So What DID Jesus Really Say?
Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV)
34 When the Pharisees heard that he
had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and
one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher,
which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 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.’ 38 This is
the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second
is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
For the past five weeks Matt and I have looked at five often
used phrases and have done our best to demonstrate to you why they are at best
half truths, if not completely false and importantly why we need to stop using
them.
In case you have forgotten we looked at:
·
Everything happens for a reason
·
God helps those who help themselves
·
God won't give you more than you can handle
·
God said it, I believe it, that settles it
·
Love the sinner, hate the sin
All of which are false and can have terrible, unintended,
consequences to those we dump these phrases on
This morning what I want to look at is, if Jesus (nor the
Bible) really said these things, then what in the world did Jesus really say?
I understand, we like a lot of these platitudes ---
especially when we use them against someone else --- but if they are at best
half truths, what are the greater truths that we find in Jesus?
I have joked all week that this could be the shortest sermon
of my life.
For the
answer is pretty simple
What
did Jesus say?
LOVE
Love
everyone, love all the time
Now I should just go and sit down
But I think you know me better than that ---
So when I say that what Jesus tells us is that we must LOVE,
what do I believe he meant?
First of all, we must remember that Jesus was Jewish.
Everything
Jesus did was influenced by his Jewish upbringing
Sometimes I think we forget that, and try to turn Jesus into
a person living in Indianapolis IN, in 2018 --- but he didn't live here, he
certainly didn't live in this century, Jesus lived in Judea in the first
century.
And the question we must ask is: what would be most
important to a Jew living on the frontier edge of the Roman Empire in the first
century?
I believe by studying the culture of 1st Century Judea, by
reading the bible critically and by listening with our hearts and not just our
heads to the message of Jesus --- that we can figure out what was at the center
of Jesus' life.
Every day --- actual twice every day --- when waking and
again when getting ready to retire for the evening and observant Jew in the
first century would recite a creed.
This creed is found in what we call the Old Testament, but
what I prefer to call the Hebrew Scriptures (because calling it old seems
rather pejorative to me).
This creed that I am referring to is found in the Torah, the
books of Moses.
This creed is at the core of Judaism.
According to Judaism 101
The Shema is one of only two
prayers that are specifically commanded in Torah (the other is Birkat Ha-Mazon
-- grace after meals). It is the oldest
fixed daily prayer in Judaism, recited morning and night since ancient times.
It consists of three biblical passages, two of which specifically say to speak
of these things "when you lie down and when you rise up."
If you want to understand Jesus --- you need to understand
this prayer --- this creed ---because this prayer is central to Jesus and
Judaism.
Without this prayer, Jesus does not make sense.
This prayer goes like this:
Hear (Shema), O Israel: The Lord
our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength. These commandments that I give
you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress
them on your children. Talk about them
when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and
when you get up. Tie them as symbols on
your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Every day --- twice a day --- Jesus meditated upon these
words.
And it is clear from the Gospels --- that these words were
transformative in Jesus' life.
They are the core of who he is, and how he lived.
And they should be the core of who
we are and how we live --- and most significantly how we follow Jesus.
What do they tell us?
First and foremost, and in no
uncertain terms this creed remind us that: God is God alone --- there are no
other god's besides the God of Israel.
This may be the most important
message for us today, for the truth is, we have a multitude of god's that we
bow down to everyday.
Unfortunately most of which we
have gotten so comfortable with our idols that we don't even perceive of them
as competing gods or idols.
But that is a sermon for another
day --- maybe on one of my last few Sundays as your pastor because my hunch is
many of you would not appreciate the message . . .
Secondly, the
Shema outlines for us a way of life.
We
are to love God with our hearts, our souls and our strength.
Third, the
Shema gives us a spiritual path
·
memorize
·
recite
·
instruct
·
write out this Torah
·
wear reminders of this Torah
And if we do this, according to God there is a promise --- a
promise that we will be blessed.
Every day --- twice a day --- Jesus meditated upon these
words.
One day, Jesus encounters an "expert" in the
Torah, and this "expert" asks Jesus:
"Of all
the commandments which is the most important."
I hope you see how ridiculous this question is, because this
pious expert of the law already knew the answer, for he too would have
meditated on this creed twice every day.
But Jesus did something rather surprising --- he recites the
familiar and beloved Shema, but he adds to it --- and this is why for us as
followers of Jesus it is important for us to pay attention.
Jesus said:
“The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the
Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
If you want to know what Jesus really said --- it is all
right there!
Can you imagine someone adding to the Lord's Prayer or the
Apostle's Creed?
But that is exactly what Jesus did.
Jesus added that we must love God not only with our heart,
not only with our soul and strength --- but also with our mind.
I think he wanted to make sure that
we understood that it is to be TOTAL devotion to God.
But Jesus wasn't done there --- he also tied together a phrase
that is found --- in that often misused book of Leviticus
I say misused, because it is often
used today to call into question someone else's behavior when they break one of
the 613 laws, but ignoring the reality that we personally break many of the
others.
I think Jesus chose to add this because somehow he knew that
millennia later we would be beating people up with the Torah.
And what did Jesus add?
‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these he
concludes --- WOW!
Thomas a‘ Kempis the author of the classical devotion: The Imitation of Christ wrote about this
creed of Jesus --- saying that it has "put a whole dictionary into just
one dictum."
In other words, if you want to be a follower of Jesus ---
this Shema of Jesus must be not only on our lips but at the core of our being.
I don't want to in any way suggest that loving others hasn't
always been an important part of Judaism.
It just wasn't a part of this creed.
Remember this addition that Jesus
adds to the Shema is from the book of Leviticus.
Scot McKnight in his amazing book: The Jesus Creed, writes:
Instead of a Love-God Shema, it is
a Love-God-and-Others Shema. What Jesus
adds is not unknown in Judaism, and he is not criticizing Judaism. Jesus is setting up his very own shop within Judaism. Loving others is central to Judaism, it is
not central to the creed of Judaism, to the Shema. So, what Jesus says is Jewish. But the emphasis on loving others in not
found in Judaism's creed the way that it is found in the Jesus Creed. Making the love of others part of his own
version of the Shema shows that he sees love of others as central to spiritual
formation.
At the end of the day --- when I am stuck trying to
understand Scripture and the culture wars of our day --- I ask myself a simple
question:
Does, whatever I am debating over --
demonstrate love of God and love to others.
That is my litmus test -- pure and simple
Maybe Desmond Tutu puts this into perspective better than
most when he wrote:
I don't preach a social gospel; I
preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for
the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that
political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry
person is bread.
It is time that we quite trying to put everyone into a neat
box and think we have the solution to their
problems.
The Bible, if anything, facilitates more questions, more
paradoxes than answers.
In her book The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor best
summed up my relationship with the Bible when she wrote:
"My relationship with the
Bible is not a romance but a marriage, and one I am willing to work on in all
the usual ways: by living with the text day in and day out, by listening to it
and talking back to it, by making sure I know what is behind the words it
speaks to me and being certain I have heard it properly, by refusing to
distance myself from the parts of it I do not like or understand, by letting my
love for it show up in the everyday acts of my life."
We need to recognize our shortcomings to biblical
understanding --- and allow our hearts and our minds to be open to wrestling
with Jesus.
A website called The
Bible Project best summed up the Shema for Christians.
The Shema is a beautiful prayer.
There’s a reason why God’s people have been praying these words for millennia.
They are simple words with the capacity to reshape the course of an entire
life. The Shema can keep God’s love and loyalty in the forefront of your mind
and drive you towards obedience, not out of obligation or duty, but out of
love.
At the end of the day, following
Jesus is about love. Love that came to us when we weren’t looking for it. And
as we receive this love, it generates gratefulness, humility, and a commitment
to honor and love in return. Love gives birth to more love, which, in turn,
results in faithfulness and obedience. These are truths that can transform us
from the inside out. Can you imagine a better way to never forget, than
memorizing and praying the Shema twice a day? Maybe you should start today.
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your
strength.’ The second is this, ‘You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment
greater than these.”
Maybe we should take some time and learn these words, write
them on our lips and in our hearts.
My bet is the world would be a better place if we did.
I have no idea where I found this prayer, but I want to end
with it this morning.
We believe in God, whose love for
us never lets us go.
We believe in Jesus Christ, whose life of love we strive to follow.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes God's love known to us.
We believe in the church, where we gather to pray, to praise, to serve ... and to try again.
We believe in the grace of God, which enables us to be a people of hope, joy, service and love. Amen
We believe in Jesus Christ, whose life of love we strive to follow.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes God's love known to us.
We believe in the church, where we gather to pray, to praise, to serve ... and to try again.
We believe in the grace of God, which enables us to be a people of hope, joy, service and love. Amen