- Sermon - Mickey Anders

"The Only Game That Matters"

By Dr. Mickey Anders

First Christian Church

Pikeville, Kentucky

October 23, 2005

34When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

When I was growing up, it seemed that all the songs started with nonsense syllables. One of my favorites began with "Na na na Na na na Na na." Perhaps you remember that song. It was "The Games that People Play," and the words went like this:

Our text for today deals with the games that the Pharisees were playing with Jesus. For several weeks now we have been reading the instances in Matthew where the Pharisees were asking Jesus trick questions. And here they are at it again. Jesus found himself in the middle of a heated controversy, but he offered a stunningly simple response to a very tricky question, an absolutely brilliant answer.

"Which commandment in the law," asked a theologically sophisticated lawyer, "is the greatest?" Jesus knew that the religious leaders had counted no fewer than 613 commands in the law of God - 248 positive commands, linked to the number of parts of the body, and 365 negative commands, corresponding to the days of the year. Which single commandment could possibly be the greatest?

If we ask a modern preacher a similar question, they would no doubt go into a lengthy discussion of the "moral law" and the "ceremonial law." Of course, one problem with such a view is that the Bible never makes that distinction and those two terms are not found in the Bible.

Instead Jesus gave a stunningly simple and absolutely brilliant answer, "Love." "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind," he reminded them, quoting a line from Deuteronomy. "This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:36-40).

Love is the key for Jesus. It's the key for interpreting everything that God has revealed to us, not only in the law, but in the prophets. Instead of hatred, Jesus offers us love.

Shimon Peres was Israel's Prime Minister from 1984 to 1986, and in 1995 he assumed the role of acting prime minister of Israel following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. When Larry King interviewed him for his book Powerful Prayers (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1998), King asked him if he had a particular prayer that he prayed. Peres replied that he always prayed for peace, because the failure to find peace had resulted in the deaths of so many people. He went on to agree that even Yasser Arafat prays to the same God, and that they claim the same father, Abraham. He noted that King Hussein had reminded him that we are all sons of Abraham: Why don't we become brothers?

Larry King then said that he was asking people to contribute a prayer for the book he was writing. He asked Peres if he had a contribution.

Peres replied: "I would offer the one sentence Moses told the people and is the basis of Judaism: Love thy neighbor as thyself."

The problem with love is that it's a tough game to master. Hatred comes easily to us - it's almost a reflex action. We find an easy hatred between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We find hatred between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. We find hatred between American and Al-Qaeda.

Hatred is easy, you see, but love is an enormous challenge. What makes it even trickier is that Jesus commands us to love not only our neighbors, but also our enemies. "You have heard that it was said," says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (5:43-45).

Think about it. If you love those who love you, what's the big deal? Don't even members of hate groups do the same? A terrorist can sit around planning death and destruction all day, and then go give his dear, sweet mother a big, affectionate kiss. What makes the followers of Jesus distinctive is that they love not only their friends but also their enemies, and they pray precisely for those who persecute them. It's hard to imagine anything tougher.

When I was in high school I ran the mile run. My personal best was a five minute mile, but at the time I felt that was a failure because there were other boys on the team running the mile in 4 minutes and 35 seconds. So I never placed. But the one that I really admired was Mike Burchfield because he ran the track with hurdles in the way. He ran the high-hurdles and could run them in perfect stride. I don't think I could have high jumped those hurdles!

Our problem with love is that there are just too many hurdles in the way. There are just so many barriers to the kind of love that Jesus commands us to practice. Self-interest keeps us from loving others, because we fear that another person's advantage will create a disadvantage for ourselves. Inconvenience prevents us from reaching out, because we are so resistant to leaving our own cultural, political, racial and political comfort zones. Distrust is a big barrier as well - we fear that if we lower our defenses, we'll be attacked.

On top of this, we are often held back by our fundamental dislike of certain people, by our disapproval of their hairstyles, clothes, music, food, work habits, attitudes and accents. We have a misguided sense that religious purity would be threatened if we loved those who don't love us. Another barrier is a simple lack of personal interest - many of us simply couldn't care less about people across the street, or around the world. Another obstacle to love of neighbor is fear: We fear that we will be rejected, that we will offend, that we will be imposed upon, that we will be endlessly obligated.

Left to our own personal preferences, we would never leap these barriers and obey the love commandment.

Fortunately, Jesus never leaves us alone. He makes it very clear that the command to love God can never be separated from the much tougher command to love our neighbors. We cannot first love God, and then, when we get really good at loving, take on the challenge of loving people around us. To love God is identical to loving one's neighbor - they are as inseparable as the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross. "On these two commandments," says Jesus, "hang all the law and the prophets."

One of my mentors in ministry (Dr. Don Harbuck) always said that the kingdom of God is the kingdom of right relationships. God wants us to get our upward relationships right, but God also wants us to get our horizontal relationships right.

Loving others is not just a nice and noble and enlightened thing to do, but it is, instead, an integral part of our spiritual growth, a component of our relationship with Christ, and an aspect of our everlasting salvation. When we love a neighbor, we not only fulfill the great commandment but we act as a channel for God, we experience a truly indescribable joy, and we discover the very meaning of human existence. Best of all, we meet our Lord Jesus in a powerful, profound and personal way.

Jesus promises to meet us, after all, in one particular place: in our needy neighbors. At the last judgment, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, all the nations will be gathered before him, and all the people of the world will be divided into sheep and goats. The good sheep will be invited into the kingdom of God for one reason, and one reason only, predicts Jesus: They were the ones who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited the prisoner.

And, most amazing of all, when the good sheep served their neighbors, they were really serving Jesus himself (Matthew 25:31-40). When they fed a homeless woman, they were feeding Jesus. When they gave a cup of water to an immigrant groundskeeper, they were refreshing Jesus. When they welcomed a stranger of a different race to worship, they were welcoming Jesus. When they purchased clothes for poor children, they were clothing Jesus. When they cared for an AIDS patient, they were caring for Jesus. When they visited inmates in the county jail, they were visiting Jesus.

To love one's neighbor is to love Jesus Christ. Nothing more, nothing less. They are exactly the same, and as inseparable as the beams of the cross.

(I am heavily indebted to Homiletics online in this sermon. I must give credit to "High-Tech Hatred" Homiletics 10/27/2002.)