“It’s A LONG STORY; A COMPLEX ISSUE; A GRAY AREA”. You have heard statements like this haven’t you? Perhaps you used them yourself. Phrases like this are often used as a way to bring an end to a discussion. More often then not, those who say them are trying to bring an end to a discussion of why they are doing what they are doing or how they found themselves in a particularly unpleasant situation. They have no good explanation and they’d rather not try to explain, thank you very much.
I’ve even had one of my kids try this on me. “Why did you hit your brother?” “It’s a LONG STORY Dad” “Well son, I like a good story, and I’ve got all the time in world, so please tell it to me”
As it turns out, these catch-phrases are quite often used by people as a smoke screen to hide their guilt. The STORY is really not that long, they simply know they are the villain in their story and they’d rather you didn’t know that. And the ISSUE is not really all that complex, but they are perplexed as to how they are going to live with themselves if they admit what they have done. And the AREA is not really all that gray, its actually black and white and they are trying to kill the lights so that their obvious moral failure will not be exposed for what it is.
I guess you could say that what we have done here is open a window into the human psyche. All of us, without exceptions have broken God’s immuteable law. We do it every single day in our thoughts and words and deeds. And like Adam and Eve before us, we have a tendency to try and cover our backsides. We feel exposed. We feel the need to rationalize our less than stellar behavior. So we say: “It’s A LONG STORY; A COMPLEX ISSUE; A GRAY AREA”.
In Today’s Gospel lesson we are going to find help to overcome this tendency of ours. Instead of turning away from reality and hiding from the truth about ourselves, we are actually going to admit the truth. But we will do this without fear because our Savior Jesus, who loves us in spite of the fact that we sin will be leading the way.
One of the Pharisees approached Jesus with a question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36) Now first of all, you’ve got to wonder why someone would even ask such a question. Are there some commandments that should be obeyed more than others? Are we not supposed to obey them all? Was this guy performing a spiritual triage of sorts? Was he going to focus all of his energies on keeping the most important commandment, only to blow-off all the others?
Yeah, maybe. People certainly do that in our day. They say to themselves: “I do commit adultery, but at least I have no other gods.” Or perhaps, “Yeah, I don’t remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy because I’m so involved in so many other interesting, important, and crucial things, but at least I believe in one true God.”
This fellow who approached Jesus probably had some of this going on. But he had a bunch of other stuff going on too. The pharisees, by the time of Christ, had expanded and expounded on the law to such an extent that they had about 613 commandments. Yippee! From Ten commandments to 613! For them, apparently, keeping the commandments had become A COMPLEX ISSUE; living their lives for God became A LONG STORY ; and they were apparently prone to be confused by all the GRAY AREAS.
They come to Jesus and ask “Which is the greatest commandment in the law.” (Matt. 22:36) And Jesus’ answer was a wonderfully clarifying moment. What he said was so utterly perfect for the situation and perfect for our situation as well. Without skipping a beat, without even addressing the problems that might come with ranking commandments, he simply said “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” this is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt 22:37-39)
Do you see the brilliance of this? Instead of giving them a loophole that allowed them to obey one commandment but ignore another, he gave them a commandment that contains all the commandments of God in two simple sentences: “Love the Lord” and “Love your Neighbor”. You see how it works? If you love the Lord, you will not have any other gods, you will remember the sabbath day, you will not misuse his name. If you love your neighbor, you won’t murder him, steal from him, take his wife, gossip against him. With his answer, he did not gratify their desire to prove themselves to be scholars; he didn’t even give them any wiggle room so that they might keep one commandment, while ignoring another. He didn’t let them off the hook, but rather he put them on the hook. He said, “all of the Law and prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt. 23:40)
You could even take it one step further and reduce it down to just one word. LOVE. LOVE. That is what God expects of us. That’s what we are supposed to do. This is not a LONG STORY; this is not a COMPLEX ISSUE; this is not even a GRAY AREA. It’s just one word: Love.
Don’t tell me that you are confused by what God wants you to do, you already know exactly what he wants you to do. He wants you to love. Have you been doing that? Have you been loving the Lord with all your heart soul and mind? Or have you given yourself to other things like your Job, your hobbies, or your recreation?
Have you truly loved your neighbor as you love yourself? Have you? Have you been a good husband a good wife? A good father a good mother? A good friend? You’re probably with me so far. After all, it is relatively easy to love the people who love you, you get a return on your investment that way. But our Lord would have us go beyond the friends and family plan by using that word: Neighbor. Have you truly loved all the people God brings into your life? Do you see your fellow human being as an object to be loved; or an obstacle to be overcome? Let’s bring it even closer to home, when you think of the general public, do see them as those who are to be loved, or do you see them as a bunch of stupid ne’r-do-wells who are not worthy of your consideration? When you look over at that person driving next to you on the freeway during rush hour, what do you say about these neighbors under your breath? Is it a fervent expression of love? Or something else. “Quick! Somebody fire up the smoke machines!” “Must hide failure to love!”
Now you see where all the complexity comes from! It comes from you, it comes from me. It comes from you and me trying to justify ourselves and our actions. You and I are trying to hide our shame from ourselves and ultimately from the Lord. We are usually the source of our own confusion when it comes to the Law of God. And sometimes, that’s just the way we want it. We prefer a state of confusion over absolute clarity because that’s how we protect ourselves from contemplating the idea that we have not even come close to keeping the law.
But we don’t really have to do this! We don’t have to live in a veil of smoke to hide the fact that we have come up short in the love department. There is love available for us: Love at the ready; love from God himself. And its pure, clean, simple, abundant, and free!
Did you know that in spite of the fact that you are a a weak and sin prone human being, that God still loves you? We have trouble really believing that, because it doesn’t make sense to us. How could God love me? Does he really know me? Does he know what I have done and thought an said? Yes he does. But he still loves you. That’s because when God looks at you, he remembers how you were originally intended to be. He remembers what you were supposed be. The perfect you was part of his original plan when He designed you and knit you together in your mother’s womb, as it were. He has never forgotten that. In spite of the way that sinfulness has taken over parts of your life; in spite of the way you have been corrupted by your sinful nature, he has never forgotten what you were meant to be. You are still his creation!
And his goal for you and me and all other people is to redeem : to get rid of the sins that afflict the person, but keep the person!. Now obviously, this is no small job. We learn from God’s word that we are born sinful. We learn from God’s word that sin is part of the fiber of our being. Paul put’s it this way, “I know that no good thing lives in me, that is my flesh” (Rom. 7:18). So How can our Lord get rid of our sins without getting rid of us?. By way of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah explains how Jesus did this in this way: “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us piece was upon him. and by his wounds we are healed.”
Do you see? Out of a deep love and commitment to us, Jesus did this remarkable thing! He transferred the guilt for our sins to himself. So now, whenever we confess our sins to the Lord, that’s what happens to them: they are taken from us and to the cross of Christ. And now, God not only remembers how he originally intended us to be, but he declares us righteous in his sight. And at the end of time, after all is done and God’s plan of redemption is brought to completeness, we will not only be declared righteous, but we will be righteous as we dwell in the eternal presence of the Lord.
So you see, there is really no reason for us to hide. No reason to turn on the smoke machines. No reason to run. God loves us. He wants us to admit our sins to him and get them out of our lives. He wants us to get rid of our LONG STORIES, our COMPLEX ISSUES, and our GRAY AREAS. He wants us to stand before him and with him as the redeemed people that Jesus has made us to be.
Indeed, we have not always loved. We have not always loved our Lord and we have not always loved our neighbor as our selves. But God loves us and forgives us. And being on the receiving end of his love is the key to loving others. John says in his epistle “We love, because he first loved us.” (1John 4:19). All love starts with God, it flows into us by faith and eventually out from us, back to God and out to others.
The ability to love others is in direct relationship to you being loved by God. If you find yourself in a position where you can see no reason to love god and avoid what displeases him or if you find yourself at a place where you can see no reason or way to love another person, then its time to review the love that God has shown to you. And there is no better place to see the love of God then at the cross of Christ. It’s time to go to the cross and confess and receive that love and forgiveness again. You probably noticed that everything about our worship takes us right back to the cross of Christ. Confession, Absolution, Lord’s Supper, Baptism, our whole focus, both visually and content wise, takes us right back to that single loving act of Jesus dying for our sins. As Jesus said “The Son of man shall be lifted up, and shall draw all people to himself.” We are drawn to him by his love. He pours it into our hearts. It then overflows in our lives and spills out on all the people that he brings to us. That’s how it works.
Yeah, I know, you know somebody; somebody who doesn’t deserve your love; somebody who has hurt you or spurned you or has done some horrible thing to you. Loving them for you has become A COMPLEX ISSUE. They now occupy a GRAY AREA of your life. And by now you have grown fond of telling yourself the LONG STORY of how so and so does not deserve your love.
I’m sure that God could tell a similar story about you. But he doesn’t. For he has put away such things. As far as the east is the west he has removed your transgressions from you. He looks at you in a redemptive way. And He describes his feelings for you with one word. Love. And now he asks you to adopt that same word for the way your live your life. AMEN
