PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Matthew 22:34-40                                                         There Are Two Commandments

Sermon October 26, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

          Two thousand years ago the scholars of the Hebrew Bible counted 613 commandments, beginning with the Ten.  They spent a lot of time debating the relative importance of these 613, and divided them into two categories:  "light" and "heavy."  But they took every command of God seriously, and especially for the Pharisees, the most important task was to "build a fence around the Law"—that is, to organize a way to live as a Jew so that a person would obey all 613 commandments naturally.  It was a pretty good idea—develop good habits that include God's commands. 

          In our Gospel Lesson today the debate question is:  "Which of the 613 is the most important of all?"  Jesus said there are two:  love God, love your neighbor.  For the Christian there are two commandments, and they are both LOVE. 

 

          We are "liberal Protestant" Christians.  Our church is part of an American religious tradition that goes back to Plymouth Rock, and over the past 388 years our forebears in the faith have done many deeds that have set the standard for American Christianity.  For example, in 1838 it was a group of Congregational Church people who hired former President John Quincy Adams to represent before the Supreme Court the Mende people who had been brought from Africa to be slaves:  the Amistad case; and the Mende people were set free. 

          All over America there are hospitals bearing the name "Deaconess."  The Deaconess Hospital movement was part of the outreach work of the German Evangelical[1] Synod of North America:  a small denomination of German immigrants (mostly to the lower Midwest), who saw a need for good medical care and did something about it. 

One twentieth century pastor and theologian of the Evangelical Synod, Reinhold Niebuhr, was a leader in the pacifist movement that was so strong between the world wars; but when he saw the rise of Nazism he laid aside his absolutism about peace and became America's leading thinker about how Christian realism can support the defeat of tyranny in the world.  This little denomination later became part of the United Church of Christ. 

          After the American Revolution, as the Methodist Church was getting organized in America, a small group of more independent-minded Methodists broke away and started calling themselves simply "Christians."  One of their leaders, James O'Kelly, had already been working against slavery for a decade; and when the Christian Churches got going in eastern North Carolina and Virginia, they started many African American Christian Churches all over the Tidewater area—churches that are still there and thriving.  People's Church emerged from a Methodist background a hundred years later and became a part of the Christian Churches or Christian Connection; which went on to become part of the United Church of Christ. 

          Another denomination that became part of the United Church of Christ was the German Reformed Church.  In Pennsylvania in the nineteenth century the German Reformed were very active in developing what were called "Charity Schools," and in doing this they laid the foundation for the Pennsylvania public school system. 

          What I'm saying is this:  through the long history of all the churches that make up our heritage, there has been a strong sense of Christian service to one's neighbor—not just individually, but as a church and as a denomination serving the community.  And this commitment, which continues strongly in the UCC, is one aspect of "love your neighbor as yourself."  Ours is a church that has always taken the love commandment seriously, and in practical ways. 

          On the logo of the United Church of Christ are the words from the Bible:  "That they may all be one."  In fact ours is the only denomination logo that has a Bible quotation on it.  We are a church committed to bridging the chasms created by religious disagreement, and working for Christian unity.  This is in our DNA:  and it is practical love of neighbor.

          In Christianity there are two commandments, and they're both LOVE. 

 

          Now I've said all this to get to the next thing I want to say.  This past year I was reading an article about Bill Moyers, the Baptist minister who was President Johnson's Press Secretary, who has been doing high-brow interview shows for television for decades, and who has brought opportunities for religious education to millions of adults through some television series like the one on "Genesis" several years ago.  This article quoted Moyers as saying that, as much as he loves the church, religion is one of the most divisive elements in our society.  I was stunned.  I've spent my life preaching about Christian unity, participating in ecumenical dialogue, supporting the church's benevolent and social action ministries everywhere I've served.  I've always thought that my faith is a unifying force; and here's Bill Moyers saying that faith is as divisive as politics.  It took me awhile to accept that. 

          How is it that so many Christians proclaim Jesus' "two greatest commandments—both of them LOVE," and then turn around and act like Christian Taliban?  Is it so easy to move from "I love God" to "you don't because you don't do what I do"?  Evidently it's that easy.  I've known Christians whose application of "love your neighbor" was really "change your neighbor."  This is not love, this is domination.  As long as we draw lines in the sand beyond which our love will not go, we are failing to rise to the moral stature that Jesus announces in this Gospel Lesson today:  love God, love your neighbor as yourself. 

          Jesus' teaching is so central to what Christianity IS, that all the apostolic traditions represented in the New Testament repeat it in some form.  By that I mean:  we have three major ways of interpreting the Christian faith laid out in the New Testament—one related to the Apostle Peter, one related to the Apostle Paul, and one related to the Apostle John.  Almost all the books of the New Testament can be classified in one of these three traditions:  Petrine, Pauline or Johannine.  And in all three we find some form of "Love God, love your neighbor" stated as the core of the Christian faith and morals.  The Peter tradition appears here in the Gospel of Matthew, and also in James, who calls love "the royal law."[2]

          The Paul tradition—that is Paul's letters and the books written by people taught by Paul—the Paul tradition says that "love your neighbor is the fulfilling of the whole law."[3]  And of course it was Paul who wrote the hymn on love:  "If I speak with the tongues of humans and of angels but have not love, I am a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal."[4]  The John tradition IS "love"—John is called "the apostle of love."  At the Last Supper, John has Jesus tell the disciples, "A new commandment I give to you…:  love one another as I have loved you."[5]  The writer of the First Letter of John rephrases it this way:  "This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another…."[6]

          In Christianity there are two commandments, and they're both LOVE. 

 

          How?  Constance Berg has explained it with a story.[7]  Her name was Bea, and she was 81 years old; but she was a walker, healthy, full of the joy of life.  During the winter she walked in the mall.  She had to pace herself, but she loved doing it. 

          Bea was a doctor's wife and never had a job outside the home, but she took that freedom as an opportunity to get busy.  She loved to bring treats to her neighbors.  She had coffee every morning with the widow across the street.  The scouts, the high school band, all the children in the neighborhood knew she would never turn them away when they came to sell things for their group projects. 

          Last December, just before Christmas, Bea was walking home from coffee with her neighbor when she slipped on a patch of ice, fell and broke her shoulder.  It was very painful and her recovery took a long time.  She was in the hospital over Christmas, and that messed up all her family Christmas traditions—having her son and daughter and their families in for a meal and gifts:  they came to the hospital instead and celebrated in her room.  It wasn't the same, but she found something unique in it.  She said it was fun to have so much commotion, and she was glad not to have to clean up before and after the family's visit. 

          When she returned home from the hospital, her walkway was scraped clean, her driveway was cleared, there was a thick, industrial outdoor mat on the sidewalk between her garage and her back door.  Her neighbors had all gotten together to make sure she would be safe.  As the dreary months of healing crept by, neighbors shoveled her walks every snowfall.  They brought her food.  She happily made phone calls to them all to thank them for what they had done—and chatted awhile.  Every time, a neighbor would say, "I'm just being neighborly." 

          April arrived with its usual rains.  Bea opened her front door to get her newspaper, and she found a new newspaper tube hanging right next to the door, with a little piece of roof gutter on top to channel the water away from the porch.  What a clever idea! 

          Bea tried to pay them for the groceries, for the newspaper get-up:  they laughed and reminded her of things she had done for them—visiting, baby-sitting, bringing meals when they were sick, spreading candy to the children during her walks.  It was all a testimony to "being your neighbor's neighbor." 

 

          In Christianity there are two commandments, and they're both LOVE.  Love God; love your neighbor as yourself.  This is religion.  This is morals.  This is true humanhood in the best sense of the word.  Our churches have always taught this, and we've tried to live it.  If God is Love, as John said, then so are God's children.  That's you.

AMEN