The Rev. Allan Sandlin, associate rectorI’ve been e-mailing with an old friend of mine this fall.
He’s older and wiser than I am.
He’s a retired banker
and certainly understands the economic crisis more thoroughly than I do.
And he’s on the other side of the political fence from me.
We’ve been enjoying a political discussion, back and forth, off and on,
for a few weeks now.
We don’t see eye to eye on every issue.
But we do agree on one thing:
we both dislike the “gotcha” game so evident in this political campaign.
You know what I mean.
One candidate says that we could have troops in Iraq for 100 years.
You and I know he didn’t mean that the war would go on for that long
or that we’d keep anything like the current troop levels there for 100 years.
But the opposing party hollered “gotcha”
and for months, it seems that’s all they can talk about whenever foreign policy comes up.
The other candidate has a spontaneous conversation with a plumber.
And this candidate says something about using taxes to help
spread the wealth around.
In that context, it was a silly thing to say
and I bet he wishes he’d never said it.
But, his opponent immediately cried “gotcha”
and began a relentless denunciation of socialism
that we can expect to hear about for the next 8 days.
No matter who you plan to vote for (and I do hope you plan to vote),
wouldn’t all of us have been better off,
better informed about the candidates, without the “gotcha” game?
Well, guess what? It’s a very old game.
What do you suppose was going on with Jesus and the Pharisees in this morning’s gospel?
The Pharisees must have been delighted
that Jesus shushed their political opponents, the Sadducees.
In Matthew’s version of the gospel,
both parties had been out to get Jesus
ever since he rode triumphantly into town on a donkey.
Truth be told, neither the Democrats or the Republicans…
I mean the Sadducees or the Pharisees,
were serious about the questions they were asking Jesus.
They were trying to trick him, to lay a trap for him, to discredit him.
They were playing “gotcha”.
In today’s story, the Pharisees arrive smugly on the scene.
They’re standing around the edge of the gathering,
muttering amongst themselves and finally push this one guy forward.
We’re told he’s a lawyer,
but he’s really more like a theology professor, a biblical scholar.
He slides up next to Jesus and calls him Didaskalos. Teacher.
If you were to say that Greek word out loud,
you’d find it pretty hard not to hiss.
Didaskalos. Try it.
Didaskalos, which commandment is the greatest?
Now any 1st century Hebrew scholar worth his salt
knew that in the biblical tradition there were 613 commandments.
So this wasn’t a serious question.
The lawyer thought he’d trap Jesus when he asked him
Which of the 613 commandments in Torah is the most important…didaskalos?
New Testament theologian and preacher Tom Long says that
“the lawyer’s question implies a rule-based understanding of the law…
If the lawyer had been asking about baseball,
and Jesus had replied that ‘three strikes and you’re out’ was the most important rule,
the lawyer would have had reason to produce a counter argument.
‘How come the most important rule isn’t four balls and you walk?’
he might have reasonably said.” (p. 255, Matthew)
That’s what the lawyer was up to, laying his trap so that he could say “gotcha”
and finally, Jesus’ opponents would have him right where they wanted him.
Instead, Jesus thinks on his feet
better than either John McCain or Barack Obama ever will.
And he reminds the Pharisees of the one verse of Hebrew scripture
every Jew knew by heart, based on a verse from the book of Deuteronomy.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
And then he reached into his pocket
and pulled out another verse they no doubt knew, this one from Leviticus as well:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The lawyer asked for one single commandment
that boils down all the other commandments into one great law.
Jesus brilliantly gives him two, two commandments that summarize
all the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus isn’t telling the Pharisees anything they don’t already know.
But the new thing he’s doing is tying the two commandments together in one.
It’s not all about rules and regulations, he says.
It’s about loving God and loving neighbor.
It sounds so simple.
And that’s what was so brilliant about Jesus’ response.
This was a test, a major test, for Jesus.
Everything was riding on his answer to this very loaded question,
choosing 1 commandment out of 613.
And the answer was so simple. Love God, love your neighbor.
Dorothy Day, the great Roman Catholic writer
who worked so tirelessly for the poor in the 1930s, put it like this:
"I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."
In high school, we used to sing along with Paul McCartney and John Lennon:
“All you need is love”.
Sometimes I wonder if the Beatles didn’t have it right. Maybe it is that simple.
Except that it can be awfully difficult to love God
and love our neighbor in equal portions.
Some times we find ourselves so in love with God
that all we want to do is come to church and pray, read the Bible, sing…
talk about Jesus with our like-minded friends.
Then when that young man comes to the church door
for the 4th time this week asking for help,
loving my neighbor becomes something I suddenly have a lot less energy for.
On the other hand, sometimes we get so caught up in our mission trips
or marching in parades,
writing letters on behalf of Troy Davis,
volunteering at the night shelter…
loving God begins to take second place.
I have friends who believe in God
and spend many hours more than I ever will making the world a better place to live in. But some of those friends don’t see much reason to come to church,
to worship God.
Loving God seems to take a seat at the back of their bus.
I wonder where we get the idea that faith is just being nice to other people
and believing in God?
Maybe it’s not so simple after all.
My hunch is that over the course of a lifetime
we move back and forth between these two commandments.
Does love of God with our hearts, souls and minds
have primacy over love of our neighbor?
Which comes first?
I don’t know.
I do know that sometimes it’s easier to love the one
who keeps coming to the door asking for help than it is to love God.
As demanding as he can be, he’s not nearly as demanding as God.
God asks infinitely more of us.
And therefore, sometimes, it’s harder for us to love God.
Then I wonder if there is a way to hold these two in tension,
to live with them and move back and forth between them fluidly.
I wonder what worship might look like
if the boundaries between love of God and love of neighbor became intentionally blurred.
Some of the folks we try to help,
people who need a ride to the VA
or help paying their electric bill
or who need air mattresses so their 4 children don’t have to sleep on the floor…
sometimes they will ask me what time church starts on Sunday morning.
Would it be alright for me to bring my family?
I say yes, of course it would. We’d love to see you in church.
But would we really?
Would we all welcome everyone to worship God with us?
To drink coffee with us, sit in class with us, hand out bulletins with us?
Then I wonder what worship would be like if the bread we eat at the Eucharist
could be more visibly connected to bread for the world.
We pray give us this day our daily bread
and then make no connection with our responsibility
for feeding the hungry of our city their daily bread.
Ok, full disclosure here.
A small group of us here at Holy Trinity are taking this question seriously.
We’ve been planning our next Welcome Table service—
that’s what we’re calling our new Saturday evening worship service here at the church.
I’m not going to tell you what we’re planning.
If you want to know more,
you’ll just have to come worship with us this coming Saturday at 6 pm in Tisdale Hall. But here’s the question we’re thinking about:
Can we bring love of God and love of neighbor
into a more intimate, tangible proximity with each other
within the context of worship?
That’s what we’re thinking about.
I can tell you this:
loving God and loving neighbor
are the essentials we need to be faithful disciples of Jesus.
And if you’ve paid attention to those gold and purple signs
mounted on walls around this place,
you’ll recognize the greatest commandment in these words.
Our mission is to…what?
Open hearts to God (love God)
And open doors to community (love neighbor).
It’s never easy, finding the balance.
Sometimes we will lean toward loving our neighbor, sometimes toward loving God.
I suspect there will always be tension between the two, at least, some of the time.
But, the next time you find yourself getting all bent out of shape
over a disagreement with your neighbor
or frustrated by “gotcha” games between co-workers or politicians,
or wondering if we’re fulfilling our mission here at Holy Trinity,
try going back to the greatest commandment.
Recite it, along with the second one that is of equal importance.
And let every thing we do,
here in this place and in our homes and in our lives,
be done in love—for God, for one another.
Step back and look at the horizon, the big picture.
Are we opening hearts, ours’ and those of others, to God,
with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds?
Are we opening doors to community,
loving our neighbors as ourselves?
It’s truly not always as simple as asking the question.
But if we’re serious about becoming more and more the body of Christ,
serious about wanting others to join us
and share in this mission, then maybe all we need is love.
