"What's Love Got to Do with It?"
Matthew 22:34-40
We live in a very "religious" world, and I suppose that we always have.
Most people, even if they don't admit it, believe in God.
One snowy day in Syracuse, New York...many, many moons ago...I was driving "a bit" too fast down an icy, curvy road when suddenly I lost control of the car.
Have you ever done that?
It's a horrible feeling isn't it?
In any event, I was traveling with a buddy of mine named Dave.
I had known Dave for several years, but I had never heard Dave discuss religion or God.
I just took it for granted that Dave didn't think much about it.
In any event, when you are sliding in a car, out of control on snow and ice, there is not much you can do but pray.
For a couple seconds at most--which can seem like a lifetime--you have no idea whether you will be alive or dead in the next moment.
We lived.
We just ended up in a snow drift.
But as soon as the car stopped, Dave said aloud: "Praise the Lord."
So, my buddy, whom I had never thought of as particularly religious had been praying during our moments on the ice.
There are no atheists in foxholes, I believe that.
But when we pray to God, what kind of God are we praying to?
There can be no doubt that we live in a very mixed up, angry and confused world.
And a lot of folks have just about had enough of "religion."
"Religion" has sort of a bad name in the wider world right now.
Whether it comes from greedy television evangelists, pedophile priests or politicians hijacking Christianity in order to get elected many folks don't see much good in it.
Of course, the bad stuff gets the press.
In his book, When Religion Becomes Evil, Charles Kimball writes: "Muslims declare jihad, or 'holy war.'
Hindus murder Muslims in order to cleanse a temple site.
Palestinian suicide bombers kill Zionist settlers.
Israeli bulldozers demolish Arab homes.
All these acts of religious violence are defended as faithful to a God who, though called by different names, loves the elect and hates the rest."
Sometimes, as Christians we can become surprised by our own ability to act with hate and retribution, even though we worship a God of unconditional love and grace.
If I don't watch myself, I can easily become critical of others, while ignoring my own mistakes.
And when I'm doing something really, really good?
I can become filled with pride...
...so "puffed up" about how unselfish and humble I am.
And those pedophile priests and greedy evangelists?
No doubt, what they have done or are doing is more than wrong...more than evil.
But are we to judge them?
It's a crazy life.
That's why we need Jesus, and that's why we need to return again and again to His Words and His Church.
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, the religious leaders of Jesus' day are becoming desperate.
After Jesus' messianic entry into Jerusalem, His prophetic attack upon the Temple they are publicly confronting Jesus in order to try and discredit Him.
Their question about the greatest commandment comes after, what we talked about last week--the legitimacy of paying taxes to Caesar and then the resurrection.
And, as in other discussions, Jesus confounds the scribes and Pharisees with His superior biblical knowledge and irrefutable logic.
When He is asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus quotes Judaism's most fundamental, ancient and most widely read biblical passage.
It's called the Shema: "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind."
But Jesus doesn't leave it there.
He adds another Scripture, this one is a little known Scripture verse from Leviticus 19:18: "You must love your neighbor as yourself."
But the interesting thing is that when Jesus says, "And the second is like it"--the love your neighbor part--He's suggesting that these two commandments aren't really two commandments at all.
It's as if they are two sides of the same coin.
What is the greatest commandment?
"You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind; You must love your neighbor as yourself."
All the laws hang on that one!!!
There is no way to love God without loving our neighbor, and in loving our neighbor we are loving God--whether we know it or not.
This presented a problem for the Pharisees and it also presents a problem for us.
For many of the Pharisees, if the God of Israel loves all nations and people as much as God loves Israel, everything about their identity is threatened.
If all people are God's chosen people are they called to love the unclean and rejected, the lepers and the non-Jews as much as this Jesus loves them?
By saying what Jesus says in this passage, Jesus is calling into question the very foundation of their religious identity and practice.
While the scribes and Pharisees used the law to put major limits on those whom they had to recognize as their neighbors, Jesus puts these two passages of Scripture together and smashes all the limits and boundaries of who our neighbor is!!!
In Chapter 5 Jesus already radically reshaped the definition of "neighbor."
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
In the same chapter He said this:
"God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
What is He saying?
A person who truly loves God will also love his or her enemies.
It is the only way to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Because to love God is to love in the same way God loves--without conditions.
To love God is to love what God loves--everyone.
I think the martyrs of yester-year would roll over in their graves when WE CHRISTIANS get mad at the world for persecuting us.
When we bring up lawsuits against political interest groups, governments and individuals because they are "threatening us and what we believe"...
...is this what Jesus would have us do?
Is this "loving our enemies?"
When we easily cast out judgments about the behaviors of others, is this really love?
Some people become very surprised when they learn that Jesus taught His followers over and over again not to judge!!!
And there can be no doubt that it is hard not to judge.
I'm really good at judging others.
The loving all people unconditionally part--that doesn't come so naturally.
What about you?
Loving isn't for sissies!!!
No doubt about that.
Our journey as Christians in this life is to seek to learn how to love the way God loves us.
And there is nothing harder, but there is nothing more exciting, nothing more freeing, nothing more life-giving!!!
One person has written, "As long as I allow hate, pain, fear or pride keep others at a distance, they remain strangers--different, and therefore a threat.
Only by befriending neighbors, strangers, and enemies do we begin to understand them and love them."
Think about it.
How can God love every person?
God loves every person because God knows every person.
C.S. Lewis wrote:
"If you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome perversion, nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair.
God knows all about it.
You are one of the poor whom He blessed.
He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive.
Keep on.
Do what you can.
One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap heap and give you a new one.
And then you may astonish us all--not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school."
It can be easy to judge and hate if we don't make the effort to know and understand.
Many of our judgments of others aren't based on knowledge, but rather on ignorance and prejudice.
The more I know someone, the more difficult it is for me to judge them.
This doesn't mean I know what causes some people to do what they do, but knowing people means knowing that we are all fighting our hidden demons.
And knowing God means we know that God loves us and others despite ourselves.
As Chet read earlier from 1st John: "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."
It couldn't be clearer, could it?
It couldn't be harder, could it?
One scholar writes the following:
"God's law, finally and forever, is the law of love.
It is that simple...and that difficult, because loving others means putting them first.
It means sacrificing.
It means being vulnerable to the needs of those around us.
All of this can be scary, which is why Jesus does not just come teaching and preaching God's law; he also embodies it.
Just a few days after this encounter, Jesus will gather with his disciples, take some bread and wine, and invite them by eating and drinking to share his very life.
After that meal, he will go out from that place of safety to embrace his destiny, going to the cross not to make God loving but to show us how much God loves us already, because ultimately the only way we can love each other is first to recognize just how much God loves us."
Do you know how much God loves you?
I think it takes a lifetime of experiences, of journeying with Jesus to even get to the tip of the iceberg.
Do you know how much God loves everyone in this room?
Do you know how much God loves your grumpy neighbor next door?
Do you know how much God loves the Muslim, the Jew, and yes--even those fighting with ISIS?
When asked what it's all about--what all the law and the prophet's words hang on Jesus said: "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind..." and "You must love your neighbor as you love yourself."
This doesn't mean Jesus was naive.
Jesus knew evil was real and He knew what evil could do.
Rome would often line the roads of Palestine with crosses.
Jesus must have walked between those crosses many times on His way to Jerusalem.
The anger and hatred of our world wouldn't have surprised Jesus.
He knew these things well.
Yet Jesus commanded His disciples to carry crosses rather than swords.
And Jesus not only taught this; He lived it.
In those hours before His death, He was spit on, slapped, whipped, mocked, and in intense physical pain.
Yet Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those people who did these things.
And when He rose from the dead, He didn't go seeking revenge.
No, He commanded us to spread the Kingdom of God--the Kingdom of Love--throughout the world.
When people see me or you, do they see faulty folks who are seeking to love, forgive and help make this world a better, more peaceful, more fair place for all?
If so, Jesus might just say, "Keep going.
You are not far from the Kingdom."
