Spiritual Armchairs vs. Mature Discipleship
- Invitation to the Celebration
We come to worship to celebrate Good News, to declare our allegiance, to affirm whose we are, who we are, what we do, where we go, in the name and power of the risen Christ. So, let's do that! Here! Now! And, all the people said, "Amen! Be It So! Let's Do It! Tah-dah!" (Keep repeating the response until responds with enthusiasm.)
P: We are here today, for whatever reason.
We are here because God called, invited us, as God does every week. Today, we said "yes," for whatever reason.
P: Now that we're here, Lord, heal us and free us to be persons who love You, our friends and enemies.
In order to do that, Lord, we're going to need all the help that You can give us. Thanks for Your loving us, so that we will love those whom You have placed in our personal histories.
* OPENING HYMN Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty #2
* INVOCATION AND LORD'S PRAYER God of love, thou hast given us the capacity to love, yet we have fallen short, been selfish and sinful. We have hurt those whom we might have loved, been selfish toward the very ones who have meant the most to us. We repent of this, our failure to love. We pray for a new selflessness, for a vision of that which is our best self and our brightest hope, to share this life in joy with the very ones you have led to us, for forgiveness, and for kindly love to reign, at last, in our hearts. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. AMEN.
SCRIPTURE READING Leviticus 19:1-2+15-18
19:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. 15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18 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.
Psalms 1:1-6
1:1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; :2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
OFFERING We are stewards of God's love, either positive or negative stewards. Jesus told us that if our brother or sister has a grudge against us, we are, first, to go to that person and get squared away before bringing our offering. That may cut down on the offering today; but it might transform our church and community. (One minute of silence before receiving the offering.)
* DOXOLOGY
* PRAYER OF DEDICATION There is no use in our pretending, God, that we can repay all of the damage that our lack of loving has done to ourselves, others, and you. We offer these gifts as partial payment, not because we must do so to win your love, but because we choose to do so to thank you for your love. did anyone made a decision to reach out to someone from whom he/she is alienated?
CHILDREN'S STORY TIME Do you have an easy time, or a hard time, loving people, especially brothers or sisters, or even parents, when you don't get what you want? Distinguish between loving and liking. We can love others without liking many of the things they do; just as they may not like many of the things we do. Our parents do not throw us into the street because of certain things we do or say. Not true of all parents, as we read about in the daily newspaper. (Be careful about not making this a legalistic message; that is, "you should ... you have to ... you must because I say so....") We love others for one reason only; because God loves us, even when we have no idea how to love ourselves.
CHORAL ANTHEM
PRAYER Center it around the heighth, depth, width, breadth of God's love to and for the world, a love which exceeds our comprehension; a love which is extended to those whom we do not know, and some whom we do not like; and wonder how God can possibly love them, when to us they are so unlovable. / We Seek Forgiveness The Act of Seeing How Poorly We Love C. S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, says, "If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact, you must give it to no one, not even to a cat or a dog." (One minute of silence with no comment.) Now, silently consider your potential for love, and for your actual practice of loving, those in your home (pause); those in your neighborhood (pause); those with whom you work or attend school (pause); those whom you do not like (pause); those who actually have set out to do you in (pause). Consider your thoughts, silently, about Jesus' commandment. (Two minutes.) Invite the people to offer sentence prayers of confession. After each prayer, ask the people to respond, "Lord, have mercy on us." // The Act of Receiving New Power to Love John Thompson, in a sermon titled "A Christian 'Love-In,' " says, "Love unites [I add, hate unties], for to love another is to accept unlimited responsibility for his good. In other words, love is being fully responsible in our relationships." I put it this way, "We are responsible for ourself; we are responsible to another, to listen, to affirm, to be available to comfort, to confront." Ask if the people have any response to these comments.
Prayer "O God of love, may the light of your love dawn in our lives and through us, shine into our world, which first and foremost is your world. Dispel the gloomy cloud of night, and death's dark shadow put to flight by your loving presence and your awesome power. Come now, O Christ, and prepare us to receive you when you come to us in the person of the homeless one, the hungry one, the enemy, or the stranger. By your great love, rule in our hearts and our heads, and let your light shine in us and through us forever"
* PREPARATIONAL HYMN Open My Eyes That I May See # 174
SCRIPTURE TEXT Matthew 22:34-46
22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 37 He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 43 He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 44 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? 45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
SERMON Spiritual Armchairs vs. Mature Discipleship
Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth century Danish theologian wrote thirty-some books to deepen people's capacity to understand, appreciate, and appropriate the Christian faith. Kierkegaard attributed humankind's greatest illness not to ignorance, but to a lack of peace of mind. Much of Western thinking still seems to cast a heavy vote for the former and not for the latter. If one believes one's greatest illness is ignorance, one will spend lots of time discovering and gathering facts. If one comes to believe that his/her greatest illness is a lack of peace of mind, Soren Kierkegaard invites them to come to know Christ, which in his day was not synonymous with the institutional church. // Formal Judaism had one of its professional expressions in the sect called the Pharisees. Birthed around 175 B.C.,1 this group sought to preserve Judaism and the Law at the time that Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria was forcing Greek religion and culture upon the Jewish people. The Pharisees, that is, the Separated Ones were the men who dedicated their whole life to the careful and meticulous observance of every rule and regulation which the scriptures had worked out .. at most there were not more than 6,000 of them .. they were dedicated legalists .. (and) they were men in desperate earnest about their religion .. They could, therefore, develop at one and the same time all the faults of legalism and all the virtues of complete self-dedication.2
It is William Barclay’s opinion that the Pharisees had such a mind and heart for the legal facts of the Jewish faith that they had overlooked their more underlying need for a peace of mind that came through a personal acceptance of the true hoped-for Messiah, i.e., more through Christ as Messiah than through the more popular nationalistic, militaristic notion of a prince more like David.
Soren Kierkegaard lived at a time when Hegel, the great philosopher, lived. Hegel had come up with a construct by which to understand historical events: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. An event occurs, a counter-event follows, and a synthesis event takes hold. Many learned people were impressed. Not so Soren Kierkegaard. He likened Hegel and certain others to having an "armchair" approach to life. That is, intellectually and philosophically, some bright minds would sit and debate matters of truth and be very persuasive. But as soon as they left their sitting positions, they behaved as if the truth they had just spent hours debating held no personal, abiding significance for their own lives. Such great intellects would spin great castles of thought, but once leaving their armchairs, chose, morally and spiritually, to live in doghouses. The presenting mal ady? In matters of morality and spirituality, truth is not just objective; it is deeply personal. And we don't show we truly know it or have it until we live differently because of it. Discussion is not the heart of truth; incarnation is the enlivenment of truth -- God's truth -- in and through persons.
The Pharisees certainly grasped Law as truth, and they lived differently legalistically and with a certain admirable piety. But the precious Spirit of God, dwelling within our hearts, minds, and wills, has the chief role, not of detailing God's Law through further rules and regulations, but of removing further blindness from our minds and hearts, so we can see and receive God's truth embodied in the true Messiah, Jesus the Christ. To experience God's truth through Jesus is to experience profound alterations of some of our most cherished religious conceptions. Facts and knowledge, as important as they are, are all the more useful once they are in the hearts and hands of disciples maturing in a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The temptation is that they too often block our view, because they are valued and cherished for themselves, rather than made secondary to devotion to Christ. The Love of God for us must be so well-seeded, welcomed, into the soil of our lives, that Jesus' two commandment teaching in this passage -- our loving God and each other -- takes on profoundly new dimensions that legalism stifles more than enhances. Disciples know that God's objective truth delights to give personal evidence of its existence and value through persons, not primarily through armchair discussions.
In verses 34-40, Jesus draws upon his knowledge of the Torah, the Law and wisdom of Israel, to answer the lawyer/Pharisee's question (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). It is a traditional answer to a traditional question. It is the historic wisdom of the faith that one cannot place anything more important above the commands to love God and neighbor. It is truth that is already known, but we choose to keep it on the mental shelf of our lives (the armchair stance) rather than put it into action through our lives (the mature discipleship stance).
Verses 41-46, expresses an originality of Jesus that is also deeply personal, "If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" It is really Jesus' attempt to get these Pharisees to think much more personally about David calling the one from his seed also his Lord, that is, the Messiah.
The two sections of this passage, according to one commentator, reveal a helpful tight bond to one another, through Matthew, the Gospel writer: / Throughout Matthew's Gospel, we find great respect to tradition. Matthew depicts Jesus as the one who comes in fulfillment of the faith of Israel, rather than in supersession of Israel's faith. Jesus knows and loves Torah and quotes from it freely in Matthew. Thus the sermon .. first considers questions and traditional answers. Then it gets to the heart of the matters -- where are you in this debate? What think you of the Messiah?3
In verse 34, not long after Jesus successfully responded to the question-and-answer barbs of the Sadducees, enough to quiet them, another fraternity of challengers, the Pharisees, wanted, with their questions-and- answers approach, to try Jesus on for size. He was no less able to meet their challenge as well. Although verse 34 seems merely to set the stage for the verses that follow, it also holds for us, on a more personal level, a precious insight. When others challenge us in matters of faith, knowledge, and principle to see if we will stand or fall, we can, like Jesus, and since the resurrection, through Jesus, respond with God's power and truth. We just need to do a difficult thing, daily: stay close to God, cherish His Word enough to continue growing in knowing it, and be willing to stand for Him, at the very time that the enemy is working through others to topple us. Very much like Jesus, we need, not a mere human level of strength and insight, but a divine-human compound combination of empowerment and godly understanding to meet challenges set otherwise to topple us. Keep the faith, and the faith will most certainly keep you. In response to the Pharisee/lawyer's question of verses 35- 36, Jesus gives two answers intimately connected in verses 37-40: Love God with all you've got inside and love your neighbor, outside of you, as yourself. And Jesus states in so many words in verse 40 that if one were mature enough to understand these two commandments, one would see their foundational qualities for all other laws given through the prophets. My question is: "Why did Jesus respond to the Pharisee's request for the greatest commandment by quoting him two commandments?" Might it be because he wants them to move from their primary motive of entrapping him to the better motive of appreciating the application value of these already-known commandments in their own lives? If you and I could picture the scene then, even though they may be standing as they question Jesus, might they, attitudinally and dispositionally speaking, at this point be in an armchair posture of relating to a traditionally taught and known truth? Jesus shares two commandments to encourage them to move from their armchair awareness to a personal practice of loving God, by loving others they might not otherwise love. If one loves God with a great and sure intensity, from God's point of view, that intensity should not significantly lighten up by the time it reaches others. Learning to love others, as God's love counsels and accompanies us, moves us far away from armchair discussion to heart-to-heart sharing. ,In the words of one commentator,
The Pharisees don't want to grow in their faith and understanding. What they want is to play a little theological ping-pong. Pharisees 4, Jesus 0. That's what they want in their theological one-upsmanship. And Jesus gives them nothing controversial, new, or radical. He merely quotes back to them what they already know from their days as kids in Sunday School. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. Class is over. School is out.4
Just at the point while they're still gathered and may be done with Jesus, especially given his comeback invitation and challenge to them to move from merely quoting scripture to embodying it in their lives through genuine practice, Jesus now completes their day by putting a precious and original question to them in verse 41-42. He asks them what they personally think of the Messiah, including the matter of whose son he is. He's trying personally to draw them into an intimate awareness of Messiah. They give a traditional, memorized answer, thereby keeping their distance, emotionally and spiritually: "Messiah is the son of David!" So, by asking a unique question, for which, in their experience and background, they have no further formal, prepared answer, he actually is inviting them to stretch emotionally and spiritually. In verses 43-45, Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1, a Messianic text, where it is believed God invites the Messiah (His Son) to sit at His right hand: "The Lord says to my Lord; sit at my right hand." The Jewish leaders and people thought this through enough to know that the Messiah would come through David's lineage, but obviously not personally and thoroughly enough to appreciate that this son through his lineage would be more Lord than Son. To understand and to appreciate that would fill both head and heart with a love and regard for God and neighbor that would thereafter alter one's perceptions and actions. It alters one's perceptions because one would see that it is no longer "adequate to call the Messiah, Son of David. He is not David's son; he is David's Lord."5 In verse 46, we note that his questioners are left speechless, daring never again to ask him any more questions, thus implying that they retreated to their accustomed thinking, debating, and acting. But had they taken what he shared and said to heart, they would have been transformed by the connection that indeed this one from David's lineage was and is his and our Lord. Furthermore, their armchair debates would no longer eclipse activity, but be better evidenced in new fruit through activity, that is, the traditional notion of Son of David would yield to the greater matter of Son of God and that is something always larger and greater than any tradition or strings of tradition. Practice in fruitfulness would supersede matters of intellectual knowledge and elocution, for the Son of God, the Messiah Jesus and those transformed by his presence and Lordship over their lives believe that right understanding is intimately connected to right activity. They belong together: loving God and loving neighbor; cherishing Messiah and living Messiah-discipleship lives. In the words of William H. Willimon, a Bible commentator: What good is our creed, our enumeration of our beliefs, if those beliefs don't make any difference in the way we live, in the ways we act? It is not enough to believe something; we must live it as well ..//.. Call for the question, the question. Now to the very heart of the matter. What think you of the Messiah?6
1. William Barclay, Matthew, Volume II, Westminster Press, p. 282.
2. Ibid., pp. 282-283.
3. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, October-December, 1996,Vol. 24, No. 4, p. 16.
4. Ibid., p. 16.
5. Barclay, op. cit., p. 280.
6. Willimon, op. cit., p. 17.
* INVITATIONAL HYMN Sing to the Lord of Harvest # 593
* BENEDICTION "How shockingly indiscriminate is the love of God" (author unknown). "How shockingly discriminate is the love of (our name)"
ORGAN POSTLUDE