MT 22:34-46 

Matthew in the Margins… 21st S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

Pharisees rush in where Sadducees have not feared to tread. Those who live by Law rather than Love seem to slip into that habit rather easily!

In an old movie I once saw, a benefactor donates a rug to make the recreation room in an old-style ‘mental asylum’ a touch less bare & forbidding. But carers insist the patients not walk on that rug! Only walk round & round the outside of the rug so it doesn’t get dirty! So, day after day, patients dutifully circle round & round that rug until it becomes set in law that that rug must be circled. The purpose of the gift of the rug becomes lost on both attendants & patients! Today’s passage raises the whole question of the purpose of the Law of God.

Legal experts, or would-be experts, roll out that same rug in front of Jesus, daring Him to walk on it! He calls their bluff of course! I was about to write ‘in His inimitable fashion’, but the whole point of this passage is that Jesus IS imitable! That’s the whole point of the Gospel! JS enemies are trying to entice Him into mis-interpreting these Laws central to both Hebrew faith & the Gospel by turning them into that carpet on the floor of the ‘asylum’. Embedded in DEUT & LEV, these God-given laws have always been laws at their best because they need no explanation. It's not the interpreting that's the problem; it's the doing! As G.K. Chesterton once put it, ‘Christianity hasn’t been tried & found wanting; it’s been found difficult & not tried!’

Today, many are ignorant of the heritage that is our Hebrew Bible. (Sunday by Sunday listening to passages often lacking context isn’t much help.) If we remain ignorant, though, how are we to recognise the Two Commandments that all the Law & the Prophets hang on? Being a disciple of Jesus involves going on from where the Hebrews left off, carrying their old & precious treasures along with our new ones.

First round of this bout goes to Jesus. He doesn’t dismiss the Pharisees' question despite its clear intent of bringing him undone. Questions need to be explored. Jesus asks His question-ers to apply the ‘Great Commandments’ to Himself & themselves, rather than just theorise about them, or Him! Finding the right questions to ask in life comes before finding the right answers to them!

Jesus appears to change the subject, but if He is the Anointed, David's son, then the answer about the greatest commandment is physically standing in front of them! Unrecognized. The One who loves God & neighbour perfectly. “I’ve done it!” He’ll go on to shout from the cross! Loving God & others that far doesn't come out of Bible quotations or sermons!

The verses about whose son is the Anointed is another of Jesus’ hard riddles. But as long as we get our heart round His question, as well as, even more than, our head, the answer will be revealed! Let’s put following Jesus the Anointed into practice & not just keep circling Him like that rug on that floor.