Life is Just that Simple

October 25, 2020 21st Sunday After Pentecost Matthew 22:34-46 Year A Opening Music Welcome Opening Prayer Welcome to the house of God’s love. Is this the right time? Is God’s love available now? God’s love is always here, always ready. But what about emergencies? What if the system crashes? God’s love has been around since the beginning, and it will be here after the ending. We’re ready to live in God’s love, 24/7! Stewardship Moment Offering From the abundant ways in which God has blessed our lives, let us share our tithes and offerings in joy and gratitude. Let us receive our morning offering. Prayer of Dedication As you have poured your healing love into our lives, O God, we now offer these gifts to you. Let them be used in ministries of peace and justice through the work of this church in your world. AMEN. Scripture Matthew 22:34-46 Common English Bible Great commandment 34 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had left the Sadducees speechless, they met together. 35 One of them, a legal expert, tested him. 36 “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being,[a] and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” Question about David’s son 41 Now as the Pharisees were gathering, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” “David’s son,” they replied. 43 He said, “Then how is it that David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, called him Lord when he said, 44 The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right side until I turn your enemies into your footstool’?[c] 45 If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” 46 Nobody was able to answer him. And from that day forward nobody dared to ask him anything. Sermon Life is just that simple You may have never heard the name, but Karl Barth is one of the most famous theologians in the world. Every pastor who has ever been to seminary has at some point had to write a paper are Karl Barth. Barth was a German theologian who not only taught but also challenged the popular beliefs of his day. According to the best accounts of the incident I have heard (many have taken on weird additions), Karl Barth was at Rockefeller Chapel (really a Gothic cathedral!) on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Barth allegedly said something like “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” When we think of all of the problems of the world, we think that surely life cant be that simple. Books on the teachings of Jesus could fill this whole room, as a matter of fact this whole church. Karl Barth wrote over 600 books himself on the teachings of Jesus. In Jesus' day there was a group of people who pored over the ancient writings of Moses to look for every law in the book. They were called Pharisees and they were very scrupulous about the observance of all the religious laws. They counted up all the commandments of Moses and found that there were 613 of them; 248 of these were positive, and 365 of them were negative (one for every day of the year, they said). Instead of condensing and simplifying the commandments, they expanded and complicated them, so that what had started as a sincere desire to please God had become a terrible burden of ever-increasing requirements. They needed someone who could cut through all the burdensome requirements of the law and focus on its essence. Pastors spent a lot of time trying to simplify these rules into something that the average person could remember. When Jesus whittles the 10 commandments down to two, he may have been thinking of the words of another Rabbi - Hillel. One famous account in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot. First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request, threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!" Every morning and every night every faithful person was supposed to recite the Shema – to themselves and to their Children. Hear on Isreal, the Lord your God is one. Love the lord with all of your mind, your heart, your soul. This is the most important rule. Everyone knew these two rules, but Jesus loved to challenge popular thinking. As a matter of fact, that is the whole point of this scripture. In those days it was popular to challenge people by asking questions. The questions were not always confrontational. Questions were a way that you got to know who people really were. Questions bought out your differences. So as Jesus is teaching, the leaders of the day can’t help but to ask questions. Before this scripture for today, the Sadducees start to ask Jesus questions – which Jesus uses as a chance to teach about resurrection. Now the pharisees, whose job it is to know all 600 rules for life, are asking their own set of questions. Jesus knows his stuff, so he is prepared. Unfortunately, this is the last time that Jesus is questioned. Once the questions stop, the plot to get rid of him starts. They don’t want to change, so they set out to act upon their own misunderstandings of the law of grace. Jesus made a point to challenge the status quo and to redefine their and our understandings of the simple things in life. For instance Jesus repeats the greatest commandment – love the lord with all of your mind, heart and soul. But he challenges also. The second commandment love your neighbor is not just the second commandment, but also the third commandment – love your neighbor – as you love yourself. In order for you to love anyone else, including God – first you have to love yourself. Selfishness is not self love. When you love yourself, it is easy for you to love others. Loving Ourselves She was a beautiful Scandinavian girl. She had come to the hotel room of Dr. and Mrs. Walter Trobisch for counseling, just one day after they had given a lecture at one of the universities of northern Europe. As they talked about her problems, one basic issue kept coming up – one that seemed to be at the root at all her problems. She could not love herself! In fact, she hated herself so much that she was only a step away from ending her own life. She had been raised in a very religious home. Her parents were sincere, no doubt, but they had given her a terribly distorted understanding of the Christian life. Because of what her parents and pastors had taught her, she was afraid of affirming any good thing about herself. She was afraid that self- appreciation would lead to pride, and pride would lead to alienation from God. So, for her, the life of faith required self-depreciation – putting herself down! She believed that rejection of the self was the only way to God! That’s why her religious convictions led her to the brink of suicide. During the counseling session there in the hotel room, Dr. Trobisch led her to a mirror where he asked her to look carefully at her image. She turned away, unable to look at herself. He held her head gently but firmly and made her look into her own eyes. Obviously the experience was painful for her emotionally. Dr. Trobisch asked her to repeat after him: “I am a beautiful girl – I am a beautiful girl.” But she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it - because in her eyes that was sinful. Where did we ever get the idea that to affirm ourselves, to appreciate ourselves is wrong? Certainly we didn’t get that from Jesus. When we read the gospels carefully, we discover that Jesus went around day after day looking for the good in people, pointing it out to them, and asking them to celebrate it. And, in the scripture from the 22nd chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us to love our neighbors. How? As we love ourselves. Notice that Jesus does not say we are to love our neighbors instead of ourselves. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It is inarguable: Jesus wants us to love ourselves! James McCormick, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com Love is a way of life. Love is a place inside of us that determines our actions. One day a certain man hurriedly headed out the door for work. In his path was the 3 year old son playing with blocks. The man patted the boy on the head, stepped over him, opened the door and went outside. Halfway down the walk a guilt bomb exploded within him. What am I doing, he thought to himself. I am ignoring my son. I never play with him. He’ll be old before I know it. In the background of his thoughts he heard to pounding of Cat’s in the Cradle – Harry Chapin’s balld to lost fatherhood. He returned to the house and sat down with his son and began to build blocks. After two minutes, the boy asked – Daddy, why are you mad at me? He was acting out of duty, not love and it was obvious to the 3 year old. A daughter took her other into her home after surgery. Things were okay until one day they got into an argument over a dirty plate. During the argument, the mother asked why are you doing all of this for me anyway. The daughter thought about it and came up with a million reasons - I don’t want anything to happen to you, I want to keep you safe, I worry about you, I wanted to prove that I was an adult, I wanted to show that I was strong. Finally the mother stopped her and said all of her reasons were a bunch of junk. They didn’t mean anything – the only reason that mattered was that they loved each other. When we act out of love it makes all of the difference in the world. One of the last questions that the pharisees asks is who is the messiah? Is the messiah really the son of David? Jesus points out that even though he is son of David, David still calls upon the messiah. David’s weapon of power was war. Jesus’ weapon of power was love. Love is stronger than war, that ‘s why David called upon a messiah. Jesus is the messiah because he reminds us of the power of love. Life is just that simple – love ourselves, love others love God. One is not more important than the others, they are all expressions of the same love. Let us pray… Prayer In the midst of frightening times when words of war soar to the heavens and anger seems to be the way to treat others and to respond to difficulty, be with us, merciful God. We do not want to live in these hideous ways. We seek your peace and healing love. Our hearts are filled with concern for our families and friends as well as those in far off lands who face great times of difficulties, illness, mourning. We share the names of those for whom we seek prayers knowing that you hear our cries and respond in love. Let us pray silently for a minute then offer the names of these dear ones. [Silent Prayer]. Yet in the midst of darkness your light of joy abounds within us as we share those moments which have caused us to rejoice in delight and love. Let us pray silently for a minute and then offer instances of joy that we have encountered this week. [Silent prayer.] Lord of hope and peace, we have brought before you the names of dear ones on our hearts. Some of the names have been uttered out loud in the congregation; others are whispered in our hearts. Be with all of us, O Lord. Heal our wounds. Direct our lives in pathways of peace. These things we offer in Jesus’ name. AMEN. Song for Reflection O God Our Help in Ages Past UMH 116 Benediction for Facebook Community Time Benediction As you leave this place, may God’s love surround you, uphold you, and empower you to be agents of love in this world. Amen. From The Abingdon Worship Annual, edited by Mary J. Scifres and B.J. Beu, Copyright © Abingdon Press. What Do You Want? What do you want? What do you want? That question is such a commonplace. The waitress comes up to your table and asks, "Do you know what you want?" and you reply, "The chicken salad on rye, please." The telemarketer whose phone call has interrupted your dinner drones on and on until finally you break in to ask, "Can you please just tell me what you want!" Your child barges into the den while you are trying to read a book and with a slight hint of irritation in your voice you ask, "Honey, what do you want?" Most of the time when that question gets asked, we don't blink at it. We answer it easily. But that same question can be taken in more than one way. In the movie Field of Dreams, there is a humorous moment when Kevin Costner's character has taken a crotchety, famous author, played by James Earl Jones, to a baseball game. On their way to their seats, Costner casually asks, "What do you want?" to which the author snaps, "I want people to leave me alone. I want people to stop asking me things. I want people to stop believing that I have all the answers to life's questions." "No," Costner replies pointing to the nearby concession stand, "What do you want?" The man then orders a hot dog and a beer! Scott Hoezee, What Do You Want? Sermon Opener – The Two Most Important Questions a Christian Can Answer – Matthew 22:34-46 Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, and one of the developers of the atomic bomb, was once asked how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn't so much interested in what he had learned that day, but how he conducted himself in his studies. She always inquired, "Did you ask a good question today?" "Asking good questions," Rabi said, "made me become a scientist." In order to ask a good question I think you need to have noble motives behind the question. You have to want to know the truth. The Pharisees, by contrast, already had the answers to their questions. They felt they already knew the truth. How many times have we had it in for someone, asking a question designed to trap them? We do it to our loved ones all the time. In a moment like this we are not trying to learn; we are trying to injure. The Pharisees come to Jesus once again with a question designed to do damage to the reputation of Jesus. And once again Jesus proves he is equal to the task. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? Now, even though this question was used to test Jesus, it is nonetheless an important question. Perhaps in the life of Israel at that time it was THE most important question. But Jesus had a question of his own. A question, which signified that the times were changing; a new theological season had come. He put this question to the same Pharisees who had tested him: “What do you think of the Messiah. Whose son is he?” Some people have a talent for getting to the core of things. Julius Caesar wrote a good-sized book titled On the Gallic War. It is still used as a textbook by students of Latin. However, Caesar was also able to cut through all the details and get to the nub of a matter. He wrote a sentence that has become a classic in condensation: "Veni, Vidi, Vici" — "I came, I saw, I conquered." That sums it all up. One of the Pharisees, perhaps dissatisfied with his own search for a meaningful religious life, approached Jesus and asked him which was the great commandment, the one that would satisfy God and oneself. In responding to the man, Jesus cut through all the liturgical requirements, taking from the book of Deuteronomy the requirement to love God, from Leviticus the requirement to love one's neighbor, and welding them together with an emphasis on love and not on the observance of a host of laws. For Jesus, meaningful religion was expressed in a triangle of love: love for God, love for others, and love for self. In that triangle of love is found the secret of a fulfilling life on earth and a foretaste of the life to come. Let's look more closely at what he said. First, he said, we must love God. One of the ways we do this, he said, is with the heart... In Love with Christ Legend has it that a wealthy merchant traveling through the Mediterranean world looking for the distinguished Pharisee, Paul, encountered Timothy, who arranged a visit. Paul was, at the time, a prisoner in Rome. Stepping inside the cell, the merchant was surprised to find a rather old man, physically frail, but whose serenity and magnetism challenged the visitor. They talked for hours. Finally the merchant left with Paul's blessing. Outside the prison, the concerned man inquired, "What is the secret of this man's power? I have never seen anything like it before." Did you not guess?" replied Timothy. "Paul is in love." The merchant looked bewildered. "In Love?" "Yes," the missionary answered, "Paul is in love with Jesus Christ." The merchant looked even more bewildered. "Is that all?" Smiling, Timothy replied, "Sir, that is everything." G. Curtis Jones, Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching, Nashville: Broadman, 1986, p. 225. The Complexity of the Situation The Constitution of the United States started off with only 7 articles and 21 sections that took up only four handwritten pages including signatures! 4 pages! But to that we added 27 amendments. Today, the United States Code, which is all of the laws in this country, fills up around 80 volumes of books, nearly 800,000 pages, and this doesn’t even include the Federal Regulations. In 1942, the Virginia Code was a single book that had 2800 pages. Today, the Virginia Code is a 25-volume set of books with 15,000 pages, nearly 20,000 separate laws! And that is just Virginia! But, let’s not think for a moment that we are the only ones to take something simple and make it complex. God gave the Israelites something simple to follow, the Ten Commandments. Just ten simple rules to follow. Nothing complex about it. But were the Israelites content with just ten commandments? Oh, no. They ended up making 613 separate commandments, 365 negative and 248 positive. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Try following all those laws in order to be considered faithful and righteous, and you probably thought the original ten was hard enough. For the lawyer and the Pharisees there was certainly a complex issue at stake. The Israelites were under assault from a man who claimed to be God, and who did God-like things. But this man was a Jew; he should have known better, no one is God, but God. Yet, he was a man who knew and quoted the Hebrew scripture, who knew the laws and commandments better than any religious leader. The Pharisees had to put a stop to it, the situation was getting out of control, it was becoming too complex to let it go on much longer. This man must be stopped and the only why to stop him was to discredit him. And what better way to discredit Jesus, the Jew, than to ask him such a question, on a complex issue about the greatest commandment, that any answer he gave would spell defeat. Author Unknown Shema In Jewish circles the single most famous verse from the Torah is the so-called Shema from Deuteronomy 6. "Shema" is the Hebrew word for "hear" or "listen" and it comes from that verse, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." The Shema was traditionally recited by every Jewish child and adult at the start of each day and at the conclusion of each day. In other words, there was no single verse from the entire Torah that the average Jew knew better than this one. So when Jesus responded to the Pharisees' tricky question by quoting a portion of the Shema, he was throwing back in their faces something they took to be exceedingly basic, something that was second-nature to even the youngest Jewish child. It reminds you of the time Karl Barth is said to have been asked what he thought was the most profound of all theological truths. But instead of giving some jargon-laden, academic answer that used words like perichoresis, kenosis, or the insuperable transcendence of God's prevenient grace as it comes through the vicarious supererogation of the Son, Barth simply said, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." That answer was charming and disarming. Barth said, "The greatest truth is the one you already know, the one all Christians know, the one a three-year old can sing about." In Jesus' case, he was slyly insulting the Pharisees, demonstrating to everyone there that the Pharisees were not really interested in seeing if Jesus could answer their question since even the youngest person there knew that answer already. This was not a difficult question. It was like asking Albert Einstein, "Do you know what 2+2 is?" This was basic, elementary stuff. Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations You Can Read All Day The story is told of a little boy whose father taught mechanical engineering at a prestigious university. One day he came in the back door and asked his mother, “What time is it?” She wasn’t wearing a watch; plus, she was busy, so she said, “Your father's in the living room, go ask him.” The little boy shrugged his shoulders and said, “Never mind. I don’t want to know how to make a watch; I just want to know what time it is!” When it comes to religion and our understanding of the Christian faith, I suspect there are times when we all feel like this little boy. For example, there are sixty-six books of the Bible. Many of them are long and complex. For each book of the Bible there are commentaries explaining every nuance of every verse. If that weren’t enough, there are books on just about every conceivable topic of the Bible. There are books on church doctrine, Christian ethics and the history of Christianity. There are books on worship, mission, education, stewardship and prayer. Christian writers are all too happy to tell you how to improve your prayer life, your sex life, your golf score and your investment portfolio. O.K., maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit. The point is you could read all day, every day, for the rest of your life and still not make a dent in the mountain of information available on understanding the Christian faith and what it means to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Philip W. McLarty, The Christian Shema The Center of the Christian Universe There is no question, in the Bible, or in the history of the church, that love is the center of the Christian universe. It is one of three things, along with faith and hope, that lasts forever, and is the greatest of the three. It is the dynamis, the power that moves the world. It is the basic magnetism holding everything together: God's love for us, and our love for him and for each other. Just as carbon is the universal element of physical life, love is the universal element of spiritual life. "If I have not love," Paul said, "I am nothing," and he meant that literally. "Nothing!" Matthew Henry said love is "the spring and fountain of all the rest." But the word is much abused today. Love has been cheapened down to a Pavlovian response. Love has a million impostors, and many things that aren't love try to pass for it. How can we tell? What's the difference between Hollywood love and the love of God? William R. Boyer, Old Law, New Law What Do You Want? What do you want? What do you want? That question is such a commonplace. The waitress comes up to your table and asks, "Do you know what you want?" and you reply, "The chicken salad on rye, please." The telemarketer whose phone call has interrupted your dinner drones on and on until finally you break in to ask, "Can you please just tell me what you want!" Your child barges into the den while you are trying to read a book and with a slight hint of irritation in your voice you ask, "Honey, what do you want?" Most of the time when that question gets asked, we don't blink at it. We answer it easily. But that same question can be taken in more than one way. In the movie Field of Dreams, there is a humorous moment when Kevin Costner's character has taken a crotchety, famous author, played by James Earl Jones, to a baseball game. On their way to their seats, Costner casually asks, "What do you want?" to which the author snaps, "I want people to leave me alone. I want people to stop asking me things. I want people to stop believing that I have all the answers to life's questions." "No," Costner replies pointing to the nearby concession stand, "What do you want?" The man then orders a hot dog and a beer! Scott Hoezee, What Do You Want? “.