What Other Commandment Would We Need?

This sermon, based on Matthew 22: 34-46 was first presented at First Baptist Church, 

Nashville, Tennessee at the "Word & Table Service". 

October 29, 2017

Last week we looked at the story of the Pharisees seeking to trap or trick Jesus by forcing him to pick a side on the controversial issue of paying the Roman tax.  After that, in a story we did not read, the Sadducees sought to trick Jesus on the issue of marriage after the resurrection. Today, we once again see the Pharisees back to trick Jesus.  Tim Wildsmith did a great job reflecting on this passage in the sanctuary service last week – as he always does.  I will do my best to keep up this week. 

In our reading from Matthew this morning, we see the Pharisees trying to discredit Jesus by revealing what they assume will be his lack of knowledge of the law.  The name, “Pharisee”, literally means “Separatist” and it alluded to the fact that the Pharisees had as their purpose to separate themselves from ritually “unclean” people and things.  Beyond that, the Pharisees were serious students of the Jewish law.  They had studied the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures (our Old Testament) and could tell you that they found 613 laws – 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commandments.  The Pharisees had studied each and every one.  They had created sub-rules and ancillary laws that were designed to make the existing laws clearer.  For example, the Sabbath was to be remembered as a day of rest and kept holy because that was one of the ten commandments that God gave Moses.  The Pharisees would have discussed and collected rules about what it meant to keep the sabbath holy; what could be done and what could not be done in order to honor that day as intended. 

Part of the discussion that Pharisees, and those like them, would have had, would be to take those 613 laws and rank them according to weight.  The would have considered all the laws to be important and would have sought to keep them all, but they would rank them as which would be the most important or first among the laws.  The Pharisees had already agreed that Deuteronomy 6:5 (that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might) was the most important of the laws.  So, their question to Jesus was to test and see if he would also say the same thing or find out if he had studied sufficiently to know what the “right” answer should be. 

Jesus answers the Pharisees well and he adds the bonus question of what is the second most important, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.  This was not radical for Jesus to say this, but Jesus would have had a very different understanding of what this meant than those who were questioning him.  Jesus says that the entirety of the law and prophets hangs on these two commandments.  Which is to say that every rule given by God in the old testament could be summed up in Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.  While the Pharisees would have still been seeking to obey all of the 613 laws and their additional counterparts, Jesus is saying all you really need to know is love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. 

As Tim Wildsmith pointed out last week, these commands sound pretty straightforward as presented.  Do I love God?  Yes.  Do I love other people?  Well, not ALL the people and not necessarily ALL the time, but I try.  So, I am doing pretty good.  So, end of sermon.  I love God.  I try to love other people.  I’m doing pretty good.  And that is probably what the Pharisees thought.  They certainly were trying to prove their love for God by obeying all the commandments.  They would have also said they were seeking to love their neighbor.  However…

I told you a minute ago that the name, “Pharisee” means “separatist”.  However, that name is not what the Pharisees called themselves.  “Pharisee” was a nickname used by people who were not Pharisees to describe this group.  The Pharisees actually referred to themselves as “Haberim” which means…Neighbor.  For the Pharisees to love their “neighbor” as themselves was pretty easy if they considered their “neighbor” to be the people that thought like them and lived like them, but Jesus demonstrates again and again that this is not what he means. 

Earlier in Matthew (Chapter 5) Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? …And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Jesus’ story of the compassionate Samaritan man in Luke 10 is in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus flips the question and does not say who is the neighbor but asks “who was a good neighbor to the man in need?” indicating that the importance is not on who to love, but how we love.

These greatest commandments would indicate that love originates with God, for the bible says that God is love. We must love God with our whole being. Jesus says to love God with your heart, soul, and mind. Deuteronomy says, “heart, soul, & might”. Other gospels include “Strength”. We could analyze each of these words and it would be interesting and enlightening (Tim did a bit of this last week and did a great job), but the point of including all these qualities (heart, soul, mind, might, strength) is they are inclusive of the whole of our being. They represent our intellect, our spirit, our feelings, our relationships and should encompass everything about us. The point of the commandment is to love God with your whole being and everything you have and everything that you are.

The reality is that though we say that we love God, we do not always show it with every part of our life. We have the parts that we hold on for ourselves out of fear, insecurity, materialism, lust, anger, among other reasons. Demonstrating our love for God with everything we are and everything we have is hard. We may desire it, but we rarely accomplish it. It is a good thing that our loving God perfectly is not a pre-requisite for God loving us perfectly. Our grasp of God’s love for us is the beginning of our ability to love God, love ourselves and love others. When we have aligned our whole being with the God who is love, then we, in turn, can love well.

The command is to love your neighbor as yourself. It is clear that this love of neighbor also grows from our love of self. It seems perhaps the implication would be that we already love ourselves. We already seek what is best for ourselves. We already try to get what we want or what we think we deserve. We are concerned about our rights and our freedom. We want to be sure we and those we love are taken care of. If this is the interpretation, then the encouragement is not just look out for your own interests, but look out for the interests of others as much as you look out for yourselves. It would be impossible for us to be completely selfish if we are considering others as important as we consider ourselves.

But many of us have been taught that we should not love ourselves at all. We have associated love of self with self-indulgence or selfishness. We don’t want to be selfish or self-focused and so instead, we focus on how we should be loving and serving others. However, this verse does not say Love your neighbor instead of yourself. It doesn’t even say love your neighbor more than yourself, but as much as you love yourself, love your neighbor that much. There is some love of self that is involved. I have thought a great deal about this passage through the years because my experience has been that in trying to live out different understandings of this and other passages in the bible, so many people have felt that they have been called to be doormats in the world to be walked on by others. In trying to live this out, some have tried to avoid arrogance and potential conflict and have limited their own abilities, diminished their own gifts, and denied their own wishes and will. In trying to always put others first and in the name of trying to keep the peace, many become “burned out” and exhausted because they are always giving and giving to others and never taking care of themselves. For many of us, to always deny ourselves and put others first without any conflict means we seek a kind of watered down conformity that does not allow for a genuine expression of our personality. For some it means limiting ourselves, not expressing our opinions or developing our own interests in order to make others happy. But I do not believe that this way of thinking about this passage captures healthy love of self either. If we are not practicing a healthy self-love, then we can assume that we are not practicing healthy love of others either.

There are two truths that form the foundation of healthy self-love. You have gifts and abilities and you are imperfect. You have gifts from God. These gifts are a combination of your genetics, your life experience, your influences, and more. Our personal calling and our source of fulfillment is often found, as Frederick Buechner said, “…[in] the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” We should follow our passions and gifts and seek to cultivate those things within us.

As we seek to cultivate our giftedness, we strive for excellence, but we must also acknowledge that we are also flawed and broken. Again, our genetics, our life experience, our psychology and other influences are always at work in us as well. Too many times when the evidence of our “failure” is exposed, we feel flawed. We are embarrassed, and we try to hide from others. We can beat ourselves up and we are hard on ourselves. However, if we are seeking to love God with our whole being, we might seek to accept that God loves us every day, all the time. The things we see as our failures are not game-changing incidents. They are merely setbacks in our effort to be all that God has created us to be. So, we accept that God loves us. We acknowledge that God is with us. We seek to learn from our setbacks and we get up each day and try again.

Loving ourselves is seeking to be all that God has created us to be in cultivating our gifts and passions and seeking to learn and grow from our setbacks knowing that God’s love is steadfast. Caring for ourselves, also includes caring for our physical and emotional selves. We seek to eat healthy, we exercise our body, and we seek to get adequate rest. It may mean that we do not waste our time trying to do things that others are more gifted at doing because our job is to what we do, as best we can.

Our healthy love of ourselves says that we do not think too little of ourselves because we are all loved by God and we are all gifted, but we cannot think too highly of ourselves because we are all flawed and broken. So, we are honest about our struggles and we encourage others when they struggle. We cultivate our gifts and we encourage others to cultivate theirs. As we seek to be all that God has called us to be, we help others become all that they are called to be. In our relationships we sometimes have difficulty because we are afraid that another’s success means that we might not get enough. We sometimes feel jealous of other’s gifts. However, the greatest commandment we have is to love God with all of what is in us, let the love of God inform how we love ourselves and, in turn, love others in the same way. What other commandment would we need? Is not everything we need to know wrapped up in these two great commandments – to love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself?

Rejoice? Don't Worry? That's Easy for You to Say

This sermon, based on Philippian 4:1-9 was first presented at First Baptist Church, 

Nashville, Tennessee at the "Word & Table Service". 

October 15, 2017

8:15A.M.

I have a newsflash this morning; Life is hard.  As I get older, I keep learning new ways that this statement is true.  In the movie, “The Princess Bride”, the character “Buttercup” says to “The [masked] Man in Black”, “You mock my pain” and the man in black responds, “Life is pain, highness.  Anyone who tells you different is selling something.” 

Indeed, life is filled with pain – both physical and emotional.  Through life we each have to deal with losses, both big and not so big.  We deal with traumatic events, personal struggles, disappointments and strained relationships.  We are hurt by illness, injury, betrayal, anger, abuse, addiction, depression, and on and on.  I don’t really have to name all the things that hurt us because you know them…well. 

When we experience difficulty and hurt, we each respond in a variety of ways.  We want to avoid feeling the pain of loss, so we try not to get too close to people.  We want to avoid disappointment, so we avoid letting people get too close to us.  We have difficulty trusting, so we are always looking for ways that others are trying to take advantage of us.  When we are hurt by someone, we may try to hurt them back.  When we have suffered great loss or other great pain, we may try to just numb the pain through frantic activities or drugs and alcohol.  In short, we focus on what has happened, we worry about what might happen and we try to control the outcome or consequences.  The result is a disconnect from ourselves, a distance in our relationships, and a loss of who God is.  We construct a God who will help us maintain our defenses and give us the means to be safe rather than connecting with God who calls us to abundant life and the adventure of deep connection. 

Paul’s words to the church at Philipi that we read this morning are a challenge to us in our lives of hurt, difficulty, loneliness, and disappointment.  Beginning in vs. 4, Paul says to “rejoice” and then he says it again.  Rejoice.  We might hear this and ask, “What do I have to rejoice about?  It is easy for Paul to say, ‘Rejoice’ because he doesn’t know what I’ve been through!”  If you said this, you would be partially right.  However, Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians from prison.  He had been beaten and arrested and was being held under a form of house arrest.  So, he did know something about suffering, but I will admit knowing that one person suffers in one way does not mean that your suffering feels any better.  People often say, “I shouldn’t complain about what I am going through, because someone else has it worse.”  Someone else having it worse does not mean that your pain or suffering is diminished.  It might give us a different perspective to realize others are suffering, but it doesn’t alleviate our pain. 

Notice, however, that Paul does NOT say, “Be happy no matter what and again, I say be happy about everything that is going on.” No, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord”, which seems to be something altogether different?  Too many times we as Christians reduce these words to some kind of syrupy superficial expression of happiness no matter what is going on in our life.  We go through a terrible experience, but somehow show up to church on a Sunday morning, slap a smile on our face, pretend like we are doing fine and think we are living up to Paul’s encouragement to rejoice all the time.  This cannot be what Paul is encouraging us to do because what follows seems to be direction on how to live more authentically and fully and to pretend things are ok when they are not does just the opposite. 

One of the first things that Paul says is, “The Lord is near.” While there may be more than one understanding of what this means, it most definitely includes the idea that God is near to us and God cares for us.  Paul then says, “Do not worry about anything.”  Again, I think this is an idea that we have abused as Christians.  It is normal to worry.  When faced with uncertainty when we don’t know what is going to happen or how things are going to turn out, we have concern.  I have known people who are going through difficulty who cannot say that they are concerned about an outcome because they fear it is a sin to worry.  This passage does not say it is a sin to worry.  Paul is encouraging the people of Philippi  and us, not to worry, but he gives us a different strategy.  Rather than worrying about what will happen in any given situation, Paul suggests that we let our requests be known to God with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.  Note that there are several components to Paul’s suggestion.  Prayer is simply the act of addressing God.  Our prayers need not have particular words or be in a particular place.  Anything we do or say in our lives that we intend to be a communication with God can be a prayer.  When we are worried, our prayers should contain supplication, which literally is just asking for something.  We should offer these prayers in a spirit of thanksgiving. 

There are many thoughts on this and I am not offering mine as a counter to any of the other, but as one way of thinking about these things.  When we worry, we are generally afraid of a particular outcome.  We are worried about being adequate.  We are worried about what we cannot yet see.  We are focused on what has not yet happened.  For us to step outside of our worry and to make an honest of assessment of what we really need, takes perspective.  It involves setting aside our need to be in control or try to manipulate the outcome we think is best.  Being able to report to God our needs is an opening of ourselves to the reality that we, in and of ourselves, are not sufficient to control anything.  For us to try to control something is to suggest that God cannot handle what is going to happen or that God cannot bring about something that will bless us.  Admitting to God that we have needs is to admit that we are not complete in ourselves and we are in need of God.  To admit we have needs is a stance of humility.  But Paul says we should also have a perspective of Thanksgiving. 

An attitude of Thanksgiving turns our focus from the struggle currently before us and the fear of what might be to a focus on the good that is present and the blessings that we have received.  Several years ago, I was suffering from a short-sighted way of living life in which I wanted things in my life to be a certain way.  I got frustrated when things were not the way I thought they should be.  I suffered from the idea that I somehow deserved to have the outcome I wanted in things.  I was often frustrated that life was not what I thought it was supposed to be and what I thought I deserved.  I had an epiphany one day that I did not “deserve” anything.  I realized that my expectations were killing my ability to enjoy and appreciate what I had.  I made a conscious decision to seek to be more grateful.  I began to thank my wife, Lynda, for doing things that she was already doing around the house because I realized that she didn’t “have to” do those things for me.  I tried to expect less from others which on the surface, sounds bad, but I realized that if I expected nothing, then when others offered to do anything with me or for me, I felt genuinely grateful rather than being angry or disappointed that what I got was not what I expected or thought I should get. 

To go to God in times of hurt and uncertainty with that kind of attitude of thanksgiving and to acknowledge that I, by myself, cannot control everything in my life, and I have needs, opens us up to see God’s presence and blessings in ways we had not imagined.  We truly have peace because we trust that God is near and God will be with us no matter what happens in the worrisome scenarios of our life. 

I wish we had time to continue to unpack versus 8 and 9, but I want to note that these verses also require a shift for us.  Too many times Christians are known for what we are against.  We seem to look for the negative and look for the bad and we love to point it out, but Paul suggests that if we shift our perspective and seek to see things as God sees them, we find the beauty, the good, and the honor in others.  I recently heard a story of a young man that visited this congregation that came dressed in shorts.  As he walked down the hall, he heard an older adult make a condescending comment about his clothes.  The young man did not return to our church because he did not feel welcome or loved.  He did not experience the joy of the Lord in that moment.  That adult in our church failed to embody this way of thinking that seeks to see what is good and build up rather than focusing what they thought was the bad and tearing down. 

If you are a person who struggles with worry, you are not living in sin.  In fact, there may actually be some biological reasons why that is true and there are medications and talk therapy that can help (I have utilized these things myself), but each of us worries in some way.  We are, however, called to make an honest assessment of ourselves.  We are encouraged to share our need with God, not because God needs to hear it or God needs us to beg, but because sharing our needs with God opens us up to looking for God at work in our lives.  Sharing our need with God reminds us that we do not and cannot control every outcome, but that when we look for God at work and let go of trying to make things happen the way we want, we open ourselves to the peace of God that does not make sense to anyone else.  

Easy Answers

The members of the Sunday School class I teach and other friends that know me, know that when it comes to my faith, I do not accept easy answers for tough questions.  I am a skeptic by nature and faith does not come easy to me.  I have lived enough life to have suffered a little and struggled a lot.  The seemingly trite explanations of suffering or the traditional answers to biblical questions are not always easy for me to accept.  When I sit down with my Sunday School Class on Sunday mornings, I want us to wrestle with meaning of difficult passages.  I don’t want to skip over the unpleasant or difficult passages of the Bible.  When it comes to the familiar passages, I want us to slow down and not just accept traditional understandings.  In short, I take the bible and faith seriously, but it is not “easy”.

On a recent Sunday Morning, one of my longtime class members asked, “Just out of curiosity, is there any “easy answer” that you accept?  The class laughed and I blushed a bit.  I did not think of an answer right off, but the question stayed with me all week.  I reflected on the basic tenants of our faith.  I thought about various “truths” I have been taught through the years.  Ultimately, I came to the answer that I usually come to when thinking such thoughts – God is Love (I John 4:8).

I was eating lunch with a new friend this week and we were sharing the respective stories of our lives and how we came to be the people we are and do the work that we do.  I was struck, as I often am in hearing other’s stories, that though my friend’s story was nothing like mine on the surface, what we shared was an overwhelming experience of God’s love.  In my own story, I talk about a time in my life when I felt unloved and unloveable and a friend reached out to me and offered me love.  This act was followed by other friends demonstrating love to me – not wholesale approval of where my life was, but love and acceptance in the place that I was.  I have also experienced incredible love from my wife, Lynda.  This love demonstrated to me by friends has become an internalized experience of what I had previously professed as God’s love, but did not truly understand.  This love has become a living reality for me and the experience has been so profound, I want only to help others have such an experience. 

In a training I recently attended, I heard Richard Rohr say, “I am better at talking about love than doing it.” That sentiment immediately resonated with me.  Having had an experience of transforming love and having done study on the power of love, I am woefully aware of the times that I fail to provide it to others.  At times when I am tired, insecure, frustrated, hurt, anxious, fearful, among other feelings, I can let those other emotions cover and smother the desire to be loving.  Each day I pray that God would make me more loving; that I would live out in my life the love that I have experienced from God through others. 

All of that to say, while I may have questions about some of the fundamentals of my own faith tradition, I cannot just walk away from my faith because there is an experience of love that I have had that literally changed my life.  When I read the bible now, I see that love in the pages.  I desire to love others because I have experienced the love of God.  I desire to be an embodiment of that love for others.  There may be one or two others, but I know that the one “easy answer” that I accept is that God is love and God loves me (and you).  The journey to understanding that and learning to live that out in every circumstance of life is not all that easy, but I can imagine no other truth that is greater for me.  

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

Integrated Church... Not Yet

I attended the First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa,Alabama from the time I was 4 until the time until I was about 11 or 12.  That year, we were sitting in the sanctuary waiting for the morning service to start when there was mild disturbance at the back of the sanctuary (which would have been the front entrance of the church).  We would later learn that an African-American couple had come to the church to worship, but they were turned away at the door by some of the greeters.  My parents were appalled and we left the church shortly after that.

My parents were good like that, though our family was not perfect at all.  While all people were welcome in our home, racial jokes still slipped into our conversations from time to time and there were some very well-meaning comments about “those people”.   While imperfect, there was a stark contrast between my family and some of the others in our area.  We had hateful and threatening notes tacked to our door by a neighbor when my parents invited ALL students from local schools to Youth for Christ meetings in our home.  My mom was hesitant when I wanted to invite my friend, Henry Pickens, home from elementary school because there were still those that openly and actively sought to segregate our society and who responded with anger and hatred.  On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I am grateful that things are not as they were.

Because of my experiences as a child, I am so pleased when I see a growing mix of race in my current congregation in Nashville (First Baptist Church). I am also sure that things are not the same at the First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa as they were in the 70’s.  I love that it is a person’s desire to be present in church and their desire to worship God rather than anything else that makes them welcome in our buildings.  I realize that the dream of Dr. King has not yet been fully accomplished.  Our churches are still predominately segregated by color.  Racism has gone underground and become more hushed.  People realize that it is not acceptable to hate out loud, so they do it quietly behind closed doors and in their hearts.  Sometimes I hear people say, “I’m not a racist.  I just think…”  Whatever comes out next is almost always a racist statement.  People have not yet owned all of their biases and we have not come to place where all people are truly seen as being created equal.  We keep finding new groups of “others” to alienate and segregate.  However, I know it is not as it was when I was a child.   I continue to pray for a day when our children will be judged not by the color of their skin (or their nationality, or any other external quality), but by the content of their character. 

There's Why We're Here and Then There's Something Else

At First Baptist Church, Nashville, our Pastor’s family has been dealing with some personal issues; issues he has shared with thechurch.  These issues have led to “Pastor Frank” taking several weeks off from the church.  This morning another “Pastor Frank” filled in for our pastor.  With the National Assembly of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Nashville this week, Rev. Dr. Frank Thomas of the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis filled our pulpit.  As he began his sermon, he said, “I realized I may have been called here for one purpose, but maybe I am here for another.”  After that, he led the congregation in a beautiful time of prayer for our pastor and his family.  Dr. Thomas indicated that his family had also struggled and he felt led to support the pastor and our congregation in this way.  After the time of prayer, Dr. Thomas brought us a most thought-provoking and moving message around the servanthood of Jesus that centered around the “Basin, the water pitcher, and the towel” that Jesus used to wash the disciples feet.

The beauty of the servanthood message was that it was presented with an act of servanthood.  There were at least two thoughts that immediately came to mind.  First of all, the word preached is never as meaningful (or meaningful at all) without the act of service that communicates the authenticity of the message.  However, an act of service that is designed to solely “earn” the right to speak is hardly authentic.  A person who demonstrates genuine humility in service that comes from a place of transformation may have the right to speak of love, transformation, and servanthood as no other.  It seems rather trite to simply say that “faith without works is dead” when what we mean is that if our faith does not make a transformative difference in how we live our lives on a daily basis, it is completely lacking in any authentic significance.  Demonstrating care and compassion with humility surely must come before any explanation of WHY we might live such a life…if any such explanation is necessary.

The other thought that stays with me from the experience in worship today is that what we think we are supposed to be doing and what God thinks we are supposed to be doing may not be the same things.  However, instead of this becoming a source of stress as we try to figure out “the real truth” of things, we simply have to be open to seeing the opportunities before us and the willingness to act on them.  The prayer for the Pastor’s family was not in the program today, but it certainly did not feel like a waste of time by the time it was done.   I wonder how many times in my life, I have been frustrated by what I thought was an interruption or a distraction that, if I had been open to it, could have been an opportunity for blessing.   However, one of the things that I think about the ministry of Pastoral Care and counseling is that Pastoral Care givers often provide a time for reflection and care that is not on the agenda.  When someone has received bad news of some kind or is dealing with difficulty, so often there is an established way of “treating” the difficulty or “dealing with” the difficulty.  The Pastoral Caregiver, however, allows for a time-out from what is “supposed” to be happening to find out what is really happening.  The person who may be used by God does not get so bogged down in their role, duty, for function that they can’t shift gears when needed.  This morning, the “preacher” shifted gears.  He named the hurt out loud and took time to address it.  We need to be open to being used by God in just such ways.  Learning the patience of letting things be what they are, rather than trying to make them be what we think they should be is a challenge, but a path to great blessing.