It Is Tragic, Really

 

It is tragic, really. “…nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” When people stop talking to one another it never ends well. In this next little episode in Matthew 22:34-46, a lawyer, which really means a Pharisee who is a scholar of the Biblical texts of Israel, is sent out to try to trick him one more time by asking, “Which of the 613 commandments is great?” The trick is no matter what Jesus chooses, the retort could be, “But what about…?”  

 

But Jesus is a shrewdie, and instead quotes an already well-known summary of the law derived from the prayer to be said three times daily in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “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,” and Levitcus 19:18, “…you shall love your neighbor as your self.” Then he asks them a trick question about David and the Messiah, his adversaries give up, walk away, and never ask him another question. Which is tragic. Truly sad.

 

For the essence, the very core, of what it means to be human as the Bible tells it begins with obedience – obedience grounded in listening. “Hear, O Y’israel!” What we hear is that the desire of YHWH is for radical neighborliness. This desire is not just for Israel, but it is a demand of every human person so as to sustain a viable human community. Human obedience means to care for the community, to practice hospitality, to engage in responsible stewardship, and concrete acts of faithfulness: to share your bread with the hungry; to bring the widow, the orphan, the resident alien, the homeless poor into your home; to cover the naked. All of which necessitates listening to hear what those in need really need lest we just give them what we think they need. Meanwhile, we tend to prattle, dissemble and debate whether this is the work of the private sector, or if this ought to be a matter of social policy. Tragically, we don’t listen, we don’t hear them or one another, and we stop talking to one another. We dare not ask any more questions of this radical itinerant Jew who wants us to take God and others – all others, even strangers – seriously. Who wants us to not only love our neighbors but also love our enemies as well. We have more important things to attend to, say the Pharisees, Sadducees, and priests: rituals, sacrifices, studying texts, issuing judgments.

 

All the while, the unsolicited testimony of the Bible makes no distinction between private and public responsibility. The Bible insists that governments and social institutions of all kinds are both expected to be vehicles for the kind of obedience that takes God at his word. We are to find ways to provide food, shelter and security for all who live among us, including strangers. Especially strangers, something we have been pondering all week at our Noonday Prayers. 

 

YHWH calls us to remember: you were once strangers in Egypt and I took care of you because I love you. No other reason. Love is rescue and hospitality and caring for the whole community. It is through such care for the stranger that God calls us to a life we cannot predict, writes Sister Joan Chittister. “It is the stranger who disarms all our preconceptions about life and penetrates all our stereotypes about the world…It is the stranger who tests all our good intentions…We must speak good about everyone we do not know and yet do know to be just as full of God as we are, if not more so.” [Illuminated Life, Sr Joan Chittister, OSB, p129-130] We walk away from such obedience at our own peril. To cease asking questions, to stop talking to one another and the stranger and the enemy is not to be human in any sense that the Bible understands who we are created to be.

 

This is what Paul is saying to the church in Thessaloniki. We don’t come to you for flattery, or greed, or impure motives, but with the Love Christ speaks of, and not only speaks of but lives out in every he says and does. No matter what people are saying about us, “… we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” [1 Thessalonians 2: 5-8]

 

I have lived with this passage from seminary to this day. When asked to “describe your ministry in 140 or fewer characters,” I simply wrote, “I endeavor to live as it we read in 1 Thessalonians 2: 5-8.” It was my attempt to encourage Bible Study among those considering my resume. I don’t always succeed living this out, but every day I reflect on those words of Paul and the words we have today from Jesus and remind myself: We Can Always Begin Again. We cannot afford to walk away from one another. We cannot afford to stop asking one another questions. For it is when we do that that things turn tragic. One day the Pharisees and Sadducees and others are talking to Jesus. Then they walk away and stop talking to him. The next thing we know, he is hanging from a Roman cross. Fortunately for us, and for the world, that is not the end of the story. It need not be tragic. Amen. It is so. It is truth.