Sermonstudio

Sometimes things happen that push us back to our deepest questions and force us to answer. A marriage breakdown, loss of a job, kids leaving home, or simply the midlife re-evaluation that all of us go through -- any of these can push us back to asking what it's all about, what we really want in our lives, what matters and what doesn't ... what we want our life to count for.

Sometimes the question gets asked more directly. An Islamic family moves in down the street, and their children ask your children what they believe. You become friends with a Buddhist coworker, and find yourself deeply impressed with the quality of his or her life, and wondering if that is available in your own tradition. The local Jehovah's Witness buttonholes you and you wish you could put into words what it is you believe.

Moments like that test us -- not so much in the sense of knowing the answers, passing or failing, but more in the sense of what we mean when we're setting up the mikes for a concert, and we go around to each one and tap on it to see if it makes a noise; and then we lean in close and we say, "Test ... test...."

We're trying to find out if it works, what kind of sound quality and range we get with it, how wide a field of pickup it has -- in other words, how is it going to serve us in the concert, and do we need to adjust the mike stand's height, or move things around a bit, or change the balance back at the mixing board? That kind of a test -- a test to see what's working and what needs adjustment, and to figure out how we can step in and run with it.

That's the kind of test that the Pharisees brought to Jesus. Here's this guy who's giving amazingly penetrating responses to challenging questions, who faces hostility with courageous integrity, and who makes people really think about where their life is going. We want to know more about what he thinks. We want to try him on for size: is he leading somewhere I'm trying to go myself? Has he got something to say that I should be listening to? What would it mean for me to start paying attention to him?

And so they come up and tap him and say, "Test ... Test.... Of the 613 commandments given in the Torah, and the hundreds more elaborated by our rabbis1 -- out of all these hundreds of precepts guiding our lives -- which is the most important? Or can we rank them? Is there one that is most important, or must they all equally be remembered and obeyed?" Test ... test....

Haven't you ever felt life tugging at you with similar questions? Is it more important to be truthful or to be kind? To fully develop the capacities God gave me to use in this world, or to sacrifice my desires to the needs of others? As a Christian am I primarily supposed to care for and be kind to others, or am I primarily supposed to stand up for my beliefs and the Lordship of Jesus Christ? How does this religion I've inherited work? Test ... test....

And you know what? Jesus doesn't condemn the Pharisees for asking the question. In fact, he seems to welcome the debate, because after he answers this question he turns around and asks them one, a challenge to them to think about the implications of one of their favorite messianic texts, to probe what it is they hope for and whether their ideas are big enough. Can your ideas carry the weight of the day? Test ... test....

To paraphrase an important dictum of the pioneering psychiatrist Milton Erickson, "Until you are willing to question what you already know, what you know will never grow bigger, better or more useful."2 Just as testing allows us to perfect the setup of the sound system, so these kinds of probing test questions allow our faith to become stronger and more useful.

So what did Jesus have to say to that perennially nagging test question about what it is in our religion that matters most? Since we already "know" what answer he gave -- love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself -- it may be hard for us to hear this really ring in the auditorium, and to appreciate what incredible equipment it is. In fact, when Luke tells about this question, he has Jesus go on to tell a startling, stand-up-and-bite-you story to help unpack the implications of it. You can go home and read it beginning at Luke 10:25. But today we're sticking to Matthew's telling of it, and Matthew just drops it in like a time bomb and waits for it to explode in the middle of some situation in our own lives.

So pick one. Pick something in your life that's pushing you, asking you, whether you've quite realized it or not, what your priorities are, what matters most, what's most important. Pick something that's tapping you and saying, "Test ... test...." (pause)

Okay. Got the scene? Now, as you feel the tug in two directions, now hear Jesus say, "The greatest and first commandment is this: love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:38-37 cf). (pause)

What do you suppose it might mean to love God with total commitment in this situation? (pause) What else might it mean? (pause) And would somebody else have another way to look at it? (pause) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Oh, but there's more. There's another top-ranker, one that accompanies and perhaps interprets the first. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39b). What might that mean in the situation you're considering? (pause) What could it mean to be as concerned for the well being of the other people involved as you are for yourself? To seek their highest good as well as yours? (pause) What about the people who aren't directly involved, but who are ultimately affected? (pause) What does it mean to hold everyone's needs as equally important in this? (pause) Does this help you to see your way more clearly? Does it feel like something you can do? Test ... test....

Sometimes it's hard to know what it means to "love" someone, whether God or our neighbor or even ourself. We may think it means to have warm and cozy feelings about them, which we all know simply isn't going to happen all the time -- even for people we deeply and truly love, like our life partner or our kids. I don't believe God commands us to have warm fuzzy feelings. Love is action on behalf of the loved one's greatest good; and while the regular practice of such action is likely to be accompanied sooner or later by warm emotional concern, it's not the emotion that matters. It's the action.

But what does that action mean? It surely can't mean the same thing toward God, who strictly speaking needs nothing from us, as toward, say, our children; and what is loving toward our children may be something quite different from what is loving toward our spouse, or our boss, or the homeless person we pass on the way to the bus each day.

Ah! Another "Test ... test...." question! What does it mean to love?

Well, if you want part of Jesus' answer on that, you can turn to Luke 10:25 and read the story he told there, about the guy who got beat up on the way to Jericho, and the folks who cared about him, or not.

But I don't think that's going to be enough to unpack the meaning this has for Matthew. Because Matthew tells of this testing encounter at a different time -- during the last week of Jesus' life -- and in a different context. For Matthew, this episode is part of a whole series of discussions about what it means to love God. We've already heard a whole string of parables about the kingdom of God and the last judgment; we've had Jesus answer a sticky question about how a faithful Jew can live under a pagan empire; and Jesus is about to go on from here to lambaste the current religious leadership for totally twisting the meaning of religious observance and turning it into a petty and burdensome matter of 6,000 picky regulations, while totally missing the really important matters of justice and mercy and honesty. From there, Jesus will go on to bewail the way his people consistently resist and reject God's messengers, and to warn about the disaster descending on the nation. In all of this he is talking at least as much about what it means to love and obey God as he is about the neighbor ... not that these can ultimately be separated. But we obviously need guidelines that go beyond the Good Samaritan and stopping to help those in need. What does love mean when it comes to God?

Peter Michaelson, a minister in Rhode Island, noted several years ago in an online discussion, "Love is lots of things, but one main one is a commitment to pay attention."3 It's fairly easy to see how that plays out with human beings: "It's no good to give a homeless person [an electronic game,] and it's no good to give a rich kid a pair of socks."4 Paying attention to the situation and needs of each one would lead us to give appropriate gifts.

It's the same way with God. To pay attention to God is much more than scrupulously observing the minutiae of the laws. Very often we use laws and rules to excuse ourselves from paying attention -- we substitute a law for the hard work of being present. God demands of us something more. To fulfill the law and the prophets, to rightly love God and our neighbor, we must pay attention. We must spend time getting to know who this is that we worship, steep ourselves in the scriptures and in prayer and in the cares of the world around us, until our hearts beat to God's pulse ... until, as the prophet Mohammed said, we become "the hearing by which [God] hears, the sight by which he sees and the hand with which he grasps and the foot with which he walks."5 Until we become the love that God is.

As you pay attention to the testing situations in which you find yourself, as you pay attention to God and to others and to your own being and needs, as you hold all of these in honest and attentive compassion, you will find something amazing happening. You will find yourself growing and deepening and resonating with a much wiser and more loving voice than your own as it whispers, "Test ... test ..." out into your world. Amen.

____________

1. Rabbi Wayne Dosick, Living Judaism (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), pp. 31, 33.

2. Quoted in Dawna Markova's, No Enemies Within (Berkeley, California: Conari Press, 1994), p. 118. Erickson said "be confused about" rather than "question."

3. Peter Michaelson, note #45 to sermonshop_1996_10_27.topic@ecunet.org.

4. Ibid.

5. From Introduction to Sufism (author and publisher not given), p. 79, as quoted by John Lohr in note #7 to sermonshop_1996_10_27.topic@ecunet.org.