Jeremiah 31:31–34 and Saint Matthew 22:34–46
“Creating Value”
This afternoon we are going to have an ordination in this place. In fact, we're going to have four ordinations. This is something we Lutherans consider to be of enormous importance.
These candidates have spent three academic years in seminary. The same amount of time, it should be noted that it takes to earn a law degree, with far less financial remuneration at the conclusion. They have spent a year being supervised by another pastor and learning about congregational life on their internship. They have jumped through academic hoops but, perhaps most importantly of all they have been interviewed and reviewed numerous times by what we call “candidacy committees” that ask them important questions about what they believe with their entire careers and futures hanging in the balance.
Lutherans along with our Roman Catholic and our Reformed Church brothers and sisters take ordained ministry very seriously if not scrupulously.
You can’t, as so many people – some well-meaning and some charlatans – go online and get ordained for a fee or even for free. Friends of mine have done this, with no malice intended, in order that they can preside over the weddings of their friends who were unchurched. I usually smile when people tell me they have done this because these ceremonies almost never occur in a church but rather as destination weddings whose locations can range from mountaintops in faraway lands, to some beach in the Caribbean (where I would love to go) to some barroom (where I wouldn’t)!
The charlatans sometimes get ordained online and then throw in a couple of extra dollars for a piece of paper that grants them the title of Doctor – usually of something obscure like Doctor of Metaphysical Sciences. Soon after some of them try and pass themselves off as the good reverend doctor something-or-another. It isn’t long before they are hanging out their shingles over the entryway of a store-front and starting their own church with little or no theological training where all manner of mischief and mayhem can occur.
Serious churches don’t do that. We ask a lot of our candidates. We put them through the same kind of “hazing rights” that any career requires. Just like you can’t wake up one morning and announce to the world that you are a Medical Doctor, or Dentist, or lawyer, or Certified Public Accountant, you can’t in no-nonsense churches, announce to family, friends, and least of all, your bishop that suddenly, without anyone’s consent, you are a pastor.
There are questions to be asked. Important questions. As important as the one asked of Jesus in today’s gospel.
Matthew is portraying Jesus “as participating in activity that was common for rabbis. Considering that the Torah contained 613 commandments ... the question ... is not so much about ranking, but a way for teachers to communicate what they believe to be the central calling of the law.”1
In his commentary Dr. Theodore J. Wardlaw imagines “that the man standing there in the face of Jesus was a lot like him. He knew that there were 613 laws in the tradition, and he was sure that Jesus would be tongue-tied by discerning, on the spot, which of those laws was the greatest.”2
Jesus isn’t. Instead, he gets right to the heart of the matter.
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”3
Jesus is simply quoting “Deuteronomy 6 which is the basis for theShema, a prayer recited daily by observant Jews. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”4
So important was this commandment that the writer of Deuteronomy continues:
Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.5
If you ever visited an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood you might see men wearing two boxes known as phylacteries (the Greek word) or in the Hebrew a Tefillin. One is strapped to the head to represent thought and the other is strapped to the arm at the same level of the heart. “The head-tefillin imbues ... the idea of subjugating [the] intellect for the love of God. The arm-tefillin, focuses on devoting the person’s strength to the Almighty."6 I admire not only what Tefillins stand for but the courage of those who wear them especially in recent days when they might make themselves targets for hatemongers.
What they represent is just like Jesus said, we are to love God above all things.
Then Jesus remembered something else in the law of equal importance. He remembered a verse from Leviticus, Leviticus 19 to be exact. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”7
Jesus concludes, “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” That seems reasonable to us. Why wouldn’t the Law, the Torah, God’s commandments for God’s chosen people, and the Prophets, God’s words to Israel through God’s human messengers, depend on loving God and loving neighbor as self? Really, when we think about it, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves doesn’t sound like particularly revolutionary moral guidance either. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do anyway? Isn’t that what nice people regardless of denomination, creed, religion, sexual orientation, nation of origin, or political party are trying to do? To be loving of God, neighbor, self?8
No. We know that is isn’t. We wish that is was but it isn’t. There is a lot of meanness in the world and a lot of divisiveness.
In the lands where Jesus walked nobody seems to be loving of anybody else but only seem to be hell-bent on committing acts of terror that inevitably lead to acts of revenge which leave innocents on both sides dead, or dying, or cowering in fear.
People with access to the kind of guns nobody should have shoot up schools, churches, synagogues, schools, movie theatres and now, even a bowling alley in acts of pure hate leaving us to think that love may be a commodity that is in short supply.
People bludgeon each other with selective versus from the Bible leading an awful lot of people to conclude that if this is what it means to be a part of the faith, they want none of it.
Times like these remind us of what is important. And what is important is the love we have seen in Jesus Christ and then been called upon to share with others.
As the late Dr. William Sloan Coffin, of the Riverside Church in New York once said: “Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally on everyone from the Pope to the loneliest [person] on the planet, and secondly, God’s love does not seek value, it creates value.”9
Since probably its very earliest days people have debated what is the greatest gift the Reformation has given us.
Like the question to Jesus there are more than 613 answers but my favourite, especially on this day is as obvious as the one that Jesus presented. It is that we are saved by grace alone. Sola gratia.
As my former Pastor Shannon Kershner pointed on once in a sermon that “the truest thing about who you are is that you are so loved and so chosen by God. God is absolutely smitten with you, but not just you. God is absolutely smitten with all those who have been created in the very image of the divine—with all people. Sola gratia. By grace alone."10
And my second favourite is “like unto it.”
It is the concept of “The Priesthood of All Believers.” It is that radical notion that is not just the four people who will be ordained this afternoon who are entrusted to proclaim the message of the gospel. It is the radical notion that is not just a stole around the shoulders, an ordination certificate, and an advanced degree diploma on that wall that calls one to proclaim the message of the gospel. It is the radical notion that is is not just my job or the job of our new pastor, Pastor Niketh’s to proclaim the messages of the gospel. It is your job to do that, too.
Maybe we can take a hint from the words of the writer of Deuteronomy and tell others about Christ’s love beginning with our children and then “talk about [Christ’s] love when you are at home or out for a walk; at bedtime and the first thing in the morning.”11
It is the call upon on all baptized believers to show forth Christ’s radical inclusion, radical love, radical grace to all people.
When we do this, all of us together, we will be living into our real Reformation heritage. We will all be a part of the priesthood of all believers helping all of Christ’s children see the value Christ has created and is creating in them.
It is all of our jobs to do that and when we do the spirit of the reformation will indeed live forever.
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1. Michael E Lee, “Matthew 22:34-46. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 420–22.
2. TheodoreJ. Wardlaw, “Matthew 22:34-46. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, 3 (Louisville, KY:Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 422–23.
3. St. Matthew 22:27-40. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
4. Deuteronomy 6:4-5. (NRSVUE) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]
5. Deuteronomy 6:6–9. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament Palms and Proverbs [Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress, 1998]]
6. Shraga Simmons, “Tefillin: A Primer,” aishcom, accessed October 24, 2020, https://www.aish.com/jl/m/pb/48969816.html
7. Leviticus 19:18. (NRSVUE)
8. William H. Willimon, “Christ Shaped Love,” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 4 (2020): pp. 12-14.
9. William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 6.
10. Shannon J. Kershner, “Sola Gracia. Only Grace.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, October 15, 2017.
11. Deuteronomy 6:7. (TLB) [ [TLB=The Living Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971]
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