Scripture: Deuteronomy
34:1-12 and Psalm
90:1-6, 13-17 • Leviticus
19:1-2, 15-18 and Psalm
1 • 1
Thessalonians 2:1-8 • Matthew
22:34-46
This week Jesus teaches us the "Great Commandment" which is a combination of the first part of Israel's great Shema (Hear): "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." And from Leviticus 19, 1-2, 15-18, particularly: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD."
Professor Alyce MacKenzie tells us in "Reality-Show Jesus: Reflections on Matthew 22:34-46," that Matthew's gospel account has Jesus teaching the Great Commandment after he was tested by and confronted the religious leaders of his day by overturning the tables of the money changers, telling the parables of the vineyard and wedding feast, and after answering those who seek to entrap him with the question of whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.
What is Jesus teaching us about the Great Commandment? About Love? See MacKenzie's article (above), The Rev. Canon Frank Logue's "Everything Hangs on Love," in which he describes what it means to be committed in loving another more than ourselves (agape love - ἀγάπη), and The Rev. Sharron R. Blezard's "Living the Gospel of Love." What does living The Great Commandment mean while living in community? For us in our parish? See The Rev. Anjel Scarborough's "The Benedictine tradition of community." Laying down our egos, our long-nurtured grudges and resentments, and seeking the way of love is the way of the cross through which we find fullness of life in Christ.
The Gospel this week is the account of Jesus telling religious leaders wishing to entrap him to give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's. In "God in the Heartbeat of Life," and in her Reflections on the passages from Exodus and 1 Thessalonians, The Rev. Kate Huey asks "Can you feel the tension?"
Tension between a transcendent, Other, Holy God in all his glory, and God who is immanently present. In our soft and ego-centric, self-help culture, with all the hypes and distractions, have we lost a sense of awe and the sacred? Have we made a God, projecting on God our wants, needs, and desires for prosperity, seeing what we want to see, hearing what we want to hear? Are we shopping for a church which satisfies our consumer appetites, or one which nurtures, feeds and gives away what we have? Can you feel the tension?
In our desire for material things, objects and objectivism, have we lost the ability to see beyond what we expect to see? Were the Israelites the chosen people because of their own "specialness," or was it more than themselves? Relationship building between a holy God, Transcendent and yet present, and us. Can you feel the tension?
This week's scripture is full of the glory of God, his awesomeness, and yet we see God's presence in Jesus being tested by religious authorities. Can you feel the tension? We are soon approaching Advent, and what Rudolph Bultmann calls "History and Eschatology: The presence of eternity" (the meaning of history), as the sacred breaks into our humanity in the coming of the Christ (the eschaton) ... as a helpless child, needing human sustenance to live, and live as one of us. Can you feel the tension?
Just when we think we've got the lesson of the parable this week, Jesus turns the tables on us... again. In Luke's account of this parable, as in the first part of Matthew's account, we get the message - all are welcome at the wedding feast given by the king, cutting through the legalism, hypocrisy, self righteousness, ownership and control asserted by the religious leaders of the day. But things take a violent turn in Matthew's version of the parable. When a guest does not have a wedding robe, the king orders him taken out, bound and thrown into the outer darkness. Why the violence? Is God rejecting him? Is there no room at the feast for him? What is meant by "many are called but few are chosen?" What is the wedding robe? What is God's grace in all of this? What is meant by Bonhoeffer's saying that there is no such thing as "cheap grace."
Consider John van de Laar's "The Uncomfortable Invitation," and Samuel Zumwalt's "Ready for the Feast."
This Sunday we study the Ten Commandments - words carved in stone, or are they more? Laws to be obeyed, or more. Love to be earned, or more. God on high, or more. Laws of dominion and control, or love amd justice. Read The Rev. Kate Matthew's "A Rule of Love."
In "Crazy Love," The Rev. David Lose makes some cheeky good points about Matthew's account of another vineyard parable which Jesus gives us. This one is about the vineyard workers who kill servants sent by the landowner to collect his die from his tenants, including the landowner's son. Jesus is reaching the climax of his ministry as he confronts religious authorities on his way to the cross - to humiliation and exaltation and glory. Why does the landowner keep sending his servants, and even his son to these "bloodthirsty hooligans?" Jesus says it best when he tells them, and us, that "the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes!"
Does the gospel account have anything to say about how we should read and live out the Ten Commandments? What do they both say about God and us?
Another week of grumbling and complaining in the wilderness. God rained manna on his people, not punishment in last week's lesson. This week, acting through his agent, Moses, who strikes a rock with his staff, life giving water gushes forth. Living bread, living water.
What do we look for, what do we find when we are in wilderness times? Do we see our glass half empty? Half full? Is it wrong to question God? Is God present in the good times, but not the bad times? Do we look for mirages instead of the truth in times of want, need or trouble? Security instead of facing our fears and troubles? Read The Rev. Kate Huey's "God's Sustaining Presence."
And Jesus, speaking with authority (ἐξουσία - a liberating power, not a dominating force), gives us the parable of the two sons who are asked to work in the vineyard. One says he will, and doesn't. One says he won't, but does. Who does the Father's will?
In Paul's beautiful letter to the Philippians, we have the kenosis (κενόω - to empty out). After telling us we need to have the mind of Christ, Paul tells us a love story of Christ's sacrifice from the beginning to the cross. Jesus, "though he was in the form of God, did not regard
equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human
likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death
on a cross."
So, with all the grumbling and complaining, how are we to do the Father's will? How can a grumbling church become the church God wants us to be? Consider The Rev. John Jewell's "How to Have a Perfect Church."
This week God hears the grumbling of the Israelites in the wilderness, complaining that they don't have food to eat - that it would have better to have died as slaves in Egypt where they at least had food to eat. In the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, God hears the complaints of those who came first and worked longer than the ones who worked less time, but all were paid the same.
We read that God rained down something on the Israelites. What was it? What does Jesus mean when he teaches us "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first?" Read about what really matters to God, and what should really matter to us in The Rev. Dr. James C. Howell's "Small and White, Clean and Bright," and "The Generosity of God," by The Rev. Dr. Michael Foss.
