The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (October 2, 2021)

May the words of mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Today’s propers revolve around the Law. As Christians, the Law is important to us. Liturgically, we recite either the 10 Commandments like we did last week or the Summary of the Law which is the subject of today’s Gospel reading. The Law is important because it’s holy and good; it points us back to its Giver.

Yet throughout the Scriptures, the perfect Law comes into contact with fragile humans who cannot keep it perfectly. In Genesis 3, we read about the first sin, a violation of God’s Law. The rest of the Old Testament is a story of perpetual disappointment as Israel continues to break the Law which was given to them through Moses. In Hosea 4, the prophet gives us a graphic description of the moral devolution of the people of Israel: “Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away.” The people’s lack of faithfulness to the Lord was so thoroughly depraved it effected not only the practitioners of wickedness but even the very ecological system they inhabited. In this instance, the Law provides not something to aspire to but rather a condemnation. So, the purpose of the Law is twofold: it provided the people an ideal and template for their lives but, it also functions as a measuring stick for sin, plumbing the depths of wickedness.

In his Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul discusses the relationship between the Law and sin in a way that is enlightening to this topic. In effect, his argument is that the Law is good because it comes from God and reveals his nature. There is nothing wrong in the Law. But, because we are sinful, we cannot keep the Law. And even if we could miraculously obey all it commands, the Law cannot enliven our souls; it cannot turn this heart of stone into a heart of flesh. So the problem isn’t at all with the Law, it’s with us. The Law is a constant reminder of our shortcomings; our inability to measure up to holiness and righteousness. This is why grace is so important. Christ did what we could not do: he lived a life that fulfilled the Law and therefore was able to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice to the Father, enabling us to participate in the divine life.

Without that grace, we would always be under the condemnation of the Law. It’s in his sacrifice on the Cross that we are enriched. That is, in our Baptism, we are “born again” because we die to sin and are raised again in a spiritual sense. This benefit is what Paul, in the Epistle this morning calls “being made rich.” What he means is that, by our participation in the sacramental life, we are given a great gift. Further, just as Israel was to remember God’s deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt as a perpetual impetus for confidence in him, so we can look at our entrance into the Church at our Baptism (and his continual provision for us in the Sacrament of the Altar) as a perpetual impetus for our confidence in the Lord. The same God who saved us is the same God who sustains us to the end, in Paul’s words. Not by our own power but by his work.

In the Gospel reading this morning, we see the reverse of what happened last week. Last week, Jesus entrapped the Pharisees by posing them questions they could not answer about healing on the sabbath. This week, we see the Pharisees attempting to trick Jesus by asking him two questions. First, they ask, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus answers this by offering them the Summary of Law. Their second question is “Whose son is the Christ.” At that time, the Jews were looking for a new David, a king who would liberate the people from the foreign imposition of the Romans and restore national autonomy to Israel. While Jesus certainly is depicted as the New David, here he pulls a quotation from Psalm 110 to say that if the Messiah is David’s son, why does David refer to him as “lord”?

In the first part of the reading revolving around the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of who we are. But this is not a commandment that can stand alone because our encounter with him isn’t privatized; we interact with God through our interactions with others and therefore, we must love our neighbor as ourself. The Cross becomes the model for us: “God proves his love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8) and so we can say “We love him because he first loved us.” God’s love for us is exhibited on the cross and so our love for him and others must be cross-shaped.

The result of his love is extrapolated further in the second half of the reading. The Jews believed the Messiah would be the Son of David (and technically, they aren’t wrong…Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy that explicitly connects Our Lord with David). But Jesus’ argument is based on Psalm 110 where David called the Messiah “lord.” This is not how a father typically addresses a son. I certainly don’t talk that way to Jude or Rowan. A son is, in a certain sense, “inferior” in rank to their father but we know the Messiah is superior to David. And why is that? Not only does David call him Lord but look at the other part of the quotation: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” Who are these enemies? In the New Testament, the locus of conflict shifts from Israel and other nations to a spiritual warfare. In Colossians 2:15, St. Paul says “Christ disarmed the principalities and powers [by which he means Satan, sin, and death] and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.” The author of Hebrews says something similar: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” The love of God made manifest on the cross actually sets us free by destroying those forces which hold us in bondage. We are set free from sin, death, and the devil so that we might find true liberty, not in self-autonomy but in the Law of Love which Paul defines by saying, “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” How different this is from our culture’s shallow and self-centered understanding of love that’s based on what we get out of it.

Real love isn’t that way. Real love is a decision to be self-sacrificial. We have the ultimate template for that in Christ’s love for us, which is so great that he went to the cross. While GOd’s love is perfect, however, human love is capacious. The more we do it, the more we can do it. This I think connects to our collect this morning and its focus on withstanding the temptations we face from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you read Genesis 3, the serpent doesn’t persuade Eve through rational argumentation; he doesn’t give Eve a syllogism or checklist of propositional truths. Rather, Satan cuts straight to her desire, causing her to see the fruit and subsequently want it. Temptation arises from our disordered desires. When we feed those desires, we warp our loves. So how ought we to turn from temptation? By emulating Christ in his self-sacrificial love. We don’t do this because we want God to love; it’s because we know he already does love us that we, emulating that love, can become those who pursue what is True, Good, and Beautiful. Cling to the cross of Christ and love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and, therefore, love your neighbor as yourself. This is the only way to withstand temptation.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.