The Greatest Is...
Zephyr United Methodist Church
Early First United Methodist
September 17, 2006
Rev. Eddie Smart
Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 37He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
One of of the Pharisees, a lawyer, thought he would test Jesus. He said, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law.” "Which one of all our laws do you consider the greatest?" "If you had to pick just one, which one would it be?"
But Jesus didn't give him just one commandment. He said to him,
"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." -Matthew 22:37-40
Why, when asked for a single commandment, would Jesus give them two? Love GOD -- Love NEIGHBOR as self. Jesus gave these two commandments priorities relative to each other. But why not just one.
Maybe we find the answer in a letter written to the early church. In 1John 4, we find a discussion of love for God and love for our fellow human beings. It is a discussion that began with the ten commandments. The subject of all ten commandments was love for God and love for our fellow human beings.
This letter to the early Christian church read:
20Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:20
Jesus gives the lawyer two laws known well by the Israelites. Once comes from Deut. 6:4-5–words that are to be placed on their bodies, on their doorposts–words that are to be recited to their children
4Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Deut. 6:4-5 (NRSV)
The other comes from Lev. 19:17–“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
As Luke tells this story, the lawyer asks the question. Jesus answers, rather than with these two laws, with a question. Jesus asks the lawyer what he thinks and the lawyer who asked for one law answers with these two. Love God & Love Neighbor
Last week we talked about being witnesses. We recalled that we are called to be “fishers of men.” Jesus calls us to follow him and be his student, so that we can bring others to be his students. We are called to be a disciple who makes disciples of Jesus Christ.
This week we will focus on the church’s role of nurturing those who choose to follow Jesus. It is in the church that disciples are nurtured so that they can go into the world. We will talk about the going next week.
There is a popular song of days gone that comes to my mind. It has been used in recent years as the theme song of a movie. What the world need now is love sweet love. The world needs love and the church is called to offer that love. If one cannot find love in the church, where will they find it. I’m talking about that perfect kind of love that Jesus called the greatest of the commandments.
We are constantly faced with death, disease, danger and dishonesty. Our world is full of things that make people bitter, hateful, filled with despair, and unloving. We live in a world were many are looking out for number one.
One day a student asked anthropologist Margaret Mead for the
earliest sign of civilization in a given culture. He expected the
answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone.
Her answer was "a healed femur." Mead explained that no healed
femurs are found where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest,
reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to
do that injured person's hunting and gathering until the leg healed.
The evidence of compassion is the first sign of civilization.
We would like to think that civilization has advanced well beyond the healed femur. But have we. For the most part we are far more responsive to physical needs (broken bones) than we are to the emotional, relational, and spiritual needs of our neighbor. To love our neighbor is to be responsive to all their needs. Loving our neighbor is not all that easy.
It is in the church that we can be nurtured into living with one another. We see division and divisiveness within our families. We see division and divisiveness withing our communities, nation and world. Israel, the first recipient of the greatest of the laws, locked in battle with Lebanon...Syria, Palestine. How sad to see the historic cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem divided and dangerous.
Napoleon thought he could be great because he founded a kingdom on force. Perhaps it's worth listening to his words of warning at the end of his life. Napoleon said, "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love. And at this hour millions of men would die for him."
Between two farms near Valleyview, Alberta, you can find two parallel fences, only two feet apart, running for a half mile. Why are there two fences when one would do? Two farmers, Paul and Oscar, had a disagreement that erupted into a feud. Paul wanted to build a fence between their land and split the cost, but Oscar was unwilling to contribute. Since he wanted to keep cattle on his land, Paul went ahead and built the fence anyway.
After the fence was completed, Oscar said to Paul, "I see we
have a fence." "What do you mean 'we'?" Paul replied. "I got the
property line surveyed and built the fence two feet into my land.
That means some of my land is outside the fence. And if any of
your cows sets foot on my land, I'll shoot it." Oscar knew Paul
wasn't joking, so when he eventually decided to use the land
adjoining Paul's for pasture, he was forced to build another fence,
two feet away. Oscar and Paul are both gone now, but their double
fence stands as a monument to how hard it can be to love our
neighbor.
Seen any double fences around here?
Living together can only happen when we love our neighbor as ourselves. We will only be able to live together when we love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength. It is in the church that we can be nurtured by the perfect love of God.
This week as we buried Wyatt James Kreisler, the grandson of the Whittington’s, I shared Paul’s words to the church in Corinth. He wrote,
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, 4who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. 2 Cor. 1:3-5 (NRSV)
Paul shares what John also shared, 19We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19 (NRSV)
I’m sure some of you have heard about the Indian brave who found an eagle's egg. Since he couldn't find the nest to put it back, he did the next-best thing. He put the eagle's egg in a nest with prairie chicken eggs.
So the eagle was hatched and began to live with the prairie chickens. All it saw were chickens, so it clucked and scratched and pecked around and was a chicken for years. And then one day it saw a glorious sight in the sky, a great bald eagle soaring up there. He said, "What is that?"
The chicken said, "That is the eagle, the king of birds. But
forget it. That's not for you; you are a chicken." And he lived the
rest of his life clucking, pecking, and scratching, and not flying.
You say, “That’s sad,” but we are eagles that soar like the eagle only when we are all that God has created us to be, and God created us to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. God created us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about John Wesley’s view of our spiritual journey. The goal of that journey according to Wesley was perfection. That is to love perfectly. In other words, love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is in the church that we are nurtured with the love of Christ so that we can love one another in God’s perfect way.