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Proper 25

1 Thessalonians 2

4For we speak as messengers who have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He is the one who examines the motives of our hearts. 5Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you very well know. And God is our witness that we were not just pretending to be your friends so you would give us money! 6As for praise, we have never asked for it from you or anyone else. 7As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but we were as gentle among you as a mother£ feeding and caring for her own children. 8We loved you so much that we gave you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.

Matthew 22

34But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they thought up a fresh question of their own to ask him. 35One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?"

37Jesus replied, "‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’£ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’£ 40All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."



I've decided to begin today by allowing you to collectively show off by naming for me the Ten Commandments. You may need time to think, so I'll share a couple of anecdotes. The first comes from Jay Leno and his popular "man on the street" interviews. He asked a college student to name one of the Ten Commandments and without missing a beat the student said "freedom of speech."

My second anecdote comes from Thomas Cahill and his book "The Gifts of the Jews." In his book he makes a couple of observations, the first being that the number of commandments and the number of fingers you possess are the same by design. Something to think about the next time you have little to do but stare at your hands. His second point is that the purpose of keeping the Sabbath (number 4) is to allow generous amounts of time for lovemaking.

Not only did I just give you one of the ten, but I gave you a whole new way to conceptualize Sunday. Back to the list.

No other gods
No idols
No misuse of God’s name
No Sabbath labour
Honour your father and mother
No murder
No adultery
No theft
No false witnessing
No coveting

To be fair, it is tricky to remember all ten, fingers or not. Add the fact that the Roman Catholic Ten Commandments are different from the Protestant Ten Commandments, and you have a recipe for confusion. I'll say more about this when Exodus 20 comes up in the lectionary next, some time in the next three years.

It's remarkable that when asked, Jesus neglected the Ten Commandments in favour of two found outside of Exodus 20, in this case from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. Listen again:

"Teacher, " the man asked, "which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?"

37Jesus replied, "‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’£ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’£ 40All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."

It's all so clear and seems so definitive, so "last-wordish" that I'm tempted to define it as one of those passages that speaks for itself and doesn't require interpretation or preaching. "The words have power," my mentor Douglas would say, "let them speak." Of course the danger for preachers is that if we going around saying that the passages speak for themselves then we would soon be out of work. Instead we ask the text questions and try to answer them in an effort to find deeper meaning in the scriptures.

The first obvious question is 'what is the relationship between these two commandments?' Do they stand alone, or are they inseparable? The answer, I think, can be found elsewhere in the scriptures, in this case 1 John 4. The author of 1 John has strong feelings on the matter:

20If someone says, "I love God," but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? 21And God himself has commanded that we must love not only him but our Christian brothers and sisters, too.

In other words, you can't profess to be a child of God and refuse to get along with the other children. The command to love neighbour grows out of the command to love God, giving it a focus and highlighting a practical implication. You can't have one without the other.

Still on this topic, if I was trying to define the most common "sin" of the United Church, I could begin with this passage. Listen again and you may hear it:

"‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Sometimes I think we took the phrase "a second is equally important" and ran with it. We are famous for our ability to "do" and less famous for our ability to "be." We love to "seek justice and resist evil," to "love and serve others," and all the other aspects of our ministry to others that seems to come so naturally. It seems to be central to our make-up (or pathology) that when confronted with the twin ideas of "worship and work" we choose the latter over the former. It has become our comfort place.

I want to share with you a few sentences from the author Marva Dawn. She is a professor of worship.

To worship the Lord is -- in the world's eye -- a waste of time. It is indeed a royal waste of time, but a waste nonetheless. By engaging in it, we don't accomplish anything useful in our society's terms.

Worship ought not to be construed in a utilitarian way. Its purpose is not to gain numbers nor for our churches to be seen as successful. Rather, the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it. Moreover, it isn't even useful for earning points with God, for what we do in worship won't change one whit how God feels about us. (p. 1)

Perhaps in your mind you are disagreeing right now and thinking "worship is never a waste of time" and by thinking this you are proving Marva Dawn's point. By attending a service of public worship, by entering this place where God is praised you are engaging in a counter-cultural act. You are engaging in an act that doesn't increase Canada's GDP, GNP, or any other marker that begins with G and ends in P. Your participation today seems incomprehensible to many, a throwback, the vestige of an earlier age.

Perhaps we wonder about this ourselves. Perhaps in our uncertainty or even discomfort with worshiping God for the sake of worshipping God we dress it up. Perhaps we blend commandments and say "we worship on Sunday to get inspired to do good things all week long." And this may be the case. Or perhaps not. Worship, the desire to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all you mind can be a "stand alone" activity. It is, after all, the first and greatest commandment.

A helpful reminder on this topic came to me through the theologian Beldon Lane in the form of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. If there are any former Presbyterians out there (that actually includes all of us, if you examine our United Church DNA) you will be familiar with the first question (ignore the archaic language, please)

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Remembering that this is a summary of Reformation theology, and that part of the purpose of the catechism is to defeat any suggestion that you can earn your salvation through doing good works, the emphasis is squarely in the first commandment and not the second. In fact, "love your neighbour" gets a mention in question 42 before the text returns to a detailed look at the Ten Commandments.

My point here is that few of us, if pressed to define the purpose of life, would answer "to glorify God." We might say "to be a good person" or "to serve others" or "to live in a godly manner" but likely not "to glorify God." In the same manner, when asked why we worship, we will try to come up with all sorts of practical reasons that the world might see as valuable, rather than the simple reason that "God deserves it."

One of the most important things to remember when we re-emphasize the need to love God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds is that the feeling is mutual. "We love him, because he first loved us," the author of 1 John says, recognizing that creation was first and foremost an act of love. It is in this spirit that we open our hearts, for God the great teacher has much to reveal.

I want to give the last word to St. Augustine, saying what I only struggle to say.

You awake us to delight
in your praises;
for you made us for yourself,
and our hearts
are restless until they
rest in you. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 11:12 AM