Michael Green | Michael Valliant

Listen to the Overlooked

Background: Last Sunday’s Gospel reading was Matthew 21:33-46, known as The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. It’s the second of three parables Jesus presents to the Temple priests, elders, and Pharisees, painting a harsh picture of how Israel is not living up to their name in their disobedience to God. This is the text of a homily I presented to the Christ Church Easton Zoom prayer service. Since our time with the Gospel is also a discussion, questions and answers people had changed and shaped things somewhat differently than what is written here.

“Listen to the Overlooked”

This conversation between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees began last week for us, when Jesus entered the Temple and was grilled by the priests and the elders about who he thought he was and where he gets his authority. And Jesus gave them a parable about a father asking two sons to go work in the vineyard, the first said he wouldn’t go, but then did, the second said that he would go and then didn’t. And Jesus made sure they caught onto the chief priests and the Temple leadership being the second son, who talks a big game, but then doesn’t do what they said they would.

And now Jesus takes it further. He relates the parable of the wicked tenants to them. This isn’t about saying one thing and then failing to deliver. This reaches another level. It’s outright disobedience and being self-serving despite all they’ve been given.

Michael Green in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” says:

“This parable unveils the flagrant disloyalty of the leaders of Israel. God had given them a wonderful vineyard to cultivate; he had given them all the necessary equipment to do the job (a winepress, a watchtower for shelter and burglar patrol, a wall to keep out the wild pigs and other trespassers). He had put his trust in them. And what did they do? The history of Israel tells the story starkly. In brief, they appropriated his goods, rejected his prophets, denied his rightful claims on them and killed his Son. They were given freedom as well as trust, but the day of reckoning is at hand: they will be held accountable for the way they have exercised that freedom.”

This is helpful to know how Jesus felt about the priests and Pharisees. In a reading we haven’t discussed in this part of the lectionary, the start of Jesus entering the Temple here is him driving out all who were selling and buying and overturning the tables of the money changers. This is the time of table-flipping Jesus. And now he is telling it like it is.

Jesus is calling out those who have been charged with doing God’s work, but who instead are looking after their own assumed power. But let’s not tell ourselves that what we are reading is simply supposed to point out and remind us of the disobedience of past people and generations—is it possible that church today, that we might also sometimes be the wicked tenants who tried to act like the vineyard was theirs and ignore the will of the owner?

Jesus then goes into quoting Psalm 118 verbatim when he says:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.”

In this case, the SON and the STONE can be thought of as the same. Where they are ignoring and casting off John and Jesus, a new movement will begin that will have them as the main cornerstone, the foundation.

Let’s take a step back and look at some reasons why Jesus might be so upset with the chief priests and the Pharisees. What do you think?

They are putting the letter of the law over the intent.
They have ignored John the Baptist and now Jesus.
They are more worried about maintaining their own power than they are about the welfare of their people.
They are being exclusive rather than inclusive.
They are ignoring their responsibility to the poor, the sick, the downcast.

And what is it that Jesus is doing that is different? What do we see when we look at Jesus’s ministry?

He includes those who have been excluded—tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, and when called upon, Gentiles.
He is healing the sick and caring for the poor.
He isn’t concerned about status or worldly power.
When it comes to things like the Sabbath, Jesus is following the intent of the law, not the letter of the law when it comes to helping people who are hurting.
Jesus views himself as a servant first, he is there to help, and to lead by serving.

Let’s fast forward to our time. Even though we wear his logo and worship his name, are we still ignoring Jesus? What would it look like for the church to be obedient, to follow him and live as he did now?

Talking about the rejected stone, the rejected Son, Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer who we are studying, says:

“Jesus reminds us that sometimes it is the overlooked person who is the one we need to pay attention to.”

Who are the overlooked people now who we might want to pay attention to?

I doubt anyone can hear the things that Jesus taught and look at the life he lived and say, “no, that’s just a bad idea.” I wonder if part of what happened to the Pharisees and to the world today is that our hearts are out of step with God and that gets in the way of our following.

I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart lately, who lived from 1260 to 1328. He was a German Catholic theologian, mystic, and a part of the Dominican Order of Preachers. He is someone who seems to help me get out of my own way and do a better job of being open and listening for what God might want to say to me.

Let’s try a couple of his sayings and see if there is something helpful:

“Breaking Through”

Too often I decide what my
life should be and whether

there is from in it for You
while You sit in a deeper

place within me, wondering
what it will take for me to

make more of all the things
in my life—the good and

the bad—and so to learn to
break through to find You

in all that is and let You
take form in me in all that

I was and am and will be.

I wonder if too often our own ideas of what we should do push out any room in our hearts for God to operate. Did the Pharisees and chief priests have such fixed ideas of who God was and how he would speak to them, that it prevented them from stepping out in faith to trust the new direction John and Jesus offered?

On top of that, I wonder if what Jesus was modeling, what he was showing those in power was too radical, too much of a change for them when they came to enjoy so much the power and the status they had.

Here is one more from Meister Eckhart on what it looks like to follow Jesus:

“You Rise by Stooping Down”

With You everything
is upside down

and inside out,
for You rise by

stooping down,
and call me

to follow in
the footsteps

of your descent,
where I find

that You and
I are one

In being and
even in power.

Jesus rises by stooping down. He became incarnate, he humbled himself, and he called and showed himself to be a servant. Where we are in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus on his way to the cross, to his death. He is trying to get everything he can across to his disciples, as well as being critical of the Pharisees, giving them another chance to repent and obey.

We have seven Sundays left in the lectionary year. Something to consider in the way these readings are presented to us. We read and reflected on Matthew’s telling of Jesus being arrested, crucified, and resurrected earlier this year, in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.

We finish the church’s year with this series of teachings, warnings, and parables, and then November 26 is “Christ the King” Sunday, and the last reading we will get from Matthew before moving into Advent and the new year for the church, will be Matthew 25:31-46. Those will be the words we hear and reflect on to close this Gospel and then begin our Mark year.

Does anyone know the story?

Here is a key takeaway:

“Truly I tell you, just as you did (or did not do) it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did (or did not do) it to me.”

Rethinking Fairness

Background: On Sunday mornings at Christ Church Easton we have morning prayer and a discussion of the week’s lectionary Gospel reading on Zoom (in addition to three in-person services with Communion). Each Zoom discussion is different, depending on the reading and who is participating–in that way each discussion is organic and in places unscripted. So when I put together notes for a homily, some of it gets used, other parts don’t, and the key is to find the questions that are engaging people. This past Sunday, the Gospel reading was Matthew 20:1-16, in which Jesus tells the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, where the landowner sends workers into his vineyard in waves from early morning right up until one hour to go in the evening. He then pays all of them the same usual daily wage. And the workers who had been there all day say it isn’t fair.

This is the homily I put together, though the discussion itself moved in different ways and there were parts that weren’t used and great questions and comments that aren’t written down.

(The image above is “Red Vineyards at Arles” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888)

“Rethinking Fairness”

How many people are bothered by this parable? And what is it that rubs you the wrong way about it?

Our sense of fairness is disturbed. Even though those who worked from the early morning got exactly what they were promised, what they agreed to, which was a good wage for their work. And it was the landowner who offered them work in the first place.

The context of this reading, what we haven’t heard just before it, was Jesus and the rich young man, who kept all the commandments and was doing everything right, and he asked Jesus what else he had to do. And Jesus tells him to “sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” And the young man goes away grieving, because he had many possessions.

Jesus tells his disciples that it’s really hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This goes against all the thinking of the day, where the rich were looked at is being in God’s good graces. That makes the disciples ask who can be saved? And Jesus tells them, “For mortals it’s impossible, but for God, all things are possible.”

And here is the line we are waiting for. Peter gets worked up and says, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”

Jesus reassures them that when the time comes, they will be taken care of. But he can tell they are missing the point of everything. So we get the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.

Let’s look at the story. What can we say about the landowner? What do we notice about him and how he does things?

He is the one out finding the workers. It would have been more likely to see a manager or one of his employees, but it’s the landowner himself out there.

Michael Green in his book “The Message of Matthew” puts it like this—

“…he goes out himself. Indeed, he goes out repeatedly to seek them. They are hungry, unemployed, and as the day wears on, increasingly hopeless. He cares about that. He wants to give them a job to work and a reward.”

Then we get the payment. Everyone who works gets the same thing, a day’s wages. The order in which people are paid is a zinger, paying the last first, so that the early arrivers see what they are given.

“The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard,” by Rembrandt, oil on panel, 1637.

I love this perspective from Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She looks through a contemporary lens:

“The landowner in Jesus’s story doesn’t judge his workers by their hours. He doesn’t obsess over why some workers are able to start at dawn and others are not. Perhaps the late starters aren’t as literate, educated, or skilled as their competitors. Perhaps they have learning challenges, or a tough home life, or children to care for at home. Perhaps they’re refugees, or don’t own cars, or don’t speak the language, or can’t get green cards. Perhaps they struggle with chronic depression or anxiety. Perhaps they’ve hit a glass ceiling after years of effort, and they’re stuck. Perhaps employers refuse to hire them because they’re gay or trans or disabled or black or female.”

That’s the thing with Jesus’s parables—he gives us a story with just enough information to get our brain turning, but he doesn’t fill in all the details—that is for us to do. And often his parables disturb us and our sense of how things are.

Back to the parts of our story: we’ve got the landowner sending everyone into the vineyard, we’ve got payment being made, and then we have the reaction.

The last into the field are the first to get paid, and they get a day’s wages. As the first, the earlier workers approach, they are expecting more. And then they get upset.

“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”

And the landowner says, didn’t I give you what I promised you, what we agreed to? Am I not allowed to give what belongs to me how I choose? Are you envious because I am generous?

What a question. I wonder, is it his generosity that offends or disturbs us here?

Here’s the thing. Part of why our sense of fairness is put off here is that we instantly identify with the laborers who went out at dawn, who have been out in the vineyard the longest.

Let’s move the parable into what it’s really addressing here: salvation. I have to tell you, when it comes to my life, to my faith—I am not one of the early arrivers. Like most things in life, I got there late.

What do the Gospels and Paul’s letters tell us over and over again: we are not saved by works, we are saved by grace, which is a gift from God. We can’t earn grace and it’s not a competition.

Here is Michael Green again:

“Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fisherman and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God.”

If we fast forward to after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, into the Book of Acts, what happens at and after Pentecost—Peter and the disciples bring more and more into the fold, baptizing and teaching thousands. They didn’t have the attitude of, “Hey—where were these guys while Jesus was here—these new disciples have it so much easier.” Instead, Peter and company are thrilled to have more workers in the vineyard.

I wonder if the problem here is us and our small sense of fairness. Maybe God’s sense of fairness is bigger and more expansive than ours is, and that is a good thing.

Grace, like forgiveness which we’ve been talking about for the past couple weeks, depends on our receiving it and paying it forward. God’s plan is to include everyone.

Back to Thomas to bring it home:

“Could it be any more obvious that we are wholly dependent on each other for our survival and well-being? That the future of creation itself depends on human beings recognizing our fundamental interconnectedness and acting in concert for the good of all? That ‘what’s fair’ for me isn’t good enough if it leaves you in the wilderness to die? That my sense of ‘justice’ is not just if it mocks the tender heart of God? That the vineyards of this world thrive only when everyone has a place of dignity and purpose within them? That the time for all selfish and stingy notions of fairness is over?”

A question/thought that came up in our Zoom discussion today was, “How can people learn to be generous if they don’t experience it?” That’s so true. Those that were invited into the vineyard last experienced that kind of generosity. Let’s step into that.

Put yourself in the life of those that arrived at 5:00pm, for whatever reason. Imagine the joy you feel, imagine the gratitude, imagine going home and what you would say to your family. Imagine how you might be inclined to treat other people you encounter?

Maybe this is how we should think of fairness, the same way we think of grace and mercy and love.

What will we do with new life?

Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. July 15 and 16 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for July 16 was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, “The Parable of the Sower,” where Jesus tells a parable to large crowds gathered by the sea to listen to him, then explains it in private to his disciples.

The image used at the top of the page is “The Sower” by Vincent Van Gogh.

What Will We Do with New Life?

How many people have heard the “Parable of the Sower” before? And how many people have then sat and tried to figure out, “Hhhmmm, which kind of soil am I?”

That’s a fair question to ask. We want to figure out how we relate to the story. At the same time it takes the Gospel message and makes it all about us, the readers or listeners.

I wonder though, if we might hear the Parable of the Sower and wonder what it tells us about the character of God? What can we learn about His kingdom?

Let’s start with the soil. By itself, soil is just soil. And it will go on being soil. But when the Sower adds a seed, that’s when transformation happens; the soil becomes a part of the process of new life springing forth.

Michael Green, in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” tells us:

“It’s not just ‘a farmer’ who went out to sow his field. It is (literally) ‘the farmer’ and he comes bringing the precious seed which can transform the soil. The kingdom comes when the soil and the seed get together. It is a marriage of seed and soil. The seed is the word of God proclaimed by the Sower of God. And the kingdom begins to come to life when the ‘soil’ receives the seed of the word for itself. Then it begins to germinate and shoot.”

In Matthew’s telling of the parable, Jesus is the Sower, and God’s Word, spread generously into the soil, adds what wasn’t there, what we can’t add on our own, what we need God to do. And that changes everything. He changes everything.

Through his sowing of the Word, Jesus is creating his kingdom in and among us. And listen to how He sows: some seeds fell on the path, other seeds fell on rocky ground, other seeds fell among thorns, other seeds fell on good soil. God is not stingy with his seeds, he spreads them everywhere. And that’s good news for us, for sure.

Why is that good news? First, we can’t create this transformation, this new life, on our own. We can’t plant the seed, it’s not our seed. We need God to take the initiative. Forgive me a cheesy pun, but in my head I hear a version of Tom Cruise’s voice from the movie Top Gun saying, “We feel the need for SEEDS!” And I apologize if that is the only line you remember from this sermon.

There are more reasons why it is good news that God is not stingy when he sows his seeds. As mentioned, we have a tendency to hear this parable and try to figure out which kind of soil we are.

Am I the path, where the birds come and eat the seed up? Am I the rocky ground, without much soil, no depth and the sun scorches and dries up? Am I full of thorns, choking the seeds? Or am I good soil, bringing forth grain?

I wonder if this is one of those multiple-choice questions where the answer is: “E: All of the above.” What if on any given day, we might be one way and on a different day another?

Catch me on a Monday and I am distracted, maybe I’ve just been in an argument, or I’ve just gotten some bad news, or the washing machine has overflowed just before I have to leave for work. In those moments, I am not fertile soil. Don’t look for grain coming from me then.

But I don’t have to stay that way. Jesus is going to sow the seeds of God’s Word and I might miss it the first time, but I can have better days and better moments, and be more open and be more fertile. And I might not always stay that way either, as much as I want to.

God’s willing to work with us. No matter what soil we are, he’s going to sow the seeds. But he wants us to get it. He wants us to be fruitful.

Matthew’s Gospel is known as the discipleship Gospel. The author wants us to understand what it means to follow Jesus, what the costs are, and what’s expected of us.

At the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus goes and sits beside the sea. That sounds nice, like something we can relate to living on the Eastern Shore. Then such big crowds gather around him that gets into a boat. The thing about being in a boat on the water, sound carries. He’s created his own amplification system.

And he tells the big crowds about the sower and the seed. And as he finishes his teaching he says, “let anyone with ears listen!” Knowing not everyone will understand.

The way today’s reading is put together, we jump from verse 9 to verse 18, where Jesus explains the parable. But the part we jumped over, is the disciples coming up to Jesus after he has been preaching to the crowds and they ask him why he speaks in parables.

So the second part of today’s reading is Jesus speaking directly to his disciples. No big crowds. And now he focuses on the soil. He asks the disciples to look in the mirror. He asks us to look in the mirror.

If through God’s Word, if through sowing these seeds, Jesus is bringing forth new life, if that’s his example to us, if that is what he is showing as the character of God, what does that ask of us?

He’s asking us to be open, to be receptive, to be good soil. And Jesus spells it out for us clearly. This means, “to hear the word and understand it, to bear fruit and yield, whether a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty.”

What does it mean to bear fruit here?

I want to go back to a couple weeks ago, to something Fr. Bill Ortt said: he said that wherever a believer is, wherever a disciple is, there is the kingdom of God.

As believers, as disciples, we bring the kingdom with us. Well, jeez, what does that mean? Here is another from Fr. Bill—and this is so helpful. Fr. Bill told us to think of it as KINGSHIP rather than kingdom. That we are closer to understanding when we think of it as a RELATIONSHIP, not a place.

To bear fruit, to carry that seed, that new life from God, sprouting in us, would be to have a different, deeper, relationship with God. To put God’s love at the center of who we are, how we live, what we do. To live differently than what we see going on in the world today.

This is not a matter of reducing the moral of the story to, we should all be better people. In fact, we might not want to try to reduce Jesus’s parables to simple morals anyway—they have a tendency to expand and confound our thinking and increase our wonder more than they do to clarify things.

Jesus is giving us a story about the Sower, (he calls it the parable of the sower, not the parable of the soil), about the word of God (the seed) creating new life where there was only soil. And maybe we don’t take enough notice in real life, watching seeds crack open, start to sprout, blossom, BLOOM. Have you ever watched that happen over the course of days, weeks, months in your own garden? I am always late getting vegetables in and right now my tomatoes are green and just taking shape on the vines. And I get excited every time I go water them. Do you get giddy and overjoyed at the very simplest things?

What about thinking about yourself that way, and your relationship with God. What if our hearts were full of gratitude for this new life that has been given to us, that has nothing to do with anything we’ve done?

How do we respond? Maybe we want to do our best to cultivate the soil of our hearts, of our lives, so that God’s Word can take root, can crack open, can bloom, and bear fruit? Maybe our thanks to God IS to bear fruit—to carry that seed, that new life, into who and how we are in the world.

No matter what kind of terrain I am at the moment, Jesus is sowing the seeds that offer me new life. What an incredible gift. What am I going to do with it? What are we going to do with it?

I want to leave you with the words of Debie Thomas, from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” and what she wishes for the church, and what we might take from the Parable of the Sower—

“How I wish we were known for our absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of recoiling from our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst forth into colorful, riotous life.”

Jesus has sown new life, God’s love, into the soil of our lives. What are we going to do with it?

Let Love Become a Reality

This week, I was asked to lead our Wednesday morning healing prayer service. It’s a small, wonderful, heartfelt and Spirit-led service, which is held every Wednesday at 10:00am. The Gospel reading for the morning was Matthew 22:34-40, which is Jesus answering the question, which is the greatest commandment. I’m including the reading below and then the homily I gave in response to it:

Matthew 22:34-40 NRSV

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘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.”

“Let Love Become a Reality”

I love when people asked Jesus questions. Depending on who was asking, they didn’t always love his responses, or the questions he asked back to them.

But I think Jesus also had in mind the spirit in which the questions were asked. Thinking of John’s Gospel—both Nikodemus and the woman at the well were trying to understand. And Jesus encouraged them. Here and elsewhere, when the Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers asked questions, it was often to try to trip him up, to trick him into saying the wrong thing so they could discredit him or have him arrested.

Here we have an expert in the law asking him which commandment is the greatest?

So Jesus goes to Scripture, he pulls from Deuteronomy 6:5, part of the Shema, the creed of Judaism, for “Love the Lord your God,” and to Leviticus 19:18 for “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

On these two commandments, hang all the Law and the Prophets. He’s given a perfect legal answer. And he’s done something even more to confound the law expert.

Michael Green in his book “The Message of Matthew,” points out that “For people who, like this expert in the law, were strong on ethics and weak on relationships, this strongly relational teaching was a revealing mirror of the heart.”

Strong on ethics, weak on relationships. A mirror of the heart. When I think about a lot of people today—we are strong on ideas, maybe strong on convictions, but not so great on relationships. We want to label people as different from us and say therefore they are wrong. Our tendency is to distance ourselves rather than drawing closer, rather than trying to understand or to love.

When we think of God and our neighbors in terms of relationships, in terms of beings who we are called to love, we have to get off of our high horses. If we try to love God with everything we have, we also have to love his creation, and the people he created.

Green writes:

“If there is real love for God, there will inevitably be real love for neighbor; God’s overflowing love is infectious. The criterion of whether love for God is real is whether or not it is reflected in our relationships with others. And it will not do to say, as many do, ‘I don’t do any harm to anyone.’ That is not only negative, but it neglects the first and great commandment, to put God as number one in our lives. With God first and neighbor second, all else in the law is commentary.”

To make a go at loving, we have to have softer hearts, our hearts need to be renewed—we can’t just be following orders (the law).

How do we do this? It doesn’t happen all at once. It takes time.

Our friend and brother John Coleman points out that as a police officer, he responds differently to situations today than he did 25 years ago. He always did his job and responded according to law, but now his first response is based much more in love and understanding, then when he was newer at the job. He credits both God and time with working on him.

I can tell you from my own experience that I think and feel and respond differently now to things than I did five years ago. And that has been five years of studying Scripture, of prayer and worship, of spiritual friendships and encouragement. When we use the term Christian formation, we are hoping, working to be formed in a more Christ-like way.

I hope I continue to grow and learn and improve how I love God and love my neighbor.

Reflecting on this passage in Matthew, N.T. Wright (in his book “Matthew for Everyone”) says:

“The heart doesn’t seem to get renewed all in one go. Many, many bits of darkness and impurity still lurk in its depths, and sometimes take a lot of work, prayer, and counsel to dig out and replace with the love which we all agree should really be there.”

I’m thinking of Paul writing in Romans where he says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.” I think we all can relate to Paul’s dilemma sometimes.

Given the fact that we are standing here together at a healing service on Wednesday morning, I think we all know it is right and a good thing to love God and love our neighbor. We can agree both that that is what we are supposed to do and that it is what we are commanded to do.

But it has to be more than a command, it has to be more than instructions to follow.

Wright says:

Commandments “come into their own when they are seen not as orders to be obeyed in our own strength, but as invitations and promises to a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become a reality.”

There it is: an invitation, a promise to a new way of life where we leave behind hatred and pride and love becomes our reality. Let’s make that our prayer, let’s make that our guiding star.

If we go back to the scene, this encounter that Matthew gives us: Jesus is answering the question posed to him by a legal expert, and he gives a brilliant answer.

If we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul—we’re not going to put idols above him, we’re not going to have other gods before him, we’re not going to take his name in vain, and on down the list.

And if we truly love our neighbor as ourselves, that should take care of murder, stealing, coveting, adultery, bearing false witness.

Jesus gives us the Cliff Notes, the summary, the thing we can memorize or a cheat sheet we can put in our pockets and refer to when we need it—you know, for when we don’t have our Bibles with us or don’t have the time to look up the answers about the law.

But it’s so much more than that. It can be a basis for a new way of life, a better way of life.

The poet Pablo Neruda wrote in his love sonnets:

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

What if we think about knowing and loving God that intimately. What if we have God’s love so much in our hearts and in our lives that we become that love when we think, when we feel, when we pray, and when we act. What if we know no other way of loving, than as God loves.

What if it didn’t matter that love was a commandment, because love was simply our reality.

Amen.

*Graphic at the top from Scripture Type, Treasure the Word.