Trinity 18 2018

Matthew 22:34-46

September 30, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”  That’s an old saying, and maybe one that even the Sadducees and the Pharisees knew about, for it sure seems like this is how they lived.  Trying to trick Jesus, the Pharisees had just asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. He didn’t fall into their trap, and His answer to render unto Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is God’s stumped them. Then the Sadducees have a go at it next and asked whose wife would a widow seven times over be in the resurrection, which they didn’t even believe in.   He astonished them with his teaching and with His rebuke that they don’t know the Scripture nor the power of God.

And so now the Pharisees try again, this time asking Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the Law. God had given many laws to His people: moral laws, ceremonial laws, civil laws. And the Pharisees had added to these as well. And so a lawyer, one versed in these laws as a profession, which of all of these was the most important. These are no innocent questions.  All of this takes place sometime between Palm Sunday and Wednesday of Holy Week.  They were close, very close, to being able to accuse Jesus and have evidence that He is a blasphemer, that He is one who is allowing people to think of Him as, to worship Him as, God. To a Jew, there was no greater offense than this. Their Creed, their basic statement of faith boiled down to what is called the “Great Shema”, from Deuteronomy 6, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.”

Knowing this of course, it is not an accident that Jesus’ answers this trick question by completing that very same verse and the following one from Deuteronomy, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  All the commandments, in particular the 10 Commandments are summarized by these two: love God, and love your neighbor.

Jesus doesn’t stop there. And Jesus doesn’t ask them a trick question.  “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He?” The better question aren’t the ones that we ask Jesus, but the ones that Jesus asks us. Who is the Christ? Now that’s the real question.  They answer correctly, “The Son of David.”  And so Jesus is.  Fully man, in the lineage of King David Himself.  But they don’t answer fully, nor do they believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that He can perform all the miracles that He did. It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that David calls Him Lord.  It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that He is the Lord whom they should love with all their heart and soul and mind. 

They don’t want to believe that Jesus is God.  But they can’t prove otherwise either.  No one can accuse Jesus of sin. His miracles were undeniable. His teaching was consistent with the Law, with Moses, with the Prophets, with the entire Old Testament.  Just a day or two earlier He was acclaimed by the palm waving crowds that He is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, the One who comes to save His people.  He speaks with the authority that only God has.

But soon they came up with a new plan, a plan to see if this Jesus would bleed like a man.  And He does.  And as He bled out of the nail holes in His hands and feet, from the scourging on His back and the crown of thorns upon His head, they mock Him, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If you are the Son of God, comes down from the cross…. He saved others; He cannot save Himself… He trusts in God; let God deliver Him now, if He desires Him. For He said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:40, 42a, 43).

Talk about blasphemy.  On the cross, as the Son of David and the Son of God hung dying, they pit Jesus’ divinity against His love and His mercy. It is there on the cross that Jesus lives out what love actually is, and fulfills the greatest commandment in the Law: His love of God the Father in submitting to death upon the cross, and His love for His neighbor, for all people, by dying for them.  For as Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

It is necessary for Jesus, true God and true man, to suffer in this way. It is the act of purest love: the love of God toward humanity.  This is how the Lord sets His heart in love on the world, in that He sends His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. This is how God loves even the Pharisees who mock and murder, the Sadducees who ridicule and rebuke, you and I who all too often lack to show the love that has been shown to us.

Repent. For you do not love the Lord with all your heart nor all your soul nor all your strength. You do not love your neighbor as you ought. You try, for sure, but your sin still clings to your mortal flesh in this life. As baptized children of God, your sinful will has been regenerated, a new man in Christ has been born, the Holy Spirit dwells in you to lead and guide you in all truth according to the Word of Christ. You have received the grace of God that was given you in Jesus Christ, you have been enriched in Him in all speech and knowledge. Do not harden your heart like those of long ago, and like many still do today.  But let us be like that centurion who stood at the foot of the cross, and when seeing all that took place, proclaim, “Truly this was the Son of God!” And let us believe and confess with all the saints of God that Jesus the Christ has been raised from the dead, and out of His perfect love, has overcome the sharpness of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers (Te Deum).

The sum of the commandments is love, a love rooted in Christ’s action resulting in your deliverance from sin, a love that fulfills all God’s commandments.  As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, love Jesus, the Lord your God, with all our heart, soul, and mind; and love your neighbor, who is beloved by Jesus, one for whom Jesus died, as Jesus has loved you. God is faithful