Love: The Greatest Commandment July 6, 2014

Transcription

1 Love: The Greatest Commandment July 6, 2014 Matthew 22: Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? 37 Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. You probably don t know that prior to feeling God s call to full-time ministry; I was a Vice President at FirstBank in the Denver area. I managed several different branches, was a loan officer, and ran the credit card department for several years. It is a great organization, well-run, with great leadership. I had great respect for the people that I worked with and for. But one day, more than thirteen years ago now, I sat with the bank president, who was also a great Christian friend, and he went over my annual performance review with me. In general it was a good review, except that he commented that I spent too much time with the customers. I thought that was an odd comment, because of course, the bank wouldn t exist without its customers and listening to the customers concerns and helping them to address them was a very important piece of my job, or so I thought. But, it started me thinking and eventually I came to the conclusion that God was calling me to full-time ministry. When I shared that comment at my going away party at the bank, they laughed and said instead of having a Come to Jesus meeting with my boss that I had had a Go to Jesus meeting. I think that they were right. I was more interested in taking care of the needs of the customer than I was in pushing whatever the latest and greatest thing was that we had created. Taking care of the needs of the people, caring for them, loving them was what I was interested in. Helping people. Sharing the love with others that Jesus has shown to me. You remember the story of Jesus who was approached by a scholar of the law who asked what the greatest commandment was? and Jesus said this: Matthew 22: Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. In the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, Matthew uses agapao, the verbal form of agape here when he talks about love. Some of you may be familiar with the word agape because it is used in Emmaus circles to describe the little gifts of love (bookmarks, placemats, necklaces, bracelets, etc.) that various Emmaus alumni make to give to pilgrims on 1

2 their very first Walk to Emmaus. This agape is a little different, but not far from, what Jesus is talking about in Matthew s Gospel. Jesus was talking about a love that is unmotivated and unmanipulated, unconditional and unlimited. Such love is not a matter of feeling, but of commitment and action. It is not something that can be commanded. It is not a schmaltzy, feel-good, dreamy sort of love. 1 John 4:19 says, We love because he first loved us. That s what it comes down to. We can love one another, because God loves us. He s shown us what love is all about. We can love God back and show that same love to others. You know that s not a new idea in Matthew either. In Deuteronomy 6:4-5 it says, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Way back in the beginning of the Bible, the people were told to love God with all of their being with their heart, soul, and strength. That s the tradition that Matthew s audience knew. He was writing to those followers of Jesus that had grown up in the Jewish traditions and beliefs that they had learned in the Old Testament. and they were serious about these beliefs, too. Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 goes on to say, These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. In other words, make sure you have these commands recorded in a number of different places in a number of different ways so that you don t forget! Many Jewish people today still take this command verbatim. Good friends of mine in Tucson, Arizona had this written on their doorframe in Hebrew. It s called the Shema, Hear, O Israel: the Lord our god, the Lord is one not many multiple gods, but one. And there are still faithful Jews who carry these scriptures in a tiny box affixed to their bangs and hanging on their forehead. We saw many of them as we travelled to Israel almost ten years ago. This is serious stuff. And Jesus, is still saying it is serious stuff, but that it isn t exactly what you thought it was (you know that s often what Jesus did. He took something that everybody thought they knew and then said, Let me tell you what this really means! ) 2

3 That s what Jesus does here. He takes familiar commands from the Old Testament, but then he adds a twist. What Jesus is saying here in Matthew s Gospel is radical. When Jesus says to love one s neighbor, in the context of the Old Testament, a neighbor was one s fellow Israelite. Way back in the Old Testament in the first five books of the Bible (the Torah) it says that God s people are to love their neighbor. In God s instructions for His people He says this (through Moses): Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 9:18) So, from the very beginning the followers of God knew that they were to love their neighbor, but it talks about their neighbor as being someone who was like them from their same people group, descended from the Hebrew people that Moses led out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. Those were their neighbors who they were to love as they loved themselves. But, for Matthew, even one s enemy is considered someone to love. In Matthew 5:43-44 Jesus said, 43 You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you Jesus is saying that we have to love our neighbors, even if we don t like them. We have to love those who are not just like us or whom we like, but everyone we encounter. Wow! That s radical for Jesus day and maybe even ours. Loving our neighbor, whether they are right next door, across town, across the state, across the country, or across the world. That s what Jesus calls us to do. I am convinced that a lot of the problems in the church universal and in our world in general would go away if we focused on loving God and our neighbor. If we all loved our neighbor we d have less homelessness, hunger, illness We d be looking out for the needs of others and helping to meet those needs. Wouldn t we? Think about it Did you also notice that when the scholar of the law (today we d call them an attorney) asked Jesus for the most important commandment, he answered with not one, but two? Jesus language in Matthew specifies that the second command is "like the first (homoia in the original Greek). This doesn t mean that they are just similar, but that the second is of equal importance and in fact inseparable from the first. One cannot first love God and then secondarily love one s neighbor. To love God is to love one s neighbor, and vice versa (p. 426, The New Interpreter s Bible, Vol. VII). I know that here at First United Methodist Church in Pueblo this congregation has a long history of loving our neighbors. It is evident in the many ministries this church is involved with: the mission breakfast, youth mission trips, sack lunches, MOPS, probation department meetings, etc and so many more that I have yet to learn about. 3

4 Is there more we can do to love God and to love our neighbor? Sure there is. Together we ll work together to share God s love with each other here within the church and out in our community and beyond. My promise to you as we begin this journey together is to do my very best to share with you the love of Jesus as I know it and to work together with you as we share that love in tangible and intangible ways with our neighbors. You have given me the privilege of being your pastor here in Pueblo and I don t take that lightly. I want to thank you in advance for allowing me into your lives. I know that change isn t always easy. But as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:1 (TNIV) 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: Pastor Rick Calhoun s season of ministry at First United Methodist Church in Pueblo has come to a close. I know that he will be missed. I know that some of you don t like change and that it is hard for you to accept a new pastor. For some of you, that change is ok. My season of ministry at the First United Methodist Church of Fort Lupton has come to an end and I will certainly miss the people there. I am here now. You and I will get to know each other and we will work together in this new season of ministry. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. In the meantime, let s approach each other with love. I ll try not to step on your toes and I know you ll try not to step on mine. But, invariably it will happen. So let s approach each other with the love of Jesus. Let s try to keep the lines of communication open. We will worship together and have fellowship together. We will study together and pray together. We will serve the needs of our neighbors, being the hands and feet of Jesus. We will laugh together and cry together. Together we will be the Church! There are many people here in Pueblo that don t have a church home. That means that we need to be sharing the love of Jesus even more. We have neighbors who are close by who are looking for what you ve already found here. Maybe they re just waiting for someone to invite them. Maybe they are just waiting for a neighbor to love them as Jesus called us to do? Think about loving God and loving our neighbor in this way. 4

5 In the 1 st chapter of the book of Genesis it says this, 26 Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. 27 So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. So, if we are going to truly love God, we also have to love human beings as they were created in the image of God. Can we love God and not love God s image? What if we looked for the image of God in our neighbor? Would it change the way we look at them? Maybe they are different than we are, but God created them in His image right? That means that we are supposed to love them as we love God. Right? I am not saying this is always easy and I am not saying that I have this all figured out. But together, we can live out the two greatest commands that Jesus has given us. Aside: Can I let you in on a little secret? You made a special effort to be here on a holiday weekend, so I am going to let you in on a little secret. When a preacher is preaching (or at least when this one is) they are usually talking to themselves they are often sharing something that they need to hear just as much as the people who are listening to the sermon. Together let s look for the image of God in each other and in our neighbors. Let s share the love of God that Jesus embodied for us. Let s not wait for them to come to Jesus. Let s be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus and invite them to Jesus. Let s pray. God I thank you for this church called the First United Methodist Church of Pueblo, Colorado. Thank you for the people you have called to this body of faith. Be with them during this time of transition. Help them to continue to share the love that you have shown to them. Help me to say hello well as they grieve the departure of Pastor Rick Calhoun. Help us as together we continue your kingdom work through the people and the ministries of this church. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this ministry. In Jesus name I pray, Amen. 5