Sermons

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Just One More Thing
June 29, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Last in a Sermon Series on Matthew
Matthew 22:34-40

This is our last sermon from the gospel of Matthew. We started this series way back in December. We looked into Matthew four times during Advent, on the birth of Christ. Two times we read of the beginnings of Jesus' ministry, His baptism and temptation. We looked at three passages from Jesus' sermon on the mount, and at three encounters that Jesus had with people. We listened to Jesus' words from the cross as recorded in Matthew, and read Matthew's resurrection story. We read three parables that Jesus taught, three questions that Jesus asked people and this morning we look at the last of three questions that people asked Jesus. Twenty-three times we have gathered and asked God to breathe His Spirit through this gospel.

Today's passage seems like a fitting one to end on, not because of my brilliant planning but because this passage reminds us of who we are…and what we are to be about.

TEACHER, WHICH COMMANDMENT OF THE LAW IS THE GREATEST?

There are a few things to remember about this question:

• "The Law" here is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
• It is a LAWYER who asks Jesus this question. Probably all I should say about that!
• If the question is sincere…it is a TOUGH question. There are 613 commandments in this Old Testament law, 248 positive and 365 negative (I didn't count them). How do you pull out just ONE?

But Matthew tells us clearly that it is NOT a sincere question. It is a test, a temptation, a trap. In fact, in Matthew, anytime Jesus is addressed as 'Teacher," you can bet that he is being tested by someone. In this case, there was a whole school of rabbinic Judaism, strict and conservative, who believed that ALL of the commandments were great, equally great, because they were God's commandments. They were great because they were God's, NOT because of how significant they seemed to some human. So, if Jesus even answers the question as it is phrased…he plays right into the hands of his enemies. He becomes "The Liberal" who plays fast and loose with the scriptures.

But Jesus doesn't hesitate. He chooses one commandment as key (maybe he IS the great liberal):

YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD

• WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART
• AND WITH ALL OF YOUR SOUL
• AND WITH ALL OF YOUR MIND.

This is, of course, part of that Shema, "the great Hear" that we read from Deuteronomy 6. It was the first thing that a Jewish child memorized. It was the passage that every Jew repeated twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening…for their whole life. Imagine…if you did something like that. Maybe with John 3:16, "God so loved the world…". Imagine if, from the time you were five years old and you lived to eighty-five, that you repeated that two times a day, every single day. You would have said it 58,400 times! It would have become as natural as breathing…it would be part of you.

This is what Jesus chooses. Love God with absolutely everything you have. Here in Matthew, that means loving God with

• the Heart -- the will, the mind, the whole-being, a very comprehensive word.
• the Soul -- your subconscious, the psychological, the instincts, even the physical.
• the Mind -- your rational thinking and intelligence.

Now, in Deuteronomy, if you noticed, it actually listed "might" as the last one, so "love the Lord your God with all of your strength, your might."

In Mark's version of this story, he lists all four: "Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind AND strength.

The exact words are less important than Jesus' point: Love God with absolutely everything you have. Is it surprising that Jesus would say this? No. But it is rather rare in the gospels that we are exhorted to love God! There are chapters and chapters about God's love for us, but very little pushing us to love God. And because it is so rare, these words of Jesus' jump out of his mouth, and off of these pages of Matthew. Love God with absolutely everything you have.

Is that you? Does this describe you? Jesus says this is the single most important thing, does it describe you and me?

Listen to this extremely passionate quote:

"No greater opportunity for accomplishment was ever given to any individual than was given to me…I determined right then and there that everything I had was to be given to the cause. No sacrifice of time, effort or my own convenience was to be too great. There were to be no reservations of alibis."

Who do you think said that? The Apostle Paul? St. Augustine? Mother Theresa?

Actually, it was a man named Alfred P. Sloan, the head of the General Motors Corporation in the first half of the 20th century when it was becoming the most powerful corporation on earth. I ran across it this week as I read David Halberstam's book, "The Fifties." I was struck by Alfred P. Sloan's desire to give absolutely everything he had to…building his company.

We give ourselves to so many things: jobs, families, friends, marriages, hobbies, exercise, sports, reading, politics. We give ourselves to so many things that each one gets a little piece of us and we try to maintain some semblance of balance and try to follow God on the way. But. This scripture is not about balance! Love God with absolutely everything you have.

Why is it so easy for us to spend 3½ hours watching a movie, but not find 15 minutes to pray or read a Psalm or walk with God?

Why is it so easy for us to spend hours surfing the Internet, but we are unable to commit to a once a week or twice a month group that will keep us pointed towards God?

Five years ago I ran a marathon. For six months before the race, I trained, I suffered, I changed what I ate and when I ate it, I ran when it was inconvenient…humid and buggy or ten degrees below zero. Why can I give everything I have to a goal like that…but not give everything to my relationship with God?

A few months ago, I spoke at an Alpha retreat at a camp up near Enumclaw. At the end of the talk on Saturday night, I gave the group a very, very complicated assignment: Be quiet for one hour. That's all. Go read your Bible, go sit and be quiet, go take a walk outside…just be quiet. And do you know what we found? We heard God! People came back and said "I think I heard God's voice!" We were reminded that God longs for us to turn and discover that He's there. We can find Him in our work, our leisure, our relationships, but do we look? And do we train ourselves?

Love God with absolutely everything you have.

Sometimes, in my very best moments, I think I get a taste of that, I love God with everything I know. He feels near, I make choices to honor Him, I make at least some connection between the priorities my mouth speaks and what I live out. But more of the time, I love God with PART of what I have. And in my worst times, God is an afterthought…or something worse.

Jesus says, " Love God with absolutely everything you have." I wonder…if we really believed we were to do that, would it be enough? If your tombstone said only, "She loved God with all of her heart, soul, mind and strength"…would that be enough?If your niece or nephew or friend or child summed up your life by saying, "He loved God with everything he had," would you be satisfied?

This is a commandment, you know. Jesus doesn't hand out many of those. There are lots of things he talks about that we can and should be involved in, things that may reflect our loving Christ…but that are not commands. Jesus does not command us to "Build big churches." He doesn't command us to "Prophesy," or to "Heal," or to "Accomplish something great for the kingdom." But he DOES command: Love God with absolutely everything that you have!

So that's how Jesus answered the question. Maybe we ought to just leave it right there…except that Jesus didn't. There is Just One More Thing. Jesus cheats on his answer! He is asked WHICH commandment is greatest, and he says "Love God…" and then immediately adds Just One More Thing:

"And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself."

They didn't ask Jesus for the top TWO, but that's what they get. And Jesus gives them as though they are inseparably connected.

Love your neighbor as yourself (this is from the law, Leviticus 19 where God says, "Don't hold grudges, don't take vengeance, love your neighbor as yourself."

Contrary to much of what we hear today, this is NOT a second and a third commandment. Some take the last phrase as a third command to LOVE YOURSELF. Now, we live in a day when "self-esteem" is woefully lacking in so many people. This is painful, frustrating, and we must deal with the lack of encouragement and grounding it reflects. But turning this command into one to LOVE YOURSELF is neither healthy nor biblical. Self-esteem will ultimately come from knowing and experiencing God's love for us, knowing He has chosen us in Christ and saved us. This is often mediated through other people.

But what Jesus does here by adding "Love your neighbor as yourself" is to deal again with what he taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:12): "In everything, do to the other as you would have them do to you." It is not a command to love yourself, but to love others by treating them the right way. The way you would want to be treated.

So Jesus cheats and sneaks in a second answer. And it's very important. Without it:

• It would be easy for a Christian person to be so concerned with heavenly things that they would be, as the saying goes, "no earthly good."
  
• If Jesus stopped with "Love God," it could be interpreted as saying that we need only concern ourselves with the spiritual state of people around us and not the physical.
  
• It could make us so busy "devoting ourselves to God," that we could ignore those in prison, the social conditions in our county and others that marginalize so many people, the 5,000 homeless people in Seattle, the millions of people affected by AIDS. But because Jesus adds this, we cannot ignore the fact that our call has both spiritual and social implications.

Jesus says, Love God with absolutely everything that you have, and just one more thing: Love your neighbor as yourself.
This word "neighbor" is a very interesting one. Literally it means "the one who is nearby, the one who is close." Who is near…to you? This is not a word about emotions, but about how we treat others. It is not based on how others act or don't act, but how we love rightly. And we need God's help in a big way to do that. Because some people nearby…are just not very lovable sometimes.

I invited you to read some short stories by Wendell Berry this summer in his book Fidelity. In the first story, set in a small town in the early 1900's, a good man is murdered by another man in a drunken rage. Years and years later, a grandmother retells the story, wrestles with what to think about the murderer and says, "If God loves the ones we can't…then finally maybe we can."

Finally, maybe we can.

When Jesus tacks on ONE MORE THING, LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, he brings it all way down. It's not "Love the whole world," or "love the poor people," or "love the people in third world countries." But your neighbor…the one who lives in the brick house across the street. The same way that Jesus brings 613 commands down to one…no, two…he brings the whole world down to your neighborhood. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR…THE ONE NEARBY.

So Jesus adds Just One More Thing. And now we have two answers to the one question. They are not to be separated. The first is first, and really enables the second. But even Jesus won't list the one without the other. "Love God with absolutely everything you have. And love the one nearby the right way."

For 16 and 14 and 11 years now, when I've prayed for my own kids at night, I've prayed, "Help them grow up to love the Lord Jesus Christ, and to love the people around them." When we baptize or dedicate infants here at Bethany, I often find myself praying the same thing: "Lord, may they grow up to be men and women who love Jesus, and who love the people around them."

The lovely thing about this passage for me…is that it is so simple when life gets so complicated. I get concerned about all of the different hats I wear, the things I feel like I should be doing, trying to figure out what God calls me to, and I get overwhelmed. I feel like I'm always in the middle of a great, precarious balancing act and I'm not really making it. What does God want of me here…and here and here? Then these words of Jesus' are so clean and clear:

"Love God with absolutely everything you have. And love the one nearby the right way."

And what Jesus has put together…let US not break apart. Amen.