The Rev. Carol Wedell
October 26, 2008

How many of you remember the kid's song, "Hokey Pokey?'  It is usually played at skating rinks, where one's sense of balance may be off-kilter just enough to land you on your back side.  I wish the kids were still in worship, because I'm convinced that some of them would have been willing to demonstrate for us.  But I'll make it easy for you.  You don't even have to stand up. Usually we would be in a circle, but we'll just have to improvise.

You know how it goes (and if you don't you'll catch on quickly!).  "You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out, you put your right hand in and you shake it all about.  You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself about.  That's what it's all about."  And it goes on from there, as you can imagine!

It's a fun, goofy song to make sure that everyone in the circle looks just a bit foolish.  After all, no one can look dignified when it comes to "put your back side in, and shake it all about! That's what it's all about."

Even the youngest of children know that shaking various body parts is not what it's all about.  As we grow up and enter adulthood, we begin to grasp what this life is all about. Or at least we try.  Our familiar scripture lesson this morning gets right to the core of what the Christian life is all about. 

Throughout this 22^nd chapter of Matthew, Jesus has been put to the test by various groups.  This time it is the Pharisees who approach Jesus and hope to trip him up so that he might be shown for who he is - a trouble maker who doesn't obey the Jewish law.

With more than a little sarcasm in his voice, one of the Pharisees who were steeped in the knowledge of the Torah, asks Jesus, "Teacher, what commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Now that sounds fairly straight forward.  It doesn't sound like the Pharisee is trying to pick a fight.  For Jesus, however, it was full of hidden landmines.  Most of the Pharisees, those who were experts in the law, assumed that they knew the answer.  But the possibility of debate was high.  The so-called "legal" answer was that every commandment in the Law is great, because each one came from God, and God wills that we should obey all of them.  That was the standard, "orthodox" response.

You may remember that the religious leaders had come up with an amazing number of commandments from the first five books of the law - a grand total of 613!  Two hundred and forty-eight of them were things that they should do.  The remaining three hundred and sixty five of them were "thou shalt nots" - forbidden territory.  Current Jewish wisdom of the time held that each one was of equal importance.

So the lawyer is sure that he has backed Jesus into a corner - no winning this time!  If Jesus gives the standard answer, that all 613 carry equal weight, then the question arises as to why Jesus had broken so many of them.  I imagine the smirk on the lawyers face as he thinks of all the laws Jesus is guilty of breaking - disregarding dietary codes, cleanliness codes.  Guilty of working on the Sabbath.   Oh yes, they had Jesus just where they wanted him.

Jesus answers with the Shema,(Deut. 6:5)  a part of the Hebrew scriptures that devout Jews would have recited daily.  The heart of that verse is, "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 and first commandment."

To love God with heart and soul and mind makes it clear that every part of us is involved in loving God. It isn't love God with your heart or your mind.  Your intellect isn't checked at the door, and it isn't just about knowing the right answer.  Loving God requires all that we are.  As was true so many times, Jesus took something that everyone knew and revolutionized the common understanding.  Serving God with your whole being was not like a slave serving a master.  Rather serving God followed the model of God serving us: in the way that God gave all for us, ultimately in Jesus.

So when Jesus responds to the Pharisees' tricky question by quoting a portion of the Shema, he was throwing back in their faces something that was exceedingly basic to them, something that was second-nature to even the youngest Jewish child.  

It reminds me of a story that I heard in seminary about Karl Barth, a neo-orthodox theologian from the 20^th century.  Apparently Barth was asked what he thought was the most profound of theological truths.  Now I have to tell you that when I had to read Barth, I went at approximately 5 pages an hour - and I'm a fast reader!  But instead of giving some academic answer with words like perichoresis or prevenient grace, Barth replied:  "Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so."  On this Reformation Sunday, it is good to remember that reform often means going back to the most basic and essential elements of our faith.

The greatest commandment - love God.  For Christians, the way we know God is through Jesus.  "Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so."

But Jesus didn't stop there.  He didn't stop because we can't really love God completely, with heart, soul and mind until we love our neighbor as ourselves (scripture found in Leviticus).  Joining the commandments of love for God and love for neighbor as Jesus does, ties our confession of faith with action - responding to our neighbor in need.

The second commandment isn't merely secondary to the first commandment - it is essential.  We can't possibly love God whom we can't see and despise our neighbors whom we see every day.  It would have been a whole lot easier for most of us, if he had simply stayed with the first part!

No, the two are totally tied together:  love God and love your neighbor.  Straight forward.  In a world where things are often muddy, this is clear.  It may be simple - but it isn't easy.  For most of us I would guess there is a big difference between knowing what we are supposed to do and actually doing it.  We kind of stumble along, looking just a bit like folks doing the "Hokey Pokey."

We probably need to take a side-track and remind ourselves what the word "love" meant in Jesus' day.  It certainly didn't have the warm, cozy, romantic connotations we usually associate with the word.  In the first-century Mediterranean world, "love" was not a warm feeling toward someone, but rather a pattern of action.  Saying you "loved" someone had to be backed up with behavior, and how you felt really didn't matter.

To love your neighbor didn't mean a positive feeling toward one that may have hurt you.  God and every one of us here know that a loving feeling sometimes is just not possible.  But neither the words from Leviticus nor Jesus were talking about a feeling, they were talking about love demonstrated in action.  And sometimes when we act in a loving way, we find ourselves able to let go of the hatred or the bitterness or self-righteousness, that can eat us up inside.  Perhaps you've heard the words, "fake it ‘til you make it."  If you act in a loving way long enough, sometimes - even often --the feeling will follow.

When Jesus said, "love your neighbor as yourself," he was essentially saying, "treat all those around you as you would your own flesh and blood" - that is, as sisters and brothers in one family, deserving honor and special care.  For the Jews, as for people in most parts of the world, neighbor meant something quite different than what you and I experience.  The people who lived around them were just like them.  They were family - part of the clan.  Historically that has been true for the majority of the world.  So to love your neighbor meant treating family members with respect.

Again, Jesus took the traditional understanding and turned it upside down, as we remember from the story of the Good Samaritan.  As if loving our family wasn't hard enough, we are called to love and serve the stranger and foreigner and enemy, as well.  It includes being willing to give up things for folks we don't know, even being willing to die for the welfare of an enemy.

The commandment may be simple - but it's not easy to put into action.  Think of all the barriers to the kind of love Jesus commands us to practice.  Self-interest jumps up, when we fear that we may be left at a disadvantage.  Inconvenience undoubtedly keeps us from reaching out.  And can there be any doubt that we are resistant to leaving our cultural, political, racial and religious comfort zones?   Distrust may be the biggest barrier of all - fearing that if we let ourselves be vulnerable, we won't be safe.  Left to what we would naturally do, not one of us today would leap those barriers and love our neighbors in the way in which we are commanded to do.

Dr. David Zersen tells the following story.  The great Norwegian novelist, Johan Bojer, makes that point powerfully in his story, The Great Hunger. It happened that an anti-social newcomer moved into the village and put a fence around his property with a sign saying, "Keep Out." He also put a vicious dog in the fence to keep anyone from climbing it. One day, the neighbor's little girl reached inside the fence to pet the dog and the dog grabbed her by the arm and savagely bit and killed her.

The townspeople were enraged and refused to speak to the recluse. They wouldn't sell him groceries at the store. When it came time for planting, they wouldn't sell him seed. The man became destitute and didn't know what to do. One day he saw another man sowing seed on his field. He ran out and discovered it was the father of the little girl. "Why are you doing this?" he asked." The father replied, "I am doing this to keep God alive in me."

Given the tone of this year's political discourse, I was struck by a recent editorial in the Plain Dealer.  It read, in part:

A couple of weeks ago, our next-door neighbor staked a sign for his presidential candidate in the middle of his front yard.  "Wrong sign," I muttered to myself.

Not good sportsmanship, I know, but I was feeling outnumbered.  The two houses across the street had the same signs in their yards.  So did the neighbors on the corner, and all the signs went up the same day.  I was pouting (like a 4 year old)....The editor continued: After I saw those yard signs, I took a deep breath, thought about Mom and grew about four decades.

I like every last one of the people in those houses.  We have history, as Mom would say.  Just recently, Beth and Henry helped us wrestle our son's runaway dog to the ground.  Bob and Linda had us over for dinner only minutes after we'd moved into the neighborhood.  And Barbara and Gene were the first to show up with gifts for our new grandson.

They've been nothing but kind to a couple who couldn't be more public with viewpoints that oppose their own.  God bless America, indeed." 

A few days later, most of those signs had been taken or mangled.  The editor felt sick, but then concluded, "Still I remain hopeful.  I don't know if my neighbors will replace their stolen signs.  What I do know is that they continue to wave whenever they see me, and they do it with a smile.  As signs go, that's a mighty good one."   (Connie Schultz, The Plain Dealer, Wednesday, October 22, 2008).

Love of God and neighbor is not about believing the same things, about agreeing on everything.  It's about acting as if every person we meet has the face of Jesus. And as we seek to be faithful, Jesus goes with us.  Loving others is not just a nice thing to do.  It is actually an integral part of our spiritual growth, a critical element of our relationship with Christ.  When we love a neighbor - whether or not that person is easy to love or not - we not only fulfill the Great Commandment, but we become a conduit for God's love - and learn what it's really all about.  We find joy, as we once again meet Jesus in each one we meet.