Barriers to Love, a sermon based on Matthew 22: 34-46 preached on October 29, 2023

Some people love rules. The Pharisees, featured in our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, loved rules. They were one of the major religious groups in the time of Jesus. Along with the Sadducees, the Scribes, and the Zealots, they were one of the major groups within the Jewish religious community who competed for influence and converts. They each make their appearance in the Gospels, and we know that these established religious groups were intimidated by Jesus, so they tried to trap Him with their questions. On numerous occasions, the Gospels show that Jesus outsmarted them. Our second Scripture lesson is just one example. It began: When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. I may have told you the best way to remember the difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Just remember that the Sadducees didn’t believe in life after death. They were such adherents to the teachings of Moses, who failed to mention the afterlife, that they didn’t believe in heaven, so they were sad, you see. The Pharisees, on the other hand, loved the law. They wanted to follow, not just the Ten Commandments, but every law that tradition passed down. They loved to follow all those rules because they felt the rules ensured that people would be treated fairly, so they were fair, you see. I learned that in seminary. In today’s Gospel lesson, this lawyer, who was a rule-loving Pharisee, wanted to test Jesus, and so he asked Him a question, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” To a Pharisee, choosing the greatest law would be like picking your favorite child. He and the other Pharisees just couldn’t do it. “How could you love one commandment more than another?” they wondered, while Jesus has no problem answering the question. He said: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. That’s what Jesus says. You’ve heard it before. It’s an often-quoted verse that’s not just in the Gospel of Matthew, but also in Mark and Luke, yet the difference here in the Gospel of Matthew is that He follows up this famous answer with a question of His own directed towards the Pharisees: What do you think of the Messiah? He asked them. Whose son is he? They said to him, “the son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’ If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” In other words, Jesus is trying to help the Pharisees see whom they are talking with. They were waiting for the son of David to appear. They thought that they knew what to look for in the promised Messiah, yet they were looking right over Him, interrogating the Messiah rather than revering Him. You know all this already. While it came as a surprise to them, it comes as no surprise to you to hear that Jesus is Lord, nor does it come as a surprise to hear Him say that the entire law may be simplified to “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself,” only think about this with me: If the Messiah is the One who simplifies the rules, who makes it all so complicated? If God’s Messiah is the One who summarizes all the law down to love God and love neighbor, who is clinging so tightly to all the other standards of society? There’s a scene I’ll always remember in the TV show Seinfeld, where the main character, Jerry, goes to visit his parents, who have just moved from Manhattan to a retirement community in Florida called Del Bocca Vista. While Jerry and Elaine are visiting them there, she can’t sleep because they put her on the fold-out couch and that bar is right in her back; plus, they won’t turn on the air conditioning even though it’s Florida. Later, when a Del Bocca Vista neighbor dies, Jerry’s friend Kramer decides to retire down in Florida right next to Jerry’s parents. Jerry’s dad pushes Kramer to run for president of the neighborhood association. The campaign is going great until Kramer gets caught walking through the neighborhood clubhouse without his shoes on. As Kramer tries to understand why such a small thing would cause his campaign to go up in flames, Jerry says, “These people work and wait their whole lives to move down here, sit in the heat, pretend it’s not hot, and enforce these rules.” Some people love rules. The Pharisees loved rules. The residents of Del Boca Vista loved rules. And there’s a little bit of Pharisee in all of us. There are rules and regulations that we all cling to. We all have standards of morality and decency. We have codes of conduct, standards of behavior. There are things that we do, and there are things we wouldn’t dare do. “No shirt, no shoes, no service,” is a rule so basic in our society that it goes without saying everywhere outside the state of Alabama. Then, there are commandments: Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. These are good rules. They are life-giving standards of behavior, yet we must allow the Messiah to help us use these rules. Otherwise, they are confined to our understanding. Take the fourth commandment for example: Honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy and consider with me how we use it. We hear that commandment and say to ourselves, “Got it. Set Sunday apart,” only does the commandment set a limit or a minimum requirement? Would God not also have us honor our Mondays and our Tuesdays? Are we not called to love the Lord our God on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays? Does God not love us every day of the week and each moment of our lives? We hear these divine mandates from Scripture, and we interpret God’s rules through our human understanding, while Jesus, the Messiah, says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Sometimes, we use rules to set limits and to draw lines; yet, if the way we use these rules creates a barrier to love, are we worshiping the rules or are we following the Lord? Following the Lord may require more than the laws or human culture stipulate, for the love of God has no limit. Right? OK. Then let’s think together about human culture and how what Jesus says in Matthew challenges some of what we do. Last week, the County Commission was discussing a statement on the conflict in Israel. It turned out to be a divisive conversation that resulted in a follow-up meeting before a big crowd last Wednesday night because the first draft of the statement declared Cobb County’s absolute support of Israel. That makes sense, right? We love Israel. Standing with the Jewish people and the nation of Israel is a part of who our nation is. Defending the cause of one of the most persecuted minority groups in the world is a part of who we are, so when we hear about the attack on Israel, we want to show our support. We want to stand with Israel, supporting them as they mourn the loss of innocent lives, as they call for the release of captives and an end to terrorism. However, some residents of Cobb County had a problem with the statement the County Commission was working on. Presbyterians born in Nazareth and Muslims from Palestine who now live here in Cobb County asked their commissioners: Why would you limit your support to the people of Israel? Do the residents of our county not mourn the loss of Palestinian children? Or does our concern have limits? Sometimes our concern does have limits. Sometimes, with our rules and regulations, we put in place barriers for whom we’ll love and whom we won’t. However, if we look to Scripture, while we clearly see God’s love for the people of Israel, we also see that God’s love does not stop there. That’s what the book of Jonah is all about. Jonah doesn’t understand how God could love the Ninevites. That’s why he doesn’t want to go and preach to them, yet God declares, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left?” You see, it’s human tendency to put a barrier on love. It’s a human tendency to love one group and to hate another, while we must expect that just as God has wept over the innocent Israeli children killed by Palestinian bombs, so also, has God wept over the innocent Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs because God’s love does not respect the boundaries that we draw. While we may limit our support and our concern, God’s love is for all of Creation. This is simply a truth that we must accept and may loving as God loves be a goal to which we aspire, for when it comes to transforming the world, there is no force more likely to transform society than love. Last Tuesday, my wife, Sara, sent me an article from Fox 5 Atlanta about a crisis dog who helps people. K-9 officer Barney and his handler, Paul Hill, got a call that a woman had locked herself in a bathroom and was threatening to end her life. When Officer Hill and his canine companion, Barney, arrived, the woman had moved from the bathroom and was lying on a bed, visibly distraught. Many of us, when we see a woman acting so strangely, would turn and walk away, yet without a second thought, Barney hopped up next to her and wiggled his way into her arms. He laid there peacefully, helping the woman to snuggle with him and relax. Soon, she was responding to the officers. Then, she was getting the help she needed, but it started not with threats, but with contact. Her healing began as a dog offered her his love on the worst day of her life. My friends, I don’t know the answer to so many of the problems that we face these days. I don’t know the answer to the conflict in Israel/Palestine, but I do know this: Years ago, I was a chaplain intern at the Metro State Women’s Prison, and I met a woman who was terrified she was going to hell. She’d been abused, and, in her dreams, she returned to this dark place with fire and daemons. It was a place she’d been before on the worst night of her life, and she never wanted to return there. I remember holding her hand through the flap in a steel door and saying, “Hell is a place you’ve been before, and I can’t believe that the God I know in Jesus Christ would send you back there again.” I’ll never forget how she cried as I said those words. I’ll always remember watching as the love of God set her free. On the other hand, shame keeps so many locked up and imprisoned. Sometimes, after violating the rules, people punish themselves so severely. I wonder if we punish ourselves more for breaking the rules than God does. If it hasn’t happened for you already, today, may the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, set you free, and may you be set loose on this broken world to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Let there be no barrier to your love, for there is no barrier to God’s love for you. Amen.