Thus Endeth the Lesson!!
23rd Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22:34-46
Sean Connery won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the 1987 classic, The Untouchables. It was the story of the struggle between lawman Eliot Ness and the gangster, Al Capone. Early in the movie, Ness has had a bad day, and is contemplating his choice to pursue Capone while looking down into the Chicago river. Connery (beat cop Jim Malone in the movie) sees him, and talks to him about what has happened. He tells him that he did his duty that day, and that’s all that he can ask of himself, and that he should go home to his family. Then Connery says, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
It was a statement from experience to inexperience – from an old cop to a rookie. It was sage advice from one who was quite long of tooth. And his words ended the conversation that day with a sense of finality that completes far too few conversations in this old world.
When Jesus was interrogated by the Pharisees and Sadducees in the event that Matthew records in the last verses of chapter 22 of his gospel, Jesus trumps them one last time, and Matthew says, “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” And I could hear Sean Connery in the background saying, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
Matthew told us a story. We’ve been listening to it for most of this year, and it was a good story. Let me remind us of a couple of things. This story was told from Matthew’s vantage point. And it was a pretty good vantage point. Matthew was the tax collector that Jesus called into service as a disciple, and he walked and talked with Jesus for a period of nearly three years. They were roommates, in a manner of speaking. They got to know the good, the bad, and the ugly about one another, and Matthew tells us that with Jesus, there was only the good. So, when Matthew started putting down his recollections on paper, he had something that he wanted to prove – a point that he wanted to make. Jesus was the long awaited Messiah – the One the Jews had been waiting for since old Abraham was first called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Jesus was the One who had been promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the promised Savior spoken of by all the prophets, and He had come to redeem us.
In the process of coming to redeem us, He showed us how to live. And one of the things He showed us is that we have a place in God’s lineage that is a place of prominence. When people question our authority to act as children of God, we respond with the same kind of gentle audacity that Jesus used when He responded to the religious leaders of that day. Jesus proved His point, even while proving that He had the right and position to make the final point. They knew it, and no one asked Him anything after that. Game, set, match. Thus endeth the lesson!
Now, that’s the context of our scripture lesson for today. Jesus finally steps way out there on the limb and basically says, in His response to the Pharisees and Sadducees, that all authority had been given to Him. That’s more or less the point of the day. It’s a good point for us to make note of – Jesus is the final authority – in our lives, in the lives of really everyone who has or will ever walk the face of this planet – whether they admit it this side of heaven, or not.
That having been said, we must notice something else – this authority is relational. Let’s back up to the original question. “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” It’s really a good question – well, sort of. It supposes that as in most things, there is a point of supremacy, and that must be true for the law. There must be an apex to the law – one law which overshadows every other law. It’s a logical conclusion to reach. Except, we live in a spiritual realm where human logic does not always apply.
Now, here’s the fun of Jesus’ response. He answers them, and then, He gives them the real answer. In His first response, Jesus says, “Hey, nothing to this one, guys. Love God. Love God more than you love anything else. Love God more than you love yourself, frankly, and love God with every aspect of your being. Because Law is relational. Like they’ll say in the Nike commercial some day, ‘Just do it.’ Well, just love God. Period.”
“But you’re wrong when you assume that you can stop right there, boys. There’s a second commandment that is equally important. Remember I said that law is relational? Well, the second, equally important command is ‘love everyone else as much as you love yourself.’ That means that first you have to love yourself, and then you take all that love that you have for God and yourself, and you turn it outward toward everyone else. Love is the thing, man. Love is the point. Relational love. Get it?”
Wow. What an answer. They had trouble with the relational aspect of the law. The religious kooks of that day thought that they could run a check list of the things that they did and didn’t do every day of the world, and make a place for themselves in religious history by simply being better at, well, being better. They read the law that said “don’t have any idols,” and they took it literally. Took all the “idol-like” objects off the bookshelf, swept the house clean of “other than Yahweh” artifacts, and pronounced themselves “good.” They read the law that said, “Keep the Sabbath holy,” and they said, “well, that obviously means that you can’t travel more than 3/5ths of a mile from your home, and that you can’t do any of your day to day work on Saturday, and unless your ox gets stuck in the ditch, you’d better be in synagogue – and remember to write a check to the temple.” They learned how to keep the law while ignoring the relational aspect of the law.
Funny. We still have trouble with that sort of thing, don’t we. We do the very same thing – we make our own set of laws to support the “Big Ten,” and then we ignore how our keeping of the law might otherwise affect our families, our neighbors, our communities. We do the very same thing.
So, Jesus pointed out the relational aspect of the law, but He also pointed out that relationships are with God and people, and that all of them are important. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with that relationship with God, and the last six deal with our relationships with one another. “On these two,” Jesus said, “hinge all the law, and the prophets.” “Boys, all these laws you’re out there writing – they all boil down to the ‘Ten,’ and those all boil down to the ‘Two.’ But those two boil down to relationship, and you’re completely missing that part of it.” Yeah, it’s funny. We’re still doing the same thing.
Well, that was the answer He gave them. But it wasn’t the real answer. I’d like to have been there to watch the faces of everyone. I’d like to have seen the little hint of a smile on Jesus’ face as he watched them huddle in the corner to consider how they were going to respond. I’d like to have watched their faces as he interrupts their quick deliberations to pose a question to them. I’d like to have watched their eyes as they realized that He asked them a “no win” question. And I’d like to have watched their countenances droop when they had to admit that they didn’t know how to answer Him. I’d like to have seen all of that.
Now, watch what He does. “Hey, boys. While your pondering over there, let me ask you a question. Ya’ll believe in the Messiah, don’t you? Whose Son would he be?” The question was direct – they would have understood. From whose lineage would the Messiah come? They knew the answer to this one – David. They had nearly exalted David to the point of divinity in their religious culture. David was the point man – he was the man to whom they would all point when talk turned to the Messiah. The Messiah would come out of the house of David!!
He had set the trap, and they stepped right into it. “Well, then – How is it then that David refers to the Messiah as Lord? How is it that David submits to the authority of the Messiah? And how is it that you boys won’t submit to the relational authority of the Messiah?” Okay, that last part is my interpolation, but it sort of moves to the point of the lesson. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus to test His authenticity, and He talks to them about authority. The root of both of those words comes from the word which we also use to develop the word author. They ask a question about the law, and He answers by speaking about authority, which, by the way, comes from the author of the law.
Do you remember a couple of years ago when Southern Baptists rewrote their statement of faith. I always found that to be a wasteful exercise – because the only two directions you could really go with something like that is to (1) say that on any given day, this seems to be what many of us believe, or (2) say that since those of us who have gained religious power think a certain way, we are going to try to force the rest of you to think the way we do. I violently opposed the latter direction, and couldn’t figure out the point of the former direction. Anyway, one of the main talking points for those of us who were amazed at the changes in the Faith and Message statement from the one that had worked just fine for 37 years was the not-so-subtle elevation of the scriptures over Christ in terms of primacy. Many of us felt that in that particular document, the scriptures were elevated – almost to a position of deity – while Christ was demoted. We argued the point, and they basically agreed that was what they had done. Their argument was steeped in a legalistic tradition that failed to adequately acknowledge the authorship of the scriptures. They couldn’t see the nature of the relationship. Over and again, I would enter into conversation with someone who would say, “How can we possibly know anything of Jesus without first encountering the scriptures?”
Now, I’m not going to go so far this morning as to say that their way of seeing things is wrong. But I will go so far as to say that their way of seeing things is not the way that I see things, and they don’t get to tell me that I’m wrong, either. When I encounter the scriptures – the law of God – I ultimately discover interpretation based on the relationship I have with the author of the scriptures. I don’t know how someone can really understand the scriptures without knowing the One Who wrote them.
Matthew has been telling us a story this year. We have been listening, and our hearts have been quickened by the truth that we see presented in his story. But our hearts have been more quickened whenever the principle Character in the story begins to speak – to offer words of truth and law that are tempered and explained by the glint in His eye as He speaks, and the authority He commands as the “Word which was in the beginning,” and Who first spoke these holy scriptures.
We ask a question about authenticity, and we get an answer on authority from the Author – Who wants to have a relationship with His readers.
Do you know the Author?
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
Matthew 22:34-46
Sean Connery won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the 1987 classic, The Untouchables. It was the story of the struggle between lawman Eliot Ness and the gangster, Al Capone. Early in the movie, Ness has had a bad day, and is contemplating his choice to pursue Capone while looking down into the Chicago river. Connery (beat cop Jim Malone in the movie) sees him, and talks to him about what has happened. He tells him that he did his duty that day, and that’s all that he can ask of himself, and that he should go home to his family. Then Connery says, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
It was a statement from experience to inexperience – from an old cop to a rookie. It was sage advice from one who was quite long of tooth. And his words ended the conversation that day with a sense of finality that completes far too few conversations in this old world.
When Jesus was interrogated by the Pharisees and Sadducees in the event that Matthew records in the last verses of chapter 22 of his gospel, Jesus trumps them one last time, and Matthew says, “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” And I could hear Sean Connery in the background saying, “Thus endeth the lesson!”
Matthew told us a story. We’ve been listening to it for most of this year, and it was a good story. Let me remind us of a couple of things. This story was told from Matthew’s vantage point. And it was a pretty good vantage point. Matthew was the tax collector that Jesus called into service as a disciple, and he walked and talked with Jesus for a period of nearly three years. They were roommates, in a manner of speaking. They got to know the good, the bad, and the ugly about one another, and Matthew tells us that with Jesus, there was only the good. So, when Matthew started putting down his recollections on paper, he had something that he wanted to prove – a point that he wanted to make. Jesus was the long awaited Messiah – the One the Jews had been waiting for since old Abraham was first called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Jesus was the One who had been promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the promised Savior spoken of by all the prophets, and He had come to redeem us.
In the process of coming to redeem us, He showed us how to live. And one of the things He showed us is that we have a place in God’s lineage that is a place of prominence. When people question our authority to act as children of God, we respond with the same kind of gentle audacity that Jesus used when He responded to the religious leaders of that day. Jesus proved His point, even while proving that He had the right and position to make the final point. They knew it, and no one asked Him anything after that. Game, set, match. Thus endeth the lesson!
Now, that’s the context of our scripture lesson for today. Jesus finally steps way out there on the limb and basically says, in His response to the Pharisees and Sadducees, that all authority had been given to Him. That’s more or less the point of the day. It’s a good point for us to make note of – Jesus is the final authority – in our lives, in the lives of really everyone who has or will ever walk the face of this planet – whether they admit it this side of heaven, or not.
That having been said, we must notice something else – this authority is relational. Let’s back up to the original question. “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” It’s really a good question – well, sort of. It supposes that as in most things, there is a point of supremacy, and that must be true for the law. There must be an apex to the law – one law which overshadows every other law. It’s a logical conclusion to reach. Except, we live in a spiritual realm where human logic does not always apply.
Now, here’s the fun of Jesus’ response. He answers them, and then, He gives them the real answer. In His first response, Jesus says, “Hey, nothing to this one, guys. Love God. Love God more than you love anything else. Love God more than you love yourself, frankly, and love God with every aspect of your being. Because Law is relational. Like they’ll say in the Nike commercial some day, ‘Just do it.’ Well, just love God. Period.”
“But you’re wrong when you assume that you can stop right there, boys. There’s a second commandment that is equally important. Remember I said that law is relational? Well, the second, equally important command is ‘love everyone else as much as you love yourself.’ That means that first you have to love yourself, and then you take all that love that you have for God and yourself, and you turn it outward toward everyone else. Love is the thing, man. Love is the point. Relational love. Get it?”
Wow. What an answer. They had trouble with the relational aspect of the law. The religious kooks of that day thought that they could run a check list of the things that they did and didn’t do every day of the world, and make a place for themselves in religious history by simply being better at, well, being better. They read the law that said “don’t have any idols,” and they took it literally. Took all the “idol-like” objects off the bookshelf, swept the house clean of “other than Yahweh” artifacts, and pronounced themselves “good.” They read the law that said, “Keep the Sabbath holy,” and they said, “well, that obviously means that you can’t travel more than 3/5ths of a mile from your home, and that you can’t do any of your day to day work on Saturday, and unless your ox gets stuck in the ditch, you’d better be in synagogue – and remember to write a check to the temple.” They learned how to keep the law while ignoring the relational aspect of the law.
Funny. We still have trouble with that sort of thing, don’t we. We do the very same thing – we make our own set of laws to support the “Big Ten,” and then we ignore how our keeping of the law might otherwise affect our families, our neighbors, our communities. We do the very same thing.
So, Jesus pointed out the relational aspect of the law, but He also pointed out that relationships are with God and people, and that all of them are important. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with that relationship with God, and the last six deal with our relationships with one another. “On these two,” Jesus said, “hinge all the law, and the prophets.” “Boys, all these laws you’re out there writing – they all boil down to the ‘Ten,’ and those all boil down to the ‘Two.’ But those two boil down to relationship, and you’re completely missing that part of it.” Yeah, it’s funny. We’re still doing the same thing.
Well, that was the answer He gave them. But it wasn’t the real answer. I’d like to have been there to watch the faces of everyone. I’d like to have seen the little hint of a smile on Jesus’ face as he watched them huddle in the corner to consider how they were going to respond. I’d like to have watched their faces as he interrupts their quick deliberations to pose a question to them. I’d like to have watched their eyes as they realized that He asked them a “no win” question. And I’d like to have watched their countenances droop when they had to admit that they didn’t know how to answer Him. I’d like to have seen all of that.
Now, watch what He does. “Hey, boys. While your pondering over there, let me ask you a question. Ya’ll believe in the Messiah, don’t you? Whose Son would he be?” The question was direct – they would have understood. From whose lineage would the Messiah come? They knew the answer to this one – David. They had nearly exalted David to the point of divinity in their religious culture. David was the point man – he was the man to whom they would all point when talk turned to the Messiah. The Messiah would come out of the house of David!!
He had set the trap, and they stepped right into it. “Well, then – How is it then that David refers to the Messiah as Lord? How is it that David submits to the authority of the Messiah? And how is it that you boys won’t submit to the relational authority of the Messiah?” Okay, that last part is my interpolation, but it sort of moves to the point of the lesson. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus to test His authenticity, and He talks to them about authority. The root of both of those words comes from the word which we also use to develop the word author. They ask a question about the law, and He answers by speaking about authority, which, by the way, comes from the author of the law.
Do you remember a couple of years ago when Southern Baptists rewrote their statement of faith. I always found that to be a wasteful exercise – because the only two directions you could really go with something like that is to (1) say that on any given day, this seems to be what many of us believe, or (2) say that since those of us who have gained religious power think a certain way, we are going to try to force the rest of you to think the way we do. I violently opposed the latter direction, and couldn’t figure out the point of the former direction. Anyway, one of the main talking points for those of us who were amazed at the changes in the Faith and Message statement from the one that had worked just fine for 37 years was the not-so-subtle elevation of the scriptures over Christ in terms of primacy. Many of us felt that in that particular document, the scriptures were elevated – almost to a position of deity – while Christ was demoted. We argued the point, and they basically agreed that was what they had done. Their argument was steeped in a legalistic tradition that failed to adequately acknowledge the authorship of the scriptures. They couldn’t see the nature of the relationship. Over and again, I would enter into conversation with someone who would say, “How can we possibly know anything of Jesus without first encountering the scriptures?”
Now, I’m not going to go so far this morning as to say that their way of seeing things is wrong. But I will go so far as to say that their way of seeing things is not the way that I see things, and they don’t get to tell me that I’m wrong, either. When I encounter the scriptures – the law of God – I ultimately discover interpretation based on the relationship I have with the author of the scriptures. I don’t know how someone can really understand the scriptures without knowing the One Who wrote them.
Matthew has been telling us a story this year. We have been listening, and our hearts have been quickened by the truth that we see presented in his story. But our hearts have been more quickened whenever the principle Character in the story begins to speak – to offer words of truth and law that are tempered and explained by the glint in His eye as He speaks, and the authority He commands as the “Word which was in the beginning,” and Who first spoke these holy scriptures.
We ask a question about authenticity, and we get an answer on authority from the Author – Who wants to have a relationship with His readers.
Do you know the Author?
Richard W. Dunn, PhD.
posted by the sojourning pilgrim | 11:59 PM
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