Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

I Corinthians 1:4-7
Matthew 22:34-46

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

ArticleVII. Of the Old Testament.
THE Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore they are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet, notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.

In about two months it will be Advent. When that season arrives, we shall be singing that great hymn of Advent (which many people think to be a Christmas Carol), O Come, O Come Emmanuel. One of the verses of that hymn says:

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times didst give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe.

It is only fitting for Jesus Christ to comment on the Law- the Torah- and to give us the Summary of the Law in the two greatest commandments. After all, it is He who is the true author of the Law.

Consider these words from today's portion of the Gospel also:

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his Son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

This is the same Gospel of Matthew that opens with the words, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Jesus was not rejecting the truth, spoken by Nathan the Prophet to David himself, that the everlasting King Messiah would be one of his own great, great, great...grandsons, ruling on his throne forever (as Isaiah also later foretold-Isaiah 9:6,7). What Jesus meant was to reveal how much more Messiah is than what they were imagining. This is the Gospel of Matthew that records the words of St. Peter's revelation as follows: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." It is not only St. John, but all four of the great Evangelists, who proclaim that Messiah is equal to God, that Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of David, but much more. He is the Son of God, eternally begotten before time and before all creation; and also born of a virgin and made flesh, having come into this world.

As the Son of God, equal with God, one with the Father, he is also the One who gave the Law to Moses. We need to understand that, because far too many people think that Jesus Christ and his New Covenant contradict the Old Covenant; that God was formerly rather vengeful and mean, until Jesus came and straightened Him out.

But, here is what He said:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 5:17-20

The Law of Moses was separated into three kinds of law. These are the ceremonial, the civil and the moral. One of the best known sayings of the Jewish people has a double meaning: "The law of the land is the Law.” It means that in whatever land the Jewish people live, they must be law-abiding people. But, it also means that in the Holy Land, the land they call H’eretz Israel, the Law of the land is the Torah, the Law given through Moses. The people of Israel, throughout the Old Testament period, and into the days of the Macabees, had only one national constitution, the Law of God. Therefore, it contains the civil code of the nation, complete with laws of criminal justice, public safety and so on (some of the practical wisdom of which we ignore to our peril. For example, in our Country a person may be convicted on the testimony of but one witness rather than two or three. Ours is an obvious way to perpetrate injustice. Not so the Torah, which requires the testimony of at least two witnesses in order to convict the accused. One of the safety laws of the Torah required that every roof have a railing so that people could not fall off of buildings). Also, the Law of Moses had in it everything we would call a rubric. The commandments tell the people everything that they are to do regarding the worship of God, sacrifice, feasts, fasts, and the details about the Levitical priesthood. This we call the ceremonial portion of the Law.

It is in the Ten Commandments that the Moral Law first appears with absolute clarity. If you were taught properly for Confirmation, no matter how long ago it may have been, you should recall that the Ten Commandments are split into two parts. The first four teach us how to love God. 1) That we worship no other god, 2) that we make no idols to distract from worship of the true God, 3) that we do not abuse, that is take in vain, His Name, 4) that we keep holy the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, as holy to the Lord. Then, the second part gives us six commandments about how to love our neighbor. 5) To honor our parents, 6) not to murder, 7) not to commit adultery, 8) not to steal, 9) not to bear false witness (that is, slander or libel), 10) and finally, not even to covet.

Part of the great wisdom of our Prayer Book is the Catechism and the Offices of Instruction that teach us how the two great commandments summarize these ten. Furthermore, if we read the New Testament carefully, we see that these commandments are much deeper than they might appear. The commandment to honor one’s parents extends to the teaching that we are to have a respectful attitude to all proper authority (Romans 13:1f). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that anger and hatred, and a lack of forgiveness, are all a violation of the commandment against murder; and that all sins against chastity, even if nothing more than the willful indulgence of "the lust of the eyes" (the kind our entertainment industry tries to cultivate), violate the true meaning of the commandment against adultery, whether by married or by single persons. When we get to the tenth commandment, against coveting, we learn that the entire concept of applying the meaning of the Law to the hidden attitudes of the heart was not a new idea to the Lord when He preached the Sermon on the Mount; no, for in the tenth commandment, that we are not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor, we see that He had centuries earlier revealed from Mount Sinai the same principle: The Law must be engraved on the heart.

The Law requires something that it cannot give, that it has no power to impart. It requires a heart that loves God and our neighbor. Furthermore, not simply that we love our neighbors in the plural. That way we could love only some of them, and say that we are fulfilling the commandment. But, the commandment is stated in the singular: “love thy neighbor” teaches the same thing as those words of the Lord Jesus: “as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren," and conversely, “As ye have done it not unto one of the least of these my brethren” (Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matt. 25:31-46). Charity, that is the highest kind of love, is not about how we treated mankind. It is about how we have treated, forgiven and come to the aid of the one (as you may recall from my sermon on the First Sunday after Trinity). Especially, perhaps, that one we simply do not like.

And, we learn something else, namely from Saint Paul. Writing to the Galatians he wrote these words:

“But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Gal. 3:22-24

When we really think about the Summary of the Law, we can be filled with either despair or hope. I know that I have never lived one day in which I have managed to love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind. I know that never has the day gone by in which I have loved my neighbor as myself, at least not each one of my neighbors. I would like to be so holy, so filled with virtue. But, I am not.

Saint Paul called himself the chief of sinners. In fact, a genuine mark of a true saint is that he is very much aware of his sins, and of how far he falls short of God’s requirements. Even though he lives better than most people, even though he wants to please God and serve Him truly, even though he abstains from willful sin and repents of every sin into which he discovers himself to have fallen, he never imagines that he has succeeded or become perfect. If the saints know themselves to be sinners, what about those of us who know that we are called to become saints, and yet know that we have not even gotten close? (For, make no mistake, that is exactly what each one of us is called to become.)

The commandments, even the list of negative commandments, that is, those that tell us what not to do, are summed up within the positive commandments, that is, what we are commanded to do. We are to love God, and we are to love our neighbor. That is the whole duty of man, as long as we understand that love means agape, or charity. It never rejoices in iniquity, but only in the truth, says the great passage in First Corinthians (chapter 13).

But, how do we come to hope, rather than despair, from these impossible requirements? The answer is what Saint Paul says, that we are brought to faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing can give me greater confidence in God’s mercy than the impossibility of fulfilling, by our own strength, these two Great Commandments we call the Summary of the Law. He knows our weakness, and does not turn away from us if we come to Him with repentance and faith. That is because He sees us in the Person of His Son, as in that wonderful phrase that is repeated constantly in Paul’s Epistles: “in Christ.” That is where we are, by baptism, by faith, by living in the Church with all of its sacraments that are real and powerful through the gifts of the Holy Ghost. We can grow into the love of God by heeding these words of Saint John, in that simple phrase: “We love him, because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19) How did he first love us? As Saint Paul says, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)

I cannot manufacture love for God, or for my neighbor, as such an endeavor is artificial. But, I can look at the cross of Jesus Christ. I can look at Him in His pain and agonies pouring out His soul unto death for me. As can you; for if you want to obtain this love for God and for your neighbor, you must look up at Jesus Christ on the cross pouring out His soul unto death for you. That is how the seed of charity is planted within your heart. And, it is by returning to the foot of that cross every day that the seed of charity grows and bears fruit unto eternal life. Realizing that He has died for you is the door of hope by which you can rejoice in His resurrection.

The very nature of what is required in these two great and impossible commandments can give either hope or despair. Because I see the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, I can understand the words in today’s Epistle:

I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ: that in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.