Sermons

It’s Never Quite That Simple

At first glance, this can seem like a random bit of a gospel where nothing much happens except that Jesus silences the Sadducees with his brilliance, perfectly answers a test question about the Torah, and performs some sort of mic drop moment about a psalm written in language that even the award-winning translator Robert Alter calls ‘cryptic.’

But this is Scripture; it’s never quite that simple. The opening line to this portion suggests an attitude. The Sadducees have been silenced.

As if Jesus, yup, the one who came here to be with us, as us, because God loves us, is wandering from town to town with the intention of besting the leaders of his community in public smackdowns.

Why would we read it that way?

Why are these question sessions portrayed as bad-faith contests? What is the upside of thinking that? Where would one get the idea that Jesus doesn’t invite questions and spirited discussion? Jesus was faithful and joyful in a faith tradition that has always celebrated partnered study, group consideration of questions, and, to be frank, pushback.

Think about it.

Both Moses and Abraham, on more than one occasion, challenge God’s plans directly to God. (not always when we think they should).

Various schools of thought existed among Jewish scholars and preachers in the First Century CE. They met and debated-in search of enlightenment-endlessly. They challenged each other in their theological thinking. It is a very life-giving way of engaging with the Divine.

And afterwards. they would eat Shabbat dinner at one another’s homes.

It’s not a nefarious plot; it’s the precursor to the Rabbinic tradition we see today.

The beef about who Jesus eats with is a big deal because he’s eating with them, too. Jesus is bringing these marginalized people with him when he comes to your house for dinner.

It’s like how our discomfort with Jesus is often because he loves, and encourages us to love, people with whom we disagree. People with whom we are uncomfortable.

Sometimes we can dig around the gospel and learn a lot about language and the context and sometimes we learn a lot about ourselves. Scripture can be both a microscope and a mirror.

It can be really helpful when engaging scripture to use stereoscopic vision, the practice of looking through two images or two time frames, to get a fuller idea of what might be there,

We can look at the people then and consider why they might be asking their questions. And I think we must be willing to ponder why we might ask those very same questions.

We hear them ask about the greatest commandment and think, “They are testing him?”

Maybe, or…

Keep in mind that this gospel is written after the First Jewish–Roman war. The Great Revolt. More than seven years of war, which resulted in the catastrophic slaughter of about a third of the Jewish population of Judea and the enslavement and dispersal of the survivors. It ransacked much of the city of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple.

Now imagine asking- in that moment -what the greatest commandment is. So much liturgy and the shared cultural history depended upon the Temple.

It was built by a descendant of David to replace the temple David’s son, Solomon, built, and King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed.

How do I practice my faith when so much seems lost?

How is God present with us?

Is God still present with us?

We hear the answer that Jesus gives in this gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

We can get caught up in pondering the two commandments, but I’d like to draw your attention to the last line:

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Here is what is true when everything else is stripped away.

Here is what everything can be built upon.

This can never be taken from you.

Only you can misplace this through neglect.

The idea that we are – or ever were- in control is an illusion.

We are utterly dependent upon God.

Which makes the commandments make sense. We have a part – we are not pawns or puppets.

Our part is to actively engage with God in all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. To understand that we fit within the larger reality, we are not the whole of reality.

If we were – today- to ask Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? What would be our purpose? Sort of a theological, “Will this be on the test?”

Would we be like the rich young man who gets the answer that, in order to gain the Kingdom of Heaven, he needs to let go of his earthly possessions, and he basically says, ‘yeah- not really what I had in mind.’

Would we listen?

Would we take Jesus’ answer in?

Are we really interested in loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind? Or are we holding back?

Unwilling to move ourselves out of the center of our lives?

Unwilling to make room for the one who gave us our lives?

Are we hedging our bets? Thinking that we need to keep at least one foot on the good side of this empire, of this competition, of this market?

Is this not the revolution, the liberation, we had in mind?

Then Jesus has a question for us:

“What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

Jesus asks questions to seek understanding and connection.

Jesus’ questions are overwhelmingly open-ended. They are designed to draw out the person being asked. To help them give voice to their concern. We know the various groups that existed during Jesus’ earthly ministry had differing ideas based on their schools of thought.

They had different ideas about what freedom, justice, or survival would require. The Zealots imagine a ruthless guerrilla fighter. The Sadducees are sure that it must be someone of noble birth and position. The Pharisees believe it will be a Priest King.

“What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

And they said to him, “The son of David.”

And then Jesus quotes Psalm 110: 1, from Alter’s translation of the Hebrew:

“The Lord’s utterance to my master: Sit at My right hand Till I make your enemies A stool at your feet.”

If the Messiah is the heir to David’s throne, well, we all know how that works. That fits the narrative of every earthly kingdom we have ever heard about or seen. The heir will vanquish his father’s enemies and restore his father’s kingdom.

But listen carefully: this psalm has HaShem saying to the psalmist’s master, ” Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies a stool at your feet. Vengeance and retribution are God’s. Human deliverance will not be accomplished by armies, or empires, or force.

The heartbreaking part is readily apparent to those familiar with the psalms, because it goes on to describe an absolute rout of the King’s army, with God’s help, against enemies reduced to “Valleys of corpses.” And their King, their priest, is anointed.

But when this Gospel is written, the Temple is in ruins

And the corpses filling the valley are their brethren.

Maybe they don’t go silent because they are amazed. Maybe they are silent because they are grieving.

The author of Matthew writes after the revolt, and the questions land differently. No longer a debate but perhaps a search for reassurance. A search for what still holds. And Jesus tells them, reassures them: This is in God’s hands, God’s time.

Always has been.

My friends, if Jesus asked us: What do you think of the Messiah?

What then?

Are we truly prepared to follow, as our anointed one, not the babe in the manger, not the glorious, resurrected, transfigured God- but the itinerant preacher who is forever having meals with people who vex you and inviting you to come along. Who is constantly asking you to put what you have in the basket because we are gonna feed all these people?

The one who was so faithful that he stood by them even when they mocked him, denied him, and executed him?

The one who is so faithful that he stands by us even when we mock him, deny him, and forget him?

What do you think of the Messiah?

It’s sort of a way of asking,

What do you think it’s gonna take to fix all this?

What’s it gonna take to heal you?

Do you need the Messiah to have the ultimate mic drop?

To silence all discussion and interpretation?

Do we ask questions to seek understanding or to test?

To learn what we do not know, or to merely confirm our prejudices?

Full disclosure, this is not a test; I’m asking us to sit with that question because our certainty, rigidity, and need to be right will get us nowhere.

It only makes us brittle and our days bitter.

The gospel is good news.

Good news for those of us who are hurting.

The good news is that how it is now is not how it will always be.

God is with us and seeking us in the questions.

As the poet Rilke wrote

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Amen