Sermons

I Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 26, 2014

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might open ourselves to your Spirit of Love and live an incarnate faith, as Jesus taught us.  We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

You gotta feel for Paul.  Well, maybe you don’t.  But I do.  In fact, I might as well say upfront that this sermon is probably more for me than it is for you.  But since I’m supposed to preach something this morning, I’m going to share it with you.  And perhaps I can hope that I’m not the only one who needs to hear it.  Anyway, back to Paul.  Keep in mind that this is his earliest letter that we have any record of; it would have been written around 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  So he’s still pretty new at this.  And you can see one of the classic new preacher stories breaking through Paul’s explanation of his situation.

There is this pattern – in literature, television, movies, and real life – of the new preacher coming in, full of righteous vigor and truth and creative ideas for reform and renewal, only to be confronted by a community of people who have been getting along just fine since long before the preacher’s arrival.  And there is struggle and tension – and hilarity in most portrayals of this story, if only from the outside – as the new preacher is gradually converted by the community and begins to realize that this motley crew of characters has been living out the abstract truths he or she was working so hard to enforce upon them, all along, just in a messier, more incarnate way that made it hard for a beginner to recognize.  If the preacher is lucky, there may even be one or two ways in which he or she actually brings something to the mix in return.

Now I may be reading into Paul’s words here, but I feel like something akin to this quintessential pattern is happening in the background.  Paul doesn’t want anyone to think he’s there to please people or receive praise.  He’s certainly not in it for the money.  He is there to share the message of the gospel of God, regardless of how much he has to suffer to do it.  But in the process of doing that, as he is imparting to them the saving truth of Christ Jesus, something happens.  Paul discovers that he is called to share with them, “not only the gospel of God,” as he writes, “but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

In later letters, Paul will write extensively and eloquently about the Body of Christ, but in this early letter, he’s just starting to figure out that following Jesus means living an embodied faith.  It means being part of a community of believers, living the gospel together instead of just preaching it at one another.  It takes time, and Paul had a lot of ground to cover.  It’s hard being a preacher of the gospel.  Here you are, trying to convert people to following Jesus, telling them he was God in human form and yet completely incapable yourself of behaving much like him.  Somehow, when you’re preaching Jesus, people expect you to act like Jesus, and it turns out, that’s a lot harder than talking about Jesus.

But he’s starting to get it.  Paul, who wanted nothing more than for his own self to disappear so that only Christ would shine through him, Paul was beginning to understand that the only way we live Christ’s love is as ourselves.  And because he had experienced the love of God in the community of the Thessalonians, he was starting to risk sharing his own self with them.

One of the dangers of being a preacher – or a Christian, for that matter – is that we think that because we’re all striving to be like Christ that we should compare ourselves with Christ.  And that’s never a good idea.  I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t go through this stereotypical new preacher pattern.  He had some rough spots, for sure, as he was coming to understand the full scope of his ministry, but it’s always seemed to me, from the way the gospels portray him, that there must have been a charisma about him and a depth of love within him that drew people in and held them in a way none of the rest of us can manage.  He could speak truth and love in one breath, with a balance that can only be called divine.  And here comes Paul, trying to share that with people, and discovering that it’s a lot harder than it seems; it requires personal investment and risking letting people learn to love you, not just proclaiming abstract truths about love.

So how does Jesus do it?  How does he proclaim and live the gospel simultaneously?  The two short pericopes from Matthew 22 give us a great snapshot of Jesus in action.  He is in conversation with the Pharisees, religious officials whose job it was to argue the finer points of Jewish law.  And so they ask him, what is the greatest commandment?  This is not quite the radical confrontation we sometimes imagine it to be; there were other prophets and scholars who had held up Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 – that is, loving God and loving our neighbors – as the crux of God’s teaching for the Hebrews.  But it does show where his priorities lie, especially when contrasted by what Matthew describes as happening next.  Matthew has Jesus asking the Pharisees a question that doesn’t really even qualify as serious inquiry; it’s more of a riddle.  ‘Who is the Messiah?  If he’s David’s Son, why does David call him Lord?’  Now, I’m sure some of the Pharisees could have come up with a good answer, given a little more time.  We could talk about the historical versus mythical meaning of the title “Son of David;” we could talk about incarnate faith requiring the Messiah to be somebody’s son.  We could talk about the Son becoming greater than the Father.  But none of that is the point.  In fact, that is Jesus’ point: that none of that is the point.  The finer questions, the details, the trivialities do not matter.  What is important – and Matthew underlines this by placing these two stories together – what is important is love.

One of my commentaries notes that in this second section of today’s reading Jesus is challenging these religious leaders to recognize him as the Messiah.  I don’t think he’s doing anything of the kind.  I think he’s just trying to help them realize they’re worrying about the wrong things, that if they’re too focused on making the puzzle pieces fit exactly, they’re going to miss the big picture.  You won’t know the Messiah because he fits your expectations of Messiah, but because he will be love.

Jesus is demonstrating something here that is useful for us as Christians trying to figure out our faith.  The Regional Minister in Northern California when I was in seminary, Chuck Blaisdell, explained it this way:  You’ve got to know what your definition of the gospel is.  There are a lot of words in the Bible, and you need to know which ones are the gospel for you, so that you will know how to measure the rest of them.  Once you’ve defined the gospel for yourself, you have a lens through which to evaluate the rest of scripture and other theological traditions and practices.  Jesus is offering us a gospel lens here:  ‘Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.’   That is a pretty good standard.  We all use these lenses, whether we recognize it or not.  Claiming your lens and defining it is a way to make your faith more your own, rather than just accepting whatever was handed to you by others or shaped by culture. [slide]  Some might prefer Micah 6:8 as a gospel lens:  “He has told you, O mortal what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”  As gospel definitions go, these two aren’t that different.  The point is that you know what the bottom line is for you, that you can articulate for yourself how you understand the call of Christ on your life, the standard by which you will decide what is right and wrong, what to do and what to avoid, how to live and what to be willing to die for.

While we may each use slightly different words for these personal definitions of the gospel, I would submit that there can’t really be that much variation.  Jesus has laid out the most important thing right here in Matthew 22.   The point is love, loving God, which includes loving what God loves, that is, our neighbors.  The lesson that Paul learned, that all of us preachers eventually learn, over and over again in each new setting, is that love happens in relationship.  It’s not at all that it’s not complicated.  With the world as messed up as it is, living love is a daily, life-long challenge.  But when our love for neighbors is grounded in our love for God, and when we live that out together, we discover the embodied gospel, the truth that truly transforms.   That is a love that can change a preacher and a congregation, over and over again, with each new pastorate, each season, each week as we gather for worship and fellowship in the presence of God.  If someone as stubborn as Paul can learn new truths, there is hope for the rest of us as well.  Let us share our own selves with one another, loving God with all our hearts, and all our souls, and all our minds!  Alleluia and Amen!