiar in a conversation among Jewish rabbis.
SPEAKER_00: What is the greatest commandment in the law?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this question sounds innocent.
SPEAKER_00: It may have also been set up as a trap for Jesus, because in Jewish teaching, all 613 laws of the Old Testament were essential.
SPEAKER_00: In many Jewish eyes, every single commandment was equal.
SPEAKER_00: So while the eagle the legal expert here is trying to use scripture, he is trying to use it to cause harm.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the great misuses of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: God's word to us in the Bible is meant to reveal who God is to us.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Timothy, Paul writes that every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.
SPEAKER_00: God's intention then for scripture for us is for teaching us and for holding a mirror up to us.
SPEAKER_00: The intent is not to wield it as a weapon, as a way to catch someone on a technicality.
SPEAKER_00: John Wesley, who started the Methodist movement, talked about the three simple rules of a Methodist.
SPEAKER_00: And he began with the same rule that begins the Hippocratic oath.
SPEAKER_00: Do no harm.
SPEAKER_00: One of John Wesley's famous early sermons is called The Character of a Methodist.
SPEAKER_00: When he is describing what a Methodist is, he preaches these words.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What then is the mark?
SPEAKER_00: Who is a Methodist according to your own account?
SPEAKER_00: I answer: a Methodist is one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him.
SPEAKER_00: One who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.
SPEAKER_00: God is the joy of his heart and the desire of his soul.
SPEAKER_00: So in describing what a Methodist is, John Wesley begins in the same place as Jesus when he answered the legal expert.
SPEAKER_00: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your being, and with all your mind.
SPEAKER_00: What is the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that it boils down to the prayer that Jews pray multiple times per day.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 6, 4 is where it is found, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: This is called the Shema.
SPEAKER_00: And the legal expert would have nodded right along when Jesus said it.
SPEAKER_00: Directly following the Shema, it describes how Israel is supposed to relate to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your strength.
SPEAKER_00: Now there are different translations of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes instead of being, we have all your soul.
SPEAKER_00: In some places we have love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: The details don't matter, those are technicalities.
SPEAKER_00: The point of it is this: love God with everything you are.
SPEAKER_00: I have always been someone who likes this idea of loving God with my mind.
SPEAKER_00: As someone who enjoys studying the Bible and reading theological books and getting into discussions with people, I find this quest to understand God as one that is fun.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is not saying to simply gather special knowledge about God.
SPEAKER_00: He is simply saying that loving God is the most important thing.
SPEAKER_00: I struggle sometimes with this idea of loving God because I don't always feel the emotions of love for God.
SPEAKER_00: But I'd encourage you today with the words of that great song by Boston.
SPEAKER_00: The love that we are called to have for God is about commitment and action.
SPEAKER_00: That song's in your head now.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes that comes with an emotional feeling.
SPEAKER_00: I love that feeling of the chills I get when I know that the Holy Spirit is near, but there are times when I don't feel that.
SPEAKER_00: Seasons when I don't.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean that I don't love God.
SPEAKER_00: The word that Jesus uses for love here closely ties to the Hebrew word chesed.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to try saying that.
SPEAKER_00: You got to get it in the back of your throat.
SPEAKER_00: Chesed, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it means faithful love, steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: In the Psalms, when it says, his faithful love, his steadfast love endures forever.
SPEAKER_00: It's that love that does not let you go, it's that love that always shows up.
SPEAKER_00: Paul begins his famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 with these words.
SPEAKER_00: If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels, but don't have love, I'm a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: It means that in Corinth there were people trying to prove just how holy they were by their ability to speak in tongues, in special languages.
SPEAKER_00: And it was making a ruckus in the worshiping community.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's issue is that the purpose of speaking in tongues had become about proving their own holiness, proving their own righteousness, and not about love for God.
SPEAKER_00: So their worship sounded more like an animal from the Muppets playing a drum solo, and not exactly like love.
SPEAKER_00: We might find ourselves saying, but I can't love God perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: I mess up all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that you don't have to manufacture love for God.
SPEAKER_00: Loving God always begins with receiving God's love first.
SPEAKER_00: It's why regular communion is important for us as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: We receive God's grace and love once again.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4 says, we love because God first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: God shows his love to us in Jesus, and we receive that love.
SPEAKER_00: Then we can return that love to God.
SPEAKER_00: We are like babies who mimic their parents' smile.
SPEAKER_00: It touches the parent's heart, but the baby is just copying what the parent has shown to them.
SPEAKER_00: Or the baby has gas.
SPEAKER_00: Confirmance.
SPEAKER_00: It is tempting as we grow up to give only part of ourselves over to God and to withhold parts of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The grown-ups here will agree with me.
SPEAKER_00: There are times when it was hard for me to love God with my dating life.
SPEAKER_00: There are other seasons where it's been a stretch to love and trust God with my money and finances.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's been hard for you to love God with your vocation and your job.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus does not offer exceptions in his commandment today.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this I love you but thing is all about.
SPEAKER_00: Loving God is like the end of the hokey pokey.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: Put your right hand in, right hand out, right?
SPEAKER_00: Put your left hand in.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the song, what do you put in?
SPEAKER_00: Your whole self, right?
SPEAKER_00: You put your whole self in and you shake it all about, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's how it goes.
SPEAKER_00: That's what loving God is like.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Confirmans are doing today.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying that they put their whole self into following after Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They are committing to God with their entire selves.
SPEAKER_00: What an awesome thing, Confirmands, that you are doing today.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you are able to sense God smiling on you today as you make that promise back to God.
SPEAKER_00: I give my whole self to you.
SPEAKER_00: After Jesus answers the question with the appropriate response, the one where the legal expert would have nodded along and said, yes, that's right, he says, and the second is like it.
SPEAKER_00: Huh?
SPEAKER_00: The legal expert asks for the greatest commandment, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can't answer with a second one.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus wants to be sure that the life of following God is not just ethereal, that it doesn't just live up here.
SPEAKER_00: After all, most of the commandments in the Jewish law have to do with how humans live with one another.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus says the second is like it, he doesn't mean that the second commandment sounds like it.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't mean that it is almost the greatest commandment, like it's the runner-up.
SPEAKER_00: He is saying that it is equally important and inseparable from the first commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus, this means if you love God, you love your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And if you love your neighbor, you love God.
SPEAKER_00: The two are so inseparable that Jesus insists you can't have one without the other.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus quotes distinctly from Deuteronomy in the first commandment, and then he goes to Leviticus by saying, Love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this verse from Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18, I'm sure you all knew that, is quoted more in Matthew than any other verse.
SPEAKER_00: So it must be important and probably difficult to do.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the whole of Leviticus 19, verses 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_00: You must not hate your fellow Israelite in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Rebuke your fellow Israelite strongly so you don't become responsible for his sin.
SPEAKER_00: You must not take revenge nor hold a grudge against any of your people.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, you must love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the concern within the Hebrew law was for the good of the community.
SPEAKER_00: Those first words of verse 17, you must not hate your fellow Israelite in your heart are really quite difficult.
SPEAKER_00: You must not hate your fellow church member.
SPEAKER_00: You must not hate your fellow co-worker.
SPEAKER_00: You must not hate your fellow student.
SPEAKER_00: You must not hate your fellow crazy uncle.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: This scripture to love your neighbor is quoted by Jesus because it is the hallmark of how Jesus calls his followers to live.
SPEAKER_00: And he knew and experienced that it is very hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: The only way that we can love our neighbors, especially those neighbors, is to receive the love of God first.
SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of people who want to claim the name of Jesus who do not act very loving.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had a lot to say about that in his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: We are to be people who have received the love of God, and this love spills over into every relationship that we have.
SPEAKER_00: God's love changes us and it changes how we act toward others.
SPEAKER_00: If someone consistently acts unloving and unkind and calls themselves a Christian, they are a Christian in name only.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a follower of Jesus by how I live, generously, with an open heart, seeking to serve, listening to others well.
SPEAKER_00: A follower of Jesus does not seek out technicalities for who they get to be exempt from loving.
SPEAKER_00: Every time someone challenges Jesus on this front, he invites them to love the person who they think of as the worst.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: What happens in that story?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gets asked, Who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, how far does this love thing really go?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus paints the hero of the story as the ultimate outsider.
SPEAKER_00: The bad guys in the story are the priest and the Levite, the ones who knew the law.
SPEAKER_00: The first day of our 45-day camping adventure this last summer was pretty rough.
SPEAKER_00: Long story short, we lost our brake controller for our camper.
SPEAKER_00: We drove for two hours in the mountains in the rain, unknowingly without lights on the trailer.
SPEAKER_00: We destroyed the plug on the camper in the process, and I couldn't back the thing up to save my life once we got there.
SPEAKER_00: And Laura and I looked at each other that night and we asked ourselves, have we made a huge mistake?
SPEAKER_00: Are we going to have to turn around and give this whole thing up?
SPEAKER_00: We tried to make it a fun first night for the kids, but the wood that we bought at the campsite was green and wouldn't light.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing, nothing was going right.
SPEAKER_00: And then out came our neighbor from his over 30-year-old RV.
SPEAKER_00: He looked the part of someone who would be in a 30-year-old RV with the stickers that I don't really agree with on it.
SPEAKER_00: And we braced ourselves for what would come out of his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he saw that we were struggling and he brought us some wood for our fire.
SPEAKER_00: He gave us a package that changed the color of the fire, figuring the kids would like that.
SPEAKER_00: He was kind.
SPEAKER_00: He was as gentle as someone could be with an accent from New Hampshire.
SPEAKER_00: Laura and I have thought about that guy a lot.
SPEAKER_00: He was our neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And he loved us that night, looking with compassion upon people who desperately needed help.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.