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But when Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And 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. This is the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and Prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40
“Teacher, which one is the greatest?”
How many of us have sat in a classroom, a meeting or around a table in the cafe with a group while someone in the group poses a riddle, a question or some scenario to show how smart they are? They set this trap of one-upmanship. It’s clear to all of us who have ever been involved in such a situation that the questioner wants the focus on themselves. On how smart they are, how brilliant they are, how much they know - especially compared to the unfortunate soul who attempts to answer them.
That, I believe, is what’s going on here in chapter 22 of Matthew’s Gospel. This question is the third in a series of riddles set up to trap Christ by the Pharisees & Sadduccees - the leading religious and academic leaders of the day. We see this intention back in vs. 15. Their three attempts may be very familiar to some of us: (1) whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, (2) the question of marriage and the resurrection, and here, lastly, the question about which is the greatest commandment.
Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospel’s look very similar in the telling of this story, as they do in many ways throughout their Gospels. In Luke’s Gospel, the question is also posed by a lawyer, but the question is different. In Luke’s telling, it sets the stage for the story of the Good Samaritan. Christ answer with a question, and the lawyer provides the answer “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) And Christ goes on to tell the shocking and challenging story of a Samaritan, of all people, who helps a man left for dead by the side of the road in answer to the lawyer’s follow-up question, “who is my neighbor”.
Well what does Luke’s passage have to do with Matthew’s? First of all, it seems to indicate that Christ’s response in Mark & Matthew about what is the greatest commandment was not at all unusual. In this instance, he didn’t try to outsmart the lawyer or his listeners. He refused to be tripped up by choosing just one commandment. Rather he gave an answer all would agree to : to love the Lord your God with all that you are and your neighbor as yourself. Twice a day, Jew’s would repeat to themselves those words from Deuteronomy 6: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.” Secondly, in all three synoptic Gospels, Christ’s answer poses a call to the questioner. It is a call, I believe we, as students and professors - those involved in the academic calling - always need to hear and be reminded of.
This passage in Matthew places in stark contrast two opposing ideas: the question & the answer. It was a question posed by a skilled, trained, intelligent lawyer, with the support of a group of likewise smart, educated, trained intellectuals - the Pharisees. It was a word game and a riddle. The very intention behind the question was to trip up Christ, to make him look like the charlatan they hoped he was. And, perhaps, more importantly, to make themselves look smarter, more intelligent, and knowledgeable then Christ.
Christ’s answer, while not surprising in content, is challenging in its target: intellectual pride and social envy. Jesus sees their heart and uses something they already know to remind them that they’re heart is out of focus. That the most important focus of their life should not be how much they know or protecting their jobs and social position, but rather to love God and love others. They likely justified their actions as “protecting” God’s truth, but in reality, and what Christ calls them out for in the last part of Matthew 22, is that they are focused on their own academic knowledge and intellectual pride.
You might be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with our academic chapel today?” What does this have to do with literature, with languages, with biology, with chemistry, with math, with history, with politics, with criminal justice, with computer science, or, even, with theology?
Everyday, we are tempted to see our daily work as just an opportunity get a better grade or know more then the person sitting next to us in class. To ensure our graduating standing so that we can get a good job after we graduate. If what we are doing is primarily about both our standing now and our job possibility in the future, how easily that desire can be frustrated and foiled. All it takes is someone who does better than us, a difficult semester, and the failure to find a job after we graduate based on our GPA. Our day to day lives here must be based on something that is not dependent on the job market or our ability to out perform the person sitting next to us in knowledge or understanding. I believe that is where Christ’s words to the young lawyer and to the Pharisee are also words for us.
How are we, in the day to day routine of studies, learning to love God more fully with all that we are and to love our neighbor? Every discipline, especially in this school, speaks to these areas in profound ways every day. Let me close by applying this to my own area of study, history.
How can I allow history to call me into a fuller love of God and of neighbor, rather than tempt me into knowledge that puffs up - knowing more facts than the person next to me or having the cynical answer that undermines another persons ideas.
History is the opportunity to study God’s world as it has been. It’s His Story - of a world He has faithfully loved through all it’s ugliness. Through war’s and atrocities committed in his name to discovers and inventions in which His obvious hand is given no acknowledgement. As Scripture tells us, all of creation proclaims God’s wonders - including the lives and history of that special creation - humanity.
History is an opportunity to understand others and, in light of that understanding, to love them. To see in those who are too easily demonized, the imago dei. To know that each person - no matter how much life’s experiences or their own choices have rejected him - has reflections of their creator. To know that those who are too easily praised as nearly divine are fallen too and imperfect. To be unsurprised by both the creative and the destructive in humanity. And to learn to love people, not in spite of, but in light of their past. To discover more about each person around us - about how to love them and serve them - by knowing more about their own history and the history which has formed them.
Today we have the wonderful opportunity to hear from Raina Howerton, the executive director of the Gregg County Historical Museum. The Historical Museum is just one of the ways we have to learn to love our community better, to know it’s past and what has shaped and formed it. The who’s, the what’s, the when’s and maybe even, sometimes, the why’s. But even more than that, the history of our county is an opportunity to see God’s faithful love of this city, of this area and of his creation.
As I close, let me leave you with this challenge. How can our academic studies - yes, even those general education classes - help us to learn to love God and others with all that we are? What would it mean for that to be our first focus, and allow the rest (a job, proficiency in our profession, etc.) flow from that? C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in, […] put second things first and we lose both first and second things.”
May we always be faithful to that first calling, seeking to love God and build up others in love. May we never be guilty of using our knowledge or our intellectual understanding to puff ourselves up or put down others. May whatever we study, even history, help us to love with all that we are in ways we never have before.
May God bless you as seek to love Him and others more fully with your academic work.
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