Sermon text - The Passion That Gives Life - Stewardship II

Matthew 22:34-40

The Passion That Gives Life – Stewardship II

James Sledge                                              October 23, 2011

It’s a stock image in comic strips, editorial cartoons, and such; the solitary guru sitting cross legged on some mountain peak.  There people seek him out to discover the secrets of life that he has discerned, the special wisdom that only he can dispense.  “O great sage, what is the meaning of life?”  The question expects some profound piece of wisdom that might be put on a motivational poster or spoken at a college graduation.  But what if the sage simply said, “Follow the rules.”

Follow the rules?  How boring is that?  Special wisdom on the meaning of life should be more profound.  It should be a secret, something hard to figure out, not “Follow the rules.”

I suspect that rules are not well loved anywhere, but Americans seem to have a libertarian streak that makes them especially distasteful to us.  Perhaps it came from this country’s largely Protestant origins.  Protestants, after all, split with the Roman Catholics in part over the issue of rules.  It’s not following the rules that saves us, we said.  It’s the gift of grace that we experience by faith.  Faith, not works, we proclaimed.

Regardless of where it comes from, we Americans often regard laws and rules as a necessary evil.  And as such, we prefer as few rules and laws as we can get by with. 

But even though we Protestant Christians sometimes act like Jesus is our guru who shows us a secret wisdom that gets us around the rules, I’m not sure Jesus shares our reservations about laws and rules. 

I say this because in Jesus’ day, many saw him as a wise teacher and came to him wanting to know the meaning of life.  On one such occasion, Jesus says, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 

And Jesus makes very clear in the Sermon on the Mount that he is not providing an alternative to the rules.  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law...”

In our gospel reading today, people again come to the wise sage, Jesus.  But it is Jesus’ opponents, and they hope to catch him in some mistake, to find some way of trapping him as they  pretend to seek his wisdom.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

It is a pretty straight forward question and Jesus gives them a straight forward answer.  Both he and his opponents agree that the law is a good thing, not a necessary evil but a blessing that shows the way to life.  And so Jesus does not need to employ any tricks or sleight of hand as he sometimes does with his opponents.  Here Jesus simply quotes from Scripture, from what we call the Old Testament.  “ ‘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.’ ”

I suppose Jesus’ opponents hoped that he would quote some commandment, saying “Do this,” and they could then say, “But what about that?”  But Jesus says that his commandments encompass all the law and the prophets.  He does have to quote two commandments, however.  Strict grammarians might object that there cannot be two greatests, but Jesus says otherwise.  In fact, I found a translation where Jesus introduces his second commandment this way, “And a second, just as great as this one…”

According to Jesus, these two greatest commandments, loving God with all your being and loving your neighbor as yourself, cover everything.  Nothing is left out.  But what exactly does it look like to love, to love with all your being?

What do you truly love?  Someone?  Something?  I know people who love their children, who love their spouse or significant other, who love chocolate, going to the beach, or reading a good book.  I know others who love sports or, often around here, love the Buckeyes.  And people who really love the Buckeyes don’t usually have to tell you.  It’s obvious.  They may have one of those OSU flags hooked to their car window, flapping the breeze.  They probably have more than one OSU sweatshirt and football jersey.  In fact they probably could go for days dressed in nothing but scarlet and gray without wearing the same thing twice. 

The local newspaper knows that lots of people love the Buckeyes.  That’s why they print special sections on game day.  A local TV station sometimes preempts network programs to air “Buckeye Blitz” on Friday nights because they know that those people who love the Buckeyes will watch.  And I imagine that a lot of travel agents are in deep depression over the state of OSU football this year because many of those who love the Buckeyes are willing to shell out big bucks to travel to bowl games.

Not being from Ohio, I don’t fully get the passion many people here have for the Buckeyes.  But I do think that this passion, this love for the school and the team, gives us a picture of what loving something with all your being looks like. 

We human beings were created in the image of God, a God the Bible tells us is love.  And so it makes sense that we are meant to love.  It is in our nature to love, to give ourselves passionately to other people and things.   We need to feel passion to be fully alive.  However, this need can get off track.  Our need to love and to feel passion can become distorted and misdirected.  It sometimes turns inward into a narcissism that demands the entire world be about me.  Gangs and cults take this need to give ourselves, to feel passion, and twist it into something frightening.  And sometimes love of community, school, or country gets twisted into a passion against the other, against my neighbor.

Being truly and fully alive requires loving passionately.  People who feel no passion or love toward anything or anyone seem lifeless and dead.  But all loves and passions are not equal, and some are even destructive. 

“O great sage, what is the meaning of life?  What is the secret that will let me be truly alive?”  And Jesus answers, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments…”  The greatest is, “ ‘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, just as great as this one: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

As we gather for worship today, once more it is Autumn, and once more it is stewardship season.  Stewardship, where more often than not, the big questions are, “Will there be enough pledges to fund the budget?  Will there be enough volunteers to run the programs?”  But I think Jesus would ask very different questions.  What love animates your life?  What passion orients and makes sense of all the other parts of your life?  What do you give yourselves to with abandon and extravagance?  Do you want to be fully alive, the person you were created to be?

His answer: Fall in love with God, with every fiber of your being, with all that you are and all that you have.  And have the same care and concern for every other human being that you have for yourself.  Do this, and everything else will fall into place.  Do this, and you will be truly alive.