22 Pentecost A 2023
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
Where Is Home?
In this morning’s readings, we find Moses at the boundary between the wilderness and the promised land, on his usual mountaintop, denied the entrance to it. He will die in the wilderness. He could see it, but he couldn’t go in.
The psalm calls God “our dwelling place in all generations.” We pass away, but the God who was there for our ancestors, is there for us now, and will be there for those who come after us. The psalm imagines God himself as our home.
And Paul names a boundary between himself and his opponents: they came to take for themselves and to build themselves up, but he came to give of himself, risking his very life.
Where is our home? Where are we meant to live? Of what nation are we citizens, from God’s perspective?
In chapter 23 or Matthew, we are in the last week of Jesus’ life. He and his followers have occupied the temple courtyard and driven out the moneychangers. The religious and civil authorities of Jerusalem, Jewish and Roman, are plotting against Jesus, and at the same time challenging him in front of his crowds of supporters. This would be their last test: a simple question, “what is the greatest commandment?”
The Shema is a section of scripture that is recited by observant Jews in the morning and in the evening. I invite you to pray it with me:
Hear, O Israel, the L-rd is our G‑d, the L-rd is One.
Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.
You shall love the L-rd your G‑d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.
The Shema is, as it were, Israel’s very home. And home is very much at stake in Matthew’s Gospel.
Most scholars think Matthew was a leader of a network of Jewish Christian churches founded in Jerusalem. We must remember that the church was originally a Jewish sect. These Jewish Christians continued to attend synagogue, make sacrifices in the temple, and honor all the Jewish customs and codes.
But by Matthew’s day, Jewish Christians had been expelled from their synagogues by the Pharisaic rabbis, and had fled Judea because of the Jewish War. They were people without a home, whether geographical, cultural or religious.
Jesus answered the test according to the widespread and accepted orthodoxy of Judaism, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind”. But then he added, “And a second is like it.”
He pulls this one not from Deuteronomy or Numbers, but Leviticus, the book of the holiness code of the Levites, the priestly clan of Israel, a code the Pharisees had imposed on all of Israel.
Leviticus 19:18:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus declares this morning that all the rest of the law and the prophets hang not only on the first, but also, inseparably, the second.
And so the Jordan River we must cross on our way to our true home is not only about our vertical relationship to God. It’s not enough to be pious, to sing praises to God, to feel all mushy about Jesus. It’s not enough to thank him, even if you thank him all day long.
Because such love for God is nothing but hypocrisy if it is not accompanied by a love of neighbor equal to the love of self.
In other words, it’s not just about feeling sorry for our sins. It’s about actually repenting. Actually stopping doing whatever sin we were doing before. Actually repairing whatever damage we have caused.
It’s about seeing clearly our connection to those around us who are in need: Actually clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry.About making what is invisible, our spiritual faith in Christ, visible in our physical words and deeds.
But Jesus didn’t stop there. As he often did, he turned the tables on his interrogators, asking a question that shocked them into permanent silence.
Jesus’ somewhat playful interpretation of Psalm 110 juxtaposes three received traditions: the first was that the psalm was authored by King David, the second that it referred to the coming Messiah, the third that the Messiah would be a son of David.
“If David calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” This silenced the opposition, because for them, the answer would have been unspeakable.
The answer was the Messiah was both the son of David and also son of God. If Jesus was son of God, and all his actions up until this moment, along with the faith of the crowds following him, would be clear signs that he was, then the authorities’ opposition and their plot to kill him could be nothing but pure, intentional evil.
Some of Matthew’s story is biased and unfair, and sadly inspired centuries of abominable anti-semitism. Jewish leaders were caught between a rock and hard place. I doubt I would have done any different from them. The threat of Roman reprisals outweighed the indulgence of an outspoken prophet, no matter how apparently innocent and good he was. Still, Jesus accepted the consequences of his ministry, and we all know how God responded: with resurrection!
To claim Jesus as our Lord may mean different things to each one of, and we Disciples rather believe this is for the best. But today he manifests before us as our resurrected judge. Jesus, the wonder-working prophet and Messiah, is also the Judge of the Living and the Dead, who sits at the right hand of God.
I’m not your judge. Your mom and dad are not your judge. Your neighbors are not your judges. Even the American justice system is not your ultimate judge. Jesus is your judge.
The good news is that he is a judge who loves God with all his heart and all his soul and all his mind. And he loves you as he loves himself.
Wouldn’t you rather receive judgment from someone who truly and purely loves you? And if you submit to this judge, while his judgment may spiritually condemn and kill you, it will also raise you into a new spiritual life, a new kind of life that links heaven and earth, and calls us to link one to another.
It’s a new geography, a new journey from wilderness to home. We enter heaven’s realm when we discipline ourselves to the way of Jesus, the way of love of God and neighbor, the cruciform life, the vertical that has miraculously joined the horizontal.
The abundant and eternal life of paradise is the life of compassion, of celebrating and mourning with God and each other, of choosing to bring to bear the compassion of God on whatever problems we face personally or as a people. It is a new and separate and holy place, a place that many in the world would mock as foolish and weak. It is a new country, a new nation, a shining city descending into this world of selfishness and dishonesty and cynicism, a beacon of hope for justice, peace and joy.
It’s right over there, across the Jordan.
Wade on in.
Amen.
