Sermon for Sunday 29 th October 2017 Matthew 22 v 34 – 46

In the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit Amen

You are probably thinking those words from the gospel sound very familiar. That is because you have already heard them this morning at the beginning of the service. But do we really think about them or do we let it just wash over us. This morning we are going to focus on those words.

I want to start this morning by asking you all to imagine a door. It can be any type of door but it needs to be securely in a door frame. When I read about this illustration I wondered about bringing a door but decided that was too tricky so we will have to rely on your skills at imagining one. I want you to focus your attention on the hinges of the door – most doors have 2 hinges one at the top and one at the bottom without those 2 hinges the door simply would not work.

So to this morning’s reading - Jesus is once again in conversation and confrontation with the Pharisees. If there was ever a group of people who approached life and religion differently than Jesus, it was the Pharisees. They thought of themselves as the defenders of both the religious and the academic, so they found Jesus doubly troubling. They were a rule-oriented bunch of people. For them, the very essence of religion was to obey the rules and regulations of the Bible. Their goal was to obey all the commandments of the Old Testament. There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. 365 of those are negative commandments “Thou shalt not! and there are 248 positive commandments (You shall!!). The very essence of the Old Testament religion for the Pharisees was to know and obey these 613 rules. So one day, one of these Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him a question in order to trap him, “Jesus, of all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament, which one is the most important?” Jesus answered from scripture “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul.” which is in Deuteronomy 6:4, this is the first and greatest commandment. And the second (he had only asked for one but Jesus gave him two.) one is like it.”, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 18. On these two commandments HINGE all the Law and the Prophets.” On these two commandments, HINGE the whole Bible. So going back to your image of the door. Imagine that the bottom third of this door represents what you have learned about the Old Testament. The middle section of this door is all about Jesus, the birth stories, his parables, his teachings, his miracles, his passion stories and the resurrection stories. The top third of the door is the life and doctrines of the Apostle Paul: his conversion stories, his missionary trips, his major doctrines of grace, faith, and justification. But what good is this door full of Biblical material without the two hinges? What good is all this religious knowledge without the two hinges of Love? What good is a door without two hinges? Jesus says if we truly love God and our neighbour we will naturally keep the commandments. This is looking at Gods law positively. Rather than worrying about all we should not do, we should concentrate on all that we can do to show our love for God and others. To love our neighbour as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you. We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.

We can love with our heart: through generosity to God's people. We can love with our soul: by worshiping God and praying for our neighbours and ourselves. And we can love with our minds: studying God's Word and letting it correct us, enlighten us, and send us out in loving action to the world. So the hinges of love allow the biblical door to work. So being Christian is about loving God and loving what God loves. Here the best known verse in the New Testament, John 3:16, provides the answer. "For God so loved the world...." God loves the world, not just me, not just you and me, not just Christians, not even just human beings, but the whole of creation. And, of course, this is also the central point of the Genesis story of creation. After each day in that six-day creation story, we are told "God saw that it was good," and at the very end, "God saw that it was very good." Now, of course, God doesn't love the world simply as it is. God loves the world and wills that it be a better world. Being Christian is about becoming the kind of person who can love God and love what God loves.

We need transformation. And transformation involves practice. The process of becoming more and more deeply centered in God, requires an attention to our relationship with God. In some ways our relationship with God is like the human relationship. How does a human relationship deepen and grow? It deepens and grows by paying attention to it, spending time in it, being present to it. And so it is with our relationship with God and this process of becoming more and more deeply centered in God. It happens through the traditional practices of the Christian tradition, worship being the most important collective practice, prayer being the most widely used individual practice. Prayer and worship are not because God needs them, but they are about our own transformation.

Being Christian is about being part of a community of transformation

We grow up, those of us who live in western culture; we grow up in a culture that has values very, very different from what is most central to the Bible. You can believe all the right things and still be quite untransformed. You can believe all the right things and still be mean. Rather, Christianity is about entering into this process of transformation. It's about our passion for God, that passion that St. Augustine spoke about when he said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their home in you." Jesus said: “Do these and you shall live. Do these two commandments and you shall finally find life?” He didn’t say: memorize these two commandments. He didn’t say: recite these two commands. He didn’t say: think about these two commandments every day. He said: “Do these and you shall finally find life and what it means to truly live.” Did you know that the title most often given to Jesus in the New Testament is not "Master" or "Lord," as you might expect, but "Teacher"? On a number of occasions, we read that the crowds were astonished, not by miracles, but by his teaching. Learning is one of the ways we find our way to the most meaningful life. God wants us to learn. God calls us to love with our minds, because the search for truth leads to God. There will always be those who struggle with the relationship between faith and learning and I close with a story that might help to illustrate this. Some churches think that they have all the answers. Heaven is up, hell is down, and they know who is going in which direction. God created the world in six days. The Red Sea parted just like in the movie and the whale swallowed Jonah. They don't have any room for questions, because they are certain of everything. Brett a student from one of these churches attended university and his first religion class was an Introduction to the Old Testament. After the first day of class he read one hundred pages of Bernard Anderson's classic Understanding the Old Testament. In his commentary on Noah and the flood, one line set Brett’s blood boiling. Anderson writes that the closing of the ark by the hand of God was a "naïve anthropomorphic touch." Brett wasn't really sure what a "naïve anthropomorphic touch" was, but he knew that his home church would not approve. He underlined the offensive passage, made several exclamation points in the margin, and marched out of the library to begin the crusade by straightening out the heretical professor who had assigned the profane textbook. Brett began calmly, but firmly: "Dr. Christian, you may not realize that the textbook you assigned questions the Word of God. Here on page 98 it says that in Genesis, which was written by Moses as I hope you know, when we read that God closed the door of the ark that is 'a naïve anthropomorphic touch.' I'm not positive what that means, but it doesn't sound like a compliment. I don't think we should question the Bible. Do you?" Dr. Christian gently replied: "Brett, do you think that God might want us to ask questions about the Bible? Could it be that God wants us to work to believe? Maybe faith shouldn't be easy." By the end of the conversation Brett realised that there was more real belief in the professor’s questions than in his own answers. Brett realised that the professor had the hinges of love and his door was working . Amen