“DOCTRINE OF FORGIVENESS & LIFE”
Saint Matthew 22. 34-46
Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity: 11 October Anno Domini 2009
Fr Watson SSP
The Pharisees did not like the Sadducees, and vice versa. New Testament exegete Dr. Gregory Lockwood states that these two rival Jewish groups acted as the reigning political parties of their day.
When someone, some sinful person, thinks they and their "group" has a monopoly on wisdom, justice, intelligence, and "rightness" than it's natural that they demonize and scapegoat all the others that don't rise to their gifted level of understanding. How pathetic. Yes, you are. What matters is not what nationality you are, not what ethnic race you were born into, and certainly not what political party you have been persuaded by other sinful men to subscribe to, the only thing that matters is that you belong to the Christ. The point worth caring over is whether you are sheep of His pasture.
Sheep feed, but sinful goats are too busy talking to receive nourishment. Sheep look to the Shepherd, but old Adam livestock (deadstock) delight in trying to trip the Shepherd and show everyone else that a caretaker is superfluous. Sheep willingly listen and seek to understand in humility and modest appreciation, but stiff-necked back-sliding "billies" question the Lord at every turn. Not questions in good faith so that faith might be good, and strengthened, but questions to tempt the Lord, to catch the Lord in some inconsistency, paradox, unfairness or mistake. With enough questions hurled at a Shepherd why then any fallen sheep will feel self-justified to eat what it wants, when it wants, and where it wants. Then the hither-to domesticated charges of the Land Owner will be free like Eve and Adam to "be like gods."
"Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?" This question from the lawyer was sinfully evil on many levels. The lawyer already thought he was smarter and more knowledgeable than the Rabbi from Nazareth. The sin of a pride-filled ego is damning. Repent ye! Repent as Paul admonishes you and do not think higher of yourself than you should. If you must boast, revel not in your own trivial memorized minutia but in Jesus Christ and His Crucifix!
The lawyer was hoping to trip Jesus up; trying to get some answer from the Lord which could then be turned, taken-out-of-context, and used against Jesus. Lawyers, Pharisees, are like Lutherans, they love to cross-examine the Word of God rather than obey it. The one who really loves to argue and debate with the Word is Satan himself. He showed his own rhetorical skill in the 40 days of Christ's desert dwelling.
In this morning's text, as in the wilderness, the Christ is content to simply obey His Father, stand firm in His own Mission and Work, and simply quote Himself. The Lord Christ repeats for the lawyer what He first said through the Law Giver Moses: Love Thy God perfectly and Love thy neighbor perfectly. Do these, obey perfectly, fulfill perfectly, comply perfectly, and live.
The Pharisee did not do this. He thought he did, but he did not.
The Good News…and there is a whole lot of it, an Immaculate Body full of it, a pumping heart and an overflowing Chalice brimming with it, the Good News is that you are no longer a clever Pharisee but a contrite Disciple. You know that you don't love your heavenly Father the way the Law demands but that you have peace in the fact that your Jesus did, and does, and that perfect obedience of His is hung on you like a White Robe.
You can hang your head in true repentance that you don't love your neighbor perfectly, sorrowful that you ridicule and even hate your neighbor because they belong to a different "party" or "persuasion" than you do, but, you have consolation in the belief that Jesus did and always does love perfectly all you and your neighbors as much as he loved His Father, his Virgin Mother, His step-father the Guardian/Carpenter, and His 12. You get the benefit of that perfect sacrificing love-it's draped/hung on you like a badge, a laurel wreath, a Shining Robe of Marriage.
The Law, the first Five Books of Moses, show forth the Will of God which must be kept for you to live. Jesus did so by letting all of your trespasses hang on His innocent flesh, while His flesh hung on Calvary. The Law as all the Prophets from Abraham to Malachi to John Baptizer preached has to be kept totally and all breaches of it must be paid for in atoning blood. Jesus did so by shedding His Passover Lamb of Life Blood, while on the Tree.
Because all obligations, all duty, all work, all failure, all pain, all guilt, all betrayal, all shame, all horror, all sadness, all death was hung upon the Lord-asphyxiating Him to death with sin; all glory, laud and honor are hung upon your foreheads and breasts as you are Christed, Messiahed, Anointed in a + new family name.
If Jesus had only been David's son, that is, King David's genealogical & biological heir, a fleshly descendant of David and of David's own fathers: Judah, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham it would have been a wonderful thing to finally have a perfect Man perfectly do what Adam could not do; what Moses and the Israelites could not do, and what you cannot do. But if the Lord had ONLY been a human Savior then His blood could not have covered all your sin, could not have washed away all your guilt and rightful punishment.
But in addition to being David's son by flesh, the flesh of the Virgin, Jesus was also David's Father. Jesus the eternal Son, Second Person of the Triune God, was not just the Messenger of the Father, but One with the Father in all glory, laud and honor. Jesus may have "become" Jesus the God/Man at the point of His conception, when the Word took flesh; but the Son of God, the Divine Only Begotten is always "I AM," not just Omega, but Alpha as well. And when God, the God/Man hangs on the cross, and bleeds, and has His body pierced, the forgiveness for all of you and for the world is won, is done, is finished.
You need not answer anything. You come to receive that which is: for you!
In the Name of The Father and + of The Son and of The Holy Ghost