As Familiar as it Gets

The Great Commandment, as we call it, is close to our hearts. As Mennonites, we probably pay more attention to this love command than we do to the Great Commission. Love God and love others. What could be better? These verses are our favourites, as familiar to us as our own family names – as familiar as it gets. Yet somehow the point of the command eludes us.

We are indeed Mennonites – Conference Mennonites to be sure. Not MB, or EMC, or EMMC, or CMC, or any of those other Mennonite groups that came out of us; nor are we Amish or Swiss Mennonite, or BIC, or Haldeman. Come to think of it, if Mennonites emphasize love so much, why have we divided into so many groups? Perhaps this love command is harder than it sounds. Somewhere in the process our love – for God or for the other – breaks down. We want to examine this breakdown this morning, reflecting on this oh so familiar text.

Psalm 90

Our Psalm this morning locates our love for God and for other within God’s steadfast love for us. Paradoxically, it pairs God’s love for us with our pain, “Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us and as many years as we have seen evil.” The point is not that God seeks to hurt (for our own good, as our parents might have said); rather, God loves us in good times and in bad times and God’s love sustains us whatever happens around us.

Before we can talk about how we love God, we must remember that God loves us. God is always there, at every stage of our lives and in whatever situation we face, extending out arms of grace and love to carry us forward.

Matthew 22

The saying of Jesus that we read this morning comes near the end of a series of controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees. Two weeks ago, I preached on the idea that true thankfulness flows from putting on God’s character. Last week, Lee explored the difficult passage telling us to give Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s. Lee suggested that the deep implication of Jesus’ controversies with the Pharisees is that he challenges them at the level of allegiance. Do they really give their full selves to God, or do they use their passion for Torah Law to continue to order their own lives?

In the verses we read, the Pharisees return to the attack, after the Sadducees had taken their turn in a dispute over resurrection in the verses between Lee’s verses last week and ours this morning. This time, their question is simple: “What is the centre of Torah Law?” Jesus responds with “Love God, and love your neighbour.” This was a continuing question in Jesus’ day, and the Pharisees had their own rabbis who had given similar answers.

One famous exchange was with the Rabbi Hillel:

One famous account in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot. First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request, threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!” (From Chabad.org)

You see how much like the Golden Rule Hillel’s response was. Jesus gives a fuller answer but in the same general direction: Love God; love your neighbour. In Luke’s gospel, the saying leads to the question, “Who is my neighbour?” This leads in turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Matthew, the pharisees have no follow up. Instead, Jesus challenges their categories by reciting Psalm 110 and asking them how the Messiah – the anointed One of God – could be David’s Son and David’s Lord at the same time.

Wrestling with these Texts

Lee and I have talked together about these texts. In our conversation about Matthew 22, Lee pointed out that the human tendency is to look for a loophole that gets us off the hook. In this case, the loophole is contained in the command. “Love God”: that’s clear and we would all agree that we should love God. “Love your neighbour”: that’s also clear and we would all agree that we should love our neighbour.

When we bring them together, however, we run into problems. What if my neighbour is not only hard to love, but also actively opposed to God? Can I love God and love God’s enemy at the same time? This instinct to find a loophole is deeply held in the human race. As a pacifist, I have described to my friends the way I understand Jesus’ call to peace. Often, my friends will respond with some dilemma that they think falsifies the call to peace. “What would you do if someone broke into your house and threatened your wife? Would you not protect her in any way you could?” What my friends have done is try to find a loophole, so that Jesus’ call to peace does not apply to them.

Children have mastered the art of loopholes. When our sons were young, we were convinced they would grow up to be lawyers. They found the loopholes in all our rules, and they even drew up their own family contract, which they were equally adept at deconstructing. That’s what people do: We find the loophole.

In this case, the problem is that loving God and loving neighbour are each hard to do on its own. When we combine them, they are impossible to do fully. Our overwhelming love for God will make us intolerant of those who don’t measure up to God’s standards, or our overwhelming love for our neighbour will make us rebuke God for judging them. To love both at the same time with our whole being is impossible.

In Luke’s parallel passage, one listener grasped the problem and asked, “Who is my neighbour?” He was looking for a loophole, and Jesus closed the loophole with the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Matthew, Jesus follows up the impossible command with an impossible identity. “The Messiah is the Son of David, but how can David’s Son be David’s Lord?”

The problem that arises in our text demands a solution. If Jesus tells us to love God and love our neighbour, and if loving both fully is impossible, what is our solution? What do we do? The answer is found in Jesus’ further words about the Messiah. This reference to Psalm 110 is important. No other verses from the Old Testament are quoted as often as these verses about the Messiah, David’s Son and Lord. They contain an impossible truth: The Messiah is David’s Son; and the Messiah is David’s Lord.

This inner puzzle reflects the central Christian doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus is the son of Joseph and Mary. He was a human child and grew into an adult like any of us. Jesus is also the Lord of Joseph and Mary. He is (in Paul’s words), “the image of the invisible God.” Who better than the impossible God-man to help us fulfill an impossible command?

The Through Line

You have heard of TED talks. One expert tells how to do a good TED talk: “There’s a helpful word used to analyze plays, movies, and novels; it applies to talks, too. It’s ‘through-line,’ the connecting theme that ties together each narrative element. Every talk should have one.”

His point is simple – effective communication is going somewhere. The “through-line” tells you where it’s going. What is Jesus’ through-line? Matthew records a series of controversies, in which Jesus disputes with the religious leaders. What’s his point? What is the overarching through-line that holds these controversies together? Once we answer that question, you should be able to tell what Lee and I have been preaching about for the past three weeks.

Consider the undressed wedding guest. He wanted to remain in control of his own life. Consider the saying about Caesar and God. God wants all of us – heart, soul, and mind, not just part of us. In today’s passage, Jesus shows that we can love God and neighbour only if we belong completely to God. The through-line is the question of allegiance and ownership. Who do you belong to? Who do you give full allegiance to? Who runs your life?

Jesus asked these questions of the pharisees and other religious leaders over and over again. Jesus asks us the same question. Who runs your life? Who do you owe allegiance to? Who gives you your identity here on earth?

Towards an Application

What does it look like to love God and love our neighbour? What does this life look like – giving everything to God and only giving Caesar what God permits? How do we do it? I like Ron Sider. Twenty years ago, he preached at Missionfest Manitoba, and he came to SMC and preached to us. He has an annoying tendency to hold on to both sides of the impossible command. He counsels an absolute love for God. In a book called One-Sided Christianity, he writes that if he could do any one thing over in his life, it would be to invite more people to follow Jesus. He describes the conversion of a Jewish activist against apartheid in South Africa before the days of majority rule. After this young man asked Jesus into his life, Ron said that he walked around his hotel room singing praises to God. Just as Jesus tells us that the angels in glory sing for joy when a lost child is found, so also Ron sang for joy. I know Ron, and I know that he loves the Lord.

Ron has also given his life to love for neighbour. Such love looks so much like social activism that people accuse him of selling the gospel out for social activism. Ron’s response is that loving others is simply expressing our love for God. Our love for God is central, and we express it by loving others. We have no time to fight with those who disagree with us. We’re too busy loving them. Because Ron has written publicly about the dangers of voting for Trump, some American church leaders have said that he is demon-possessed. (Bear with me. It’s a ridiculous charge, but they made it anyway.) In his reply, Ron embraced them as Christian brothers with whom he disagrees. He expressed his readiness to take communion with them and refused to condemn them for their political positions – or even for their attacks against him.

Ron has his faults, but I appreciate his desire to love God and to love others. He would agree that these commands are too hard for us – as commands. Perhaps instead of calling this the Great Commandment, we should call it the Great Invitation. Instead of thinking that we have to try really hard to love God, and then turn around and try even harder to love a difficult neighbour, perhaps Jesus is inviting us to accept his presence in us.

He is our older brother, and he is our Lord. He is the one who hurts with us and who lives in us. He is the one who dies with us and rises with us. He is the one who gives us life, a life of perfect love. If you try to keep this great commandment yourself, it will break you. If instead you hear the voice of Jesus inviting you into a new life, filled with God’s Spirit, you will find that you can step into love beyond measure, God’s love overflowing for all people.

Conclusion

Paul wrestled with the same dilemma we have been describing in Romans 7 and 8. In chapter 7, he says essentially, “When we try to keep this command in our strength, we will fail every time. We know what to do, but we just can’t do it.” In chapter 8, he gives the clincher, “What the law (you and I acting in our own abilities) cannot do, God does in us.”

⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

Who do you belong to? Who runs your life? Where does your ability to do anything come from? It is easy to spiritualize what I am saying and think that we just need to pray more and everything will be all right. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying that you can pray your way out of bad situations, or that you if you just love God, everything will be all right.

Paul said it better than I can: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do God’s good purpose.” We work at loving each other. We work hard at loving difficult people who are also our neighbours. We do our best, “with fear and trembling”. We do so because God is at work in us. We love others because we love God. We love because God pours out God’s love in us. God’s Spirit released in us accomplishes what we cannot do on our own, and we keep the impossible command.

Focus: Often quoted, the greatest and second commandments (as outlined by Jesus) provide us with ethics, direction, hope, understanding, and identity. We often receive them as invitations to “be” a certain kind of person or to “do” specific kinds of things. Love is indeed something we need to practice, but is it something we can ever accomplish?

Going Deeper:

1. Love of God and neighbor can seem impossible, and yet Jesus identifies them as the heart of the Gospel. How do we reconcile such commands with our inability to live up to their goals?

2. What is the difference between loving God and loving our neighbor? What do they look like?

3. Think of a time when you were loved. What did it look like? What was it really about for you? Was it something that was did, or was it more like a gift, an expression of Jesus among us?

4. How can we say that this command means that we should love people who do bad things, such as the soldiers turning Palestinian peasants off their own land, or the terrorists who kill innocent children in an attack on a defenceless community, or the callous policeman whose actions lead to the death of an ordinary unoffending person? How do we love in the presence of evil actions?

Steinbach Mennonite Church

25 October 2020

Texts

Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17

God’s Eternity and Human Frailty

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

¹ Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. ² Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

³ You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” ⁴ For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. ⁵ You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; ⁶ in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

….

¹³ Turn, O Lord! How long?  Have compassion on your servants! ¹⁴ Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,  so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ¹⁵ Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,  and as many years as we have seen evil.

¹⁶ Let your work be manifest to your servants,  and your glorious power to their children. ¹⁷ Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,  and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!

 Matthew 22:34-46

The Greatest Commandment

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.”

The Question about David’s Son

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.

Making Sense of the Pandemic

Because I am in my church office on Tuesdays, I have not heard what others have said about this subject. It may be that I repeat what others have said. It may be that I contradict them and you conclude I don’t know what I am talking about. In either case, I trust Christ will be present and help us make sense of what is happening in our world. I make some general observations about what I see happening around us, and then we come back to our New Testament Scripture.

The Pandemic

At the beginning of 2020, we heard rumblings about a new coronavirus, now known as Covid-19, with the potential to sweep across the globe. Lois and I were planning a trip at the end of March or beginning of April to visit our granddaughter in Texas. As the reports of a possible pandemic spread, we began to wonder if we should fly down to Houston or not. By mid-March, the choice was taken out of our hands as travel restrictions came into place and, soon after, the border with the USA was closed.

Since then, we had services online for several months and now our church meets at 30% capacity. We avoid singing in the service, with a music team at the front providing our music. We can eat out, but tables in our restaurants are spread apart for safety. We are not able to visit freely when people go into the hospital. Our members in personal care homes have their visits restricted as well. Pandemic fatigue is setting in, and we find it hard to maintain the level of care needed to slow the spread of the virus. At the same time, numbers are climbing, especially in Winnipeg, just as we find ourselves less able to enjoy the open air and are confined to the indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.

Medical researchers have made a lot of progress, but we’re still waiting for better treatments to ensure healing; we’re still waiting for a vaccine to slow the virus’ spread. Our best guess is that we may not be able to move freely until the end of next year. If you think we’re tired now, how do you think we’ll feel a year from now? It’s easy to paint a grim picture of the future. It’s easy to give up hope.

Some people respond to all this “doom and gloom” by denying that the virus is serious. They tell us that it’s not really so bad, just another illness something like the flu. Medical people tend to be less hopeful, as they see the danger of hospitals being overwhelmed and the possibility of long-term complications from the disease.

Nevertheless, I also would speak a word of hope – not like those who deny the seriousness of what we face, but grounded in our relationship with Jesus. Covid-19 is a major problem; it threatens the economy and the stability of our relationships and society. Even so, we do not need to be afraid. A meme has gone around the internet, placing a sound bubble of God speaking beside pictures of the pandemic, the wildfires in the Western United States, and the racial riots in the USA. The voice says, “Now that I’ve got your attention!”

We can use that idea destructively to say that God is punishing us with the virus. Or we can use the idea that God is trying to get our attention through the problems that we face. That is what I want to do by looking at Colossians 1.

Colossians 1: 15-20

Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians about 60 or 62 A.D. (I follow those commentators who locate this as one of his letters from prison, written near the end of his life.) His emphasis on the supremacy of Christ suggests that some in the church at Colossae were not sure that Jesus was truly human and fully divine. Paul is concerned to make sure that they know who Jesus is, so he writes as follows:

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 Consider briefly Paul’s claims for Christ.

·         When we see Jesus, we see God. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

·         Jesus identifies with Creation as well as with God.

·         Jesus is the creative Word (John 1. Genesis 1) through whom all that is exists.

·         Jesus comes first, and everything else “holds together” in him. This is the primary point I want to come back to shortly, in relation to the pandemic.

·         Jesus is the head of the church, the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28).

·         Jesus died with us and has risen for us, so that we also can rise with him.

·         God dwells fully in Christ; if you want to see God, look at Jesus.

·         God reconciles “all things” through Jesus on the cross.

There is a remarkable amount in this short passage – possibly originally a hymn that Christians sang in their worship services. It would take weeks to unpack it all, and I return to one idea only for our purposes today.

Everything Holds Together

We are not the first people to feel as though the world is falling apart. A hundred years ago, William Butler Yeats wrote these words in a poem called “The Second Coming”, reflecting on the disintegration he saw following the First World War:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …"

He wrote these words in the midst of the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918-1920, describing his sense that post-war Europe was unable to deal with the forces of disintegration in their world.

“Things Fall Apart” became the title of a novel by Chinua Achebe from Nigeria, written in 1958. The title has become a common saying for the disintegration experienced by traditional people in the colonial setting. It describes well enough what First Nations peoples experienced in Canada as they responded to the growing influence of the dominant Canadian society. In short, “things fall apart” is a description of the human experience. What we are feeling today under the pandemic is the normal human experience.

In the midst of this disintegration, Paul reminds us that everything “holds together” in Christ. Things fall apart in this world; things hold together in Christ. This word “holds together” is a curious one in the original text. The old King James rendered it as “consist”, with the idea of coherence. Most modern translations use “holds together”, which is again the idea of coherence. “Cohere” means “holds together in at least two ways: 1) everything is integrated and works the way that it’s supposed to – in Christ; and 2) everything is integrated and makes sense – in Christ. Not “makes sense”. meaning that we understand, but “makes sense”, meaning that does what it’s supposed to do. Everything fits together just right.

In 2003, Lois and I travelled through southern Africa while I was on sabbatical from Providence. We drove a car that broke down in almost every country we passed through. Many different mechanics worked on it. You might say that our car did not “hold together.” I remember one mechanic in Zambia who was basically self-taught. He was good! As he worked with the car, he remarked, “You know that you are putting it back together when everything fits just right. If you have to force it, it is wrong!” In Christ, everything fits just right.

A Reminder of Genesis 1

Look back to Genesis 1 (hinted at in verses 15 and 16). Thew creative word of God speaks into chaos and emptiness, bringing about an ordered and peaceful universe. Consider the sequence of creation. Day 1: Light and Darkness; Day 2: Sky and Waters; Day 3: Dry Land in the Waters. You see a set of three, which is mirrored in days four to six. Day 4: The sun and moon and stars, giving light to creation; Day 5: birds and fish, populating the skies and waters; Day 6: vegetation and animals, including the human pair, filling the dry land. A second set of three, with the seventh day making a perfect seven for a perfect creation.

A basic theme in the creation account is that God brings order and peace out of chaos and disorder. This truth is what Paul is thinking of as he reminds us that all things come together and hold together in Christ. Christ, the Eternal Word of God, is the one who brings peace and order into the chaos and disorder of our lives.

Back to the Pandemic

When we think of the effects of the pandemic, we often think that Covid-19 is really different from anything that has gone before, but of course it isn’t. As many have reminded us (C.S. Lewis for example, writing about the atom bomb), it only reveals what is always true. We were always going to die some day; we live every day with the reality we are not in control; in truth, we were made for something beyond this life. Covid-19 just strips away our efforts to cover up reality and convince ourselves that we are in control of what is happening. We aren’t in control. We never were in control.

Into that reality, Paul drops this reminder, “In Christ, all things hold together.” In Christ, life and death make sense, In Christ, good and bad in our lives are integrated into a meaningful and wonderful reality.

How Does This Work?

What do we do with this truth? How does Jesus make sense of the way that Covid-19 has disrupted our society? Here I make two basic suggestions, but you as a community of believers, with Christ as your head, need to work out the answer for yourselves.

1. The first basic and necessary step is to be reconciled with God. All people live in rebellion against God to a greater or lesser extent. Some are active and open in their insistence that they and they alone can run their lives. Others appear to submit to God, but, like the little boy told to sit down, they are “standing up inside”. This rebellion separates us from God. In verses 21 to 23, Paul describes this condition and reminds us that we are reconciled with God through the cross. The first step, then, is to embrace the cross of Christ.

2. A second step is to seek God actively every day, to pray and read the Bible and mediate on Jesus and develop our relationship with Jesus every day. What this relationship looks like depends on you and your community. Some people like music. Some prefer chorales by Bach, and some like country western. God loves both, and we can draw close to God with both.

Some people like mediation and silence, with Christ at the centre of their silent prayer; some prefer community settings where everyone prays out loud and a cataract of sound is lifted up to God in prayer. God loves silence and noise, when it is given to God with our whole hearts.

Some people read the Bible systematically – my Dad used to read about three and half pages a day, because that took him through the Bible in one year. Some people read in big chunks and then don’t read again for a week. God doesn’t care, so long as we immerse ourselves in God’s word and listen to God’s story.

Some people take courses in seminary, and others talk over the latest book study in their small group. God is present in both. The point is to seek Jesus and listen to Jesus and be open to the presence of God’s Spirit in all that we do.

Conclusion

A closing example. In 2003, our family spent half a week in the Taizé community in France. I will not describe the community’s history here, but you can look it up on the internet and learn how it came together. Taizé is a community of 200 or so brothers who spend time together, working, studying Scripture, and praying. They have three times of prayer each day, at 8:30 in the morning, at 12:30 in the afternoon, and at 8:30 in the evening.

The centrepiece of their worship is these prayer times, and at the centre of the prayer is a 10-minute silence. We took part in the work, Bible study, and prayers for the four days we were there. I have never experienced a depth of peace as we did in that place. The depth of that peace is seen in the horrific end of their founder’s life. In August 2005. A deranged woman ran up and cut his throat at the end of the prayer time. Terrible! Jason Santos had just arrived at Taizé, planning to write a history and description of the community. In his book, he describes the events after Brother Roger’s death. There was grief. There were tears. There was all of the indescribable horror of a senseless murder. But the peace of the community was greater than their grief. “Peace that passes understanding.” The prayer and silence continued, and God swallowed up their grief in the fullness of the presence of the Spirit.

That is what this passage promises us. We can find God, made available to us in Christ, greater and more wonderful than even the Covid-19 pandemic, as we immerse ourselves in our lives with Christ. Paul had done that. The Brothers of Taizé did that. We are offered that same re-integration of life and peace as we embrace Christ in the pandemic.

Giving Thanks or Getting into Trouble

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time, although the Covid rituals may overshadow our various family rituals this year. Being dual citizens gives Lois and me the special privilege of celebrating twice. Thanksgiving comes at the beginning of October and at the end of November! We do our best to take full advantage of Thanksgiving.

The Scriptures that we read this morning come from the common lectionary – assigned readings for each Sunday of the year, and they are puzzling and troubling texts for a time of giving thanks. The Children of Israel got in serious trouble when they gave thanks to the LORD through the golden calf, and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day find themselves on the wrong side of Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast, a notable time of thanksgiving.

What’s going on in these passages? What’s going on in our lives? Is it possible to get into trouble for being too thankful? It would seem so. We consider our texts together and listen for “the word of the Lord” to break through into our lives.

Exodus 32

In Exodus, God leads the Children of Israel through the wilderness from slavery in Egypt to their home in the Promised Land. Chapters 19 through 32 detail their encounter with God at Mount Sinai. In chapter 19, Moses ascends the mountain and meets God. He then goes back down the mountain to prepare the people to hear God’s words. Once they have prepared themselves, he re-ascends the mountain and receives the Ten Words and laws that work out what it means to be people living in covenant with God.

I am not clear how chapter 24 fits with chapter 19. Either it describes Moses coming down from the mountain and then re-ascending to receive the rest of the Law, or it is a repetition of his first ascent with some extra details. In both cases, it makes it clear that the whole process of giving the Law was complex and central to Israel’s identity.

Then comes chapter 32. The Children of Israel were struggling with the whole process of waiting for God and Moses to finish. They wondered if Moses were still alive, or if he had died on the mountain. The verses read in a matter of fact manner, but I suspect that they were in real distress. They wondered not only if Moses were still alive, but even if God was still with them.

Aaron responded by drawing on the images of God that surrounded them. He took their offerings of gold and made from them what we often call “the golden calf”. The golden calf has become a symbol in Christian thinking for an idol that draws us away from God. Notable in this picture is the way that this idol draws on local culture and on the people’s offerings.

God tells Moses what has happened and declares judgment on the people. They will be destroyed. Moses pleads with God not to destroy them, but rather to save them. In a stunning reversal, God agrees with Moses and spares the people ultimate judgment. The chapter ends in judgment, but here we have at least the promise that the judgment will not destroy the people.

Matthew 22

The parable in Matthew 22 is both like and unlike the parallel passage in Luke 14. The king prepares a banquet for his son’s wedding. The invited guests refuse to come and kill the king’s messengers. (In Luke 14, they simply refuse, giving their excuses.) The King responds by killing them in their turn and sending his servants out into the main streets to gather guests of all kinds in for the banquet. (In Luke 14, the master sends out his servants to gather all kinds of people from “the highways and the byways”.) Here follows a twist that is unique to Matthew’s account. The King sees one of these wedding guests who is not properly attired. He rebukes him, and then he has his servants throw the rascal out into “outer darkness” – a reference to the final judgment.

An obvious question is, “What is the wedding garment that the guest failed to put on?” The King’s own servants had just plucked him off the street and planted him in the banquet; one might wonder what the King expected him to wear. The question illustrates the danger of trying to make every element of a parable fit into a neat realistic story. Jesus is saying something important about invitation and judgment, not giving instructions on how to run a wedding.

If you want to fit it into the story in a logical way, you could say that the King provided appropriate apparel for all of the unexpected guests, and that this guest decided not to put his wedding suit on. He acted as though he was already good enough, perhaps assuming that they were lucky he agreed to come.

Whatever you decide the missing wedding garment is – faith, justification, God’s righteousness, and so on; the point is clear. God invites everyone to faith, but some sort of response is required. God gives us what we need, but we have to put it on. Acting as though we are good enough on our own is deadly and undermines everything else that has happened.

John Calvin puts it this way (quoted in Richard Gardner’s commentary on Matthew in the BCBC series):

There is no point in arguing about the marriage garment … All Christ wants to say here is that we are called by the Lord under the condition that we be renewed in our spirits into His image, and therefore, if we are to remain always in His house, the old man with all his blemishes is to be cast off and we are to practice the new life so that our appearance (habitus) may correspond to our honourable calling.

This passage comes in the middle of portraits of Jesus in conflict with the religious authorities of his day. They thought that their status as devout Jews and as religious leaders ensured their right standing with God, when in fact they were guilty of usurping God’s place in their own lives. Jesus warns them that only God’s grace can bring them into God’s presence. They had nothing in themselves to fit them for the wedding feast of God. Neither do we.

Back to Thanksgiving

I asked earlier if it is possible for us to be too thankful, or to be thankful in the wrong way. Based on these two passages – the experience of the Children of Israel in the desert and the parable that Jesus tells – I think we must say that we can indeed by thankful in the wrong way. Consider where both the wedding guest and the Children of Israel went wrong.

The Children of Israel wanted to worship God, but they were not willing to wait for God to do God’s full work in their lives. In their hurry and impatience they reconstructed God in the image of their own minds, replacing God with an image drawn from the surrounding religion. God tolerates no rivals. If it had not been for Moses’ intercession, they would have been destroyed. (This divine violence is a great mystery, which requires a separate conversation. I will not pursue it here.)

In Exodus 32, then, the wrong way to give thanks is impatiently, replacing the God who is King of the Universe with a divine figure drawn from our own thoughts and culture. On this Thanksgiving Sunday, we give thanks to God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus the Messiah.

I will not consider the first part of the parable of the Wedding Feast but ask only how the badly dressed wedding guest failed. I assume that a wedding suit was made available to him and for his own reasons he chose not to wear it. In his case, he wants to participate in the wedding feast, but he does not want to change who he is. He wants God’s gift of salvation, but he does not want God’s gift of righteousness.

Such false thanksgiving – accepting the gift of salvation but rejecting the giver of the gift – such false thanksgiving brings down a harsh response. Again, the divine violence that consigns the guest to “outer darkness” is a further problem of its own. I will not develop here, but we can talk about it more thoroughly in the Going Deeper time. For now, I note simply that it is possible to thank God and not mean it, and we see that God does not accept gratitude that simply covers up our continued life of rebellion.

Holistic Faith

So what? How does this understanding inform our giving thanks this Thanksgiving? Let me suggest a way to hold these two passages together. In Exodus 32, the people give thanks, but their impatience leads them to replace the true God in their hearts and minds with a false figure of divinity – the golden calf. We might say that the story reminds us of the importance of right belief, what we sometimes call “orthodox Christian faith”. What we believe matters, because what we do flows from what we believe. Exodus 32 makes it clear that worshipping God rightly is important.

Matthew 22 picks up the other side of the equation. Just before this parable, Matthew writes, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” Just after this parable, Matthew writes, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.” The Scribes and Pharisees, along with the priests and other religious leaders, were as orthodox in their beliefs as you could get. You might say that “Orthodoxy” was their middle name. Yet Jesus makes it clear that they are in rebellion against God. Why? Their lives did not measure up to their beliefs. They could say the right words, but when the Messiah Jesus came, they did not accept him. In spite of their orthodox beliefs, they wanted to be in charge of their own lives. They needed a new life. They needed God’s grace to make them right with God. Right beliefs were not enough; they needed God’s righteous living – what we might call “orthopraxy”, right living – to go along with right beliefs about God. That righteousness, that right living, could come only from embracing Jesus.

In fact, right beliefs and right living go together. God wants us to have both. We worship God alone, and we live only for God. We thank God for God’s grace and mercy in our lives, and we show our thankfulness by the way that we live. As the old hymn puts it, we “trust and obey”. Trust (or faith) is not enough. Obedience is not enough. Trust that does not obey is not trust. Obedience that does not grow out of faith is not real obedience.

Obedience, right living, shows what is really inside of us. As John put it, “If you don’t love your brother or sister, whom you see, how can you say you love God, whom you don’t see?” The wedding guest’s failure to put on the wedding garment reminds us that response to God’s grace unlocks God’s grace in our lives. We are changed people, and we live like changed people.

An Example

Consider a simple example from my own experience of being married. Lois might listen to my words, and it is important for me to speak my love for her and to state my concern for her well-being. You might call that “orthodoxy” – right thinking about the marriage relationship. At the same time, nice words are not enough. When she is under pressure to finish a particular project, my willingness to provide support is vitally important. You might call that “orthopraxy” – right acting within a marriage relationship.

In fact, if I do not show my love with the way we relate to each other, my spouse begins to disbelieve my words. I teach a course in cross-cultural communications. There are many ways that we communicate, not just in words. One author counts 12 different signal systems, from words to tone of voice to body language, and so on. Some of these signals are conscious and intentional, and some of them are sub-conscious – we use them without being aware of them. When we tell someone something, if our conscious communication with words is contradicted by the subconscious signals we send off, the other person will believe the subconscious communication every time. As the old saying puts it, “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.”

Conclusion

How might we give thanks badly? How might we actually offend God by expressing gratitude? By pretending to be thankful when we are only impatient. By saying “Thank you” when we our lives show our lack of gratitude. We should be like the wedding guests who put on “the garments of righteousness” when the King invited them to the wedding feast, not like the ungrateful guest who insisted that he was already just fine, thank you. We need God’s Spirit, and God with infinite grace and mercy gives us the fullness of God’s Spirit to live the way God wants us to live. Paul puts it like this in the New Testament reading that goes with the passages we read in the lectionary:

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. …. ⁸ Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹ Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Remember that this is an invitation. If this call to right thinking and right living becomes a requirement for entering God’s Reign, it is a burden too heavy to bear. If it is an invitation that we can respond to, it is good news beyond belief – in the words of T.S. Eliot, “A condition of complete simplicity, demanding not less than everything.”

Texts

Exodus 32:1-14

32:1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.

⁴ He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” ⁶ They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

⁷ The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸ they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

⁹ The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰ Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” ¹¹ But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

¹⁴ And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

 

Philippians 4:1-9

4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. ² I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. ³ Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹ Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

 

Matthew 22:1-14

22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ² “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. ³ He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. ⁴ Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ ⁵ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, ⁶ while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.

⁷ “The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. ⁸ Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. ⁹ Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’

¹⁰ “Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. ¹¹ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, ¹² and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. ¹³ “Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

11 October 2020