Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
October 26, 2008
Matthew 22: 34-40
Here are a couple of stories told my one of my favorite preachers, Fred Craddock: "When my wife, Nettie, and I were in Ireland, we noticed behind the farmer's homes and cottages little yards fenced in, and there would be a donkey back there in the backyard, like some people would have a dog. I'd say to the people in the cottage, 'So, you're still using a donkey to work the peat field?"
" 'Oh no,' they'd say,' now we have a motorized plow to work the fields.'
" 'Well, we saw that you still have the donkey.'
" 'Oh yeah, the donkey pulled our plow and cut our peat for six years. We really don't need the donkey now, but we're not going to run him off or sell him. He's part of the family. Our children would kill us if we did something to that donkey.'
" 'You mean to say that you just keep it back there, and you feed it, and take care of it and pay the veterinarian...?'
" 'Well, yes.'
" 'Isn't that kind of expensive?'
" 'Yes it is. But what's the alternative? We love our donkey.' "
Says Craddock, "Sometimes beyond the practical, to the level of love, the rules change so much that you would risk a great deal even to take care of a donkey." Or I suppose a family member or a neighbor or a stranger.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...And you shall love your neighbor as yourself." When it comes to love, sometimes the rules change, and what is practical is no longer the first consideration.
A second Craddock story: "After the Gulf war - the first war in Iraq- began, some of us Christians in Atlanta gathered for prayer. We had songs, we had scripture, we had prayer, and then more songs and scripture and prayer. Seated next to me was a young man, I think about seventeen or eighteen, might have been a freshman at the university. In the course of our prayers, he asked that God would be with the women and children in Iraq who would be hurt and killed in the war. When it was over, a man in his mid-fifties came over to the young man and said, 'Are you on Saddam's side?'
" 'Uh, no sir.'
" 'You're praying for the wrong people!' "
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Rather disturbingly inclusive, don't you think?
This past Saturday was a great event in the Nelson family as our daughter Bethany and her partner Camie were united in marriage here in this sanctuary. And again I want to thank all of you for the great outpouring of love and support which surrounded that event. Camie's brother, Trent, as I've said to you before, is a good old boy from the Bayou, Baton Rouge born and bred. He stood here with his sister during the wedding. At the reception he told me, "This has not been easy. This is not what I grew up with. And I've struggled with this relationship. But she's my sister and I love her and when she asked me to stand with her and Bethany it was a no brainer. I wanted to do it." "You shall love the Lord your God....and your neighbor as yourself."
The joke was told of an eminent philosopher that when he died he arrived in heaven and found himself at a crossroads. One sign pointed: "This way to the Kingdom of God." Another sign pointed: "This way to a discussion about the Kingdom of God." Which road do you suppose the philosopher took?
But Jesus really isn't into discussion. He wants to know - are you going to talk about the love of God and neighbor or are you going to do it? As I said, our text today, is really the last in a series of debates, question and answer sessions, Jesus is having with local religious and political leaders in Matthew 22. They ask him questions about taxes and Cesar, they ask him about the after life, and finally, about which is the greatest commandment. And they really are not seeking an honest discussion. Matthew tells us they asked their questions in order to trap him, to test him. But Jesus is hard to trap. As a debater he's pretty light on his feet - floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.
But finally, clearly, he's had enough of the intellectual boxing match. It's time to get down to what really matters. Again, are you going to discuss love or are you going to love? As William R. Inge once said, "Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking." Or in the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it." Jesus looks at the lawyers and the politicians and the religious leaders and says, "Okay folks, class is over, school is out. We have demonstrated we can all read and quote scripture. Now, who among you is going to live it?" I believe that the poet, Peggy Pond Church, years ago, captured the spirit of this text when she wrote:
Now the frontiers are all closed.
There is no other country we can run away to
There is no ocean we can cross over.
At last we must turn and live with one another.
We cannot escape this day any longer
There is no room for hate left in the world.
` Now we must learn to love.
We can no longer escape from one another.
Love is no longer a theme for eloquence,
Or a way of life for a few to choose.
It is the sternest necessity, the ultimatum.
There is no other way out, there is no country we can flee to.
There is no one on earth who must not face this task now.
William WIllimon, one of my favorite curmudgeons, who also happens to be a United Methodist bishop, writes, "Sometimes, I think we build our churches to look older than they really are. We furnish them with big, heavy furniture, with pews bolted to the floor, everything made to look old, eternal, substantial, fixed, in order to give us the illusion that it will all be here forever. So we can come back here next week and debate it all over again. Don't rush to judgment. There's always tomorrow. Debate. Question. Think. Come back next week. It will all be here, just as it is today. Postpone. But no, finally there is that moment when Jesus looks at us. Enough of your questions. Enough of your evasion, and dodging and ducking. Call for the question now." And the question? Are you going to love God and neighbor or not. Now, today, is your moment of decision, it's the time for action. What good are your creeds, your statements of faith, all those polls that say most of you believe in God, if those beliefs don't make any difference at all in the way you live, in the way you act, the way you treat each other.
I guess at this point, we might want to ask, fine, but what does this love look like exactly? How do we know it? I think we're back to our text. As I said, Jesus has been asked all these questions. Now he turns the tables on his questioners. Now he has a question for them...and for us. Tell me, what do you think of the Messiah? What do you think of the Christ, his life, his path? I think Matthew is being very deliberate here. He wants that question right here in the midst of this text because he wants us to see that the love announced by Jesus looks a lot like Jesus. The one who speaks of love, is the love. That the way he walked and what he taught not only made good sense for daily living, but was, in fact, the way of truth, of life.
I don't know if you know the name Lord Shaftesbury. He was a great man and a good one. He spoke of a night when he was about fourteen years old, but a night that became a major turning point in his life. He was walking down a London street when some drunken men, singing a vulgar song, passed him by. They were carrying a coffin. As they staggered on, the coffin lurched, slipped from their grasp, plunged to the street, discharging the body of a man he assumed to have been their friend. The men cursed their luck, the casket, even the lifeless body. They then clumsily stuffed it back into the coffin, picked it up and continued on their drunken way.
"I never forget that night." said Shaftesbury. "It stayed with me. Here was the body of a friend, an Englishman being buried in Christian England, as through he was only garbage. I knew his soul had long since departed, but where was there any human tenderness or caring?"
And so he went out - remembering that painful moment all the days of his life and in later years he gave all his energies to change and dramatically improve the conditions in mine and factory and workshops throughout England. He brought about a peaceful revolution so dramatic that Matthew Arnold said the average Englishman thought of God as Lord Shaftesbury on a larger scale. Oh yes, did I mention that his whole life he was also a faithful follower of Jesus?
Allow your faith to point beyond yourself, says Jesus, to lift you above the trivial and the sound bites and make you a servant of God and one another. Be curious about and concerned for the human condition everywhere and determined that in some way you will make a difference. That's love, that's my life. Dare to make it your life. As Martin Luther told us, become a Christ to your neighbor. What do you think of the Messiah? What do you think of the Messiah?