FAKE NEWS: What Jesus Really Said

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