Sermon for October 25, 2026
Readings:
Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18
Psalm 1
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-4
Sermon 10-25-26
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they hope you have the answer.
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they hope you have the RIGHT answer.
There’s a difference.
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they are looking for an answer.
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they already have the answer they are looking for. There’s a difference.
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they want to know what you think.
Sometimes, when someone asks you a question, they want you to know what they think.
Do you see how there’s a difference?
One person is looking for information; the other person is looking for validation.
One person is on a quest; the other person is giving a test.
Not everyone that asks you a question really cares what you think. Not everyone cares about your actual opinion. They just want to know whose side you are on. They just want to know if you think what they think. It’s a test not an interview. Some folks want a debate, not a discussion, and those are two different things.
I am sure that most of you have been in this situation before. Someone asks you a question, and you can just tell that this person isn’t genuinely interested in learning from you or about you. They are just checking to make sure that you think what they think. They are testing you to see if you belong to their tribe. It’s an election year. I know y’all know this. Everyone wants to debate. Everyone wants to win. When two candidates meet on a stage, I assure you, they are NOT interested in getting to know one another. They aren’t looking for truth, they are looking for victory. This is our political system, but people do it all the time. All sorts of people, not just politicians. In the gospel this morning it is a lawyer that asks Jesus the non-question question. It is a lawyer who is testing Jesus to see if he has the right answers. A lawyer. There’s a shock.
Now I so wish that I could say that I have had a lot of those encounters with lawyer-types, because y’all know that I love to bash on lawyers, but I have to be honest, most of the time when I have had encounters with people that were trying to test my knowledge and test my beliefs, it has been with other clergy. Clergy are the worst sometimes. And truth be told, the lawyer in the gospel this morning was someone whose career was focused on studying and interpreting God’s law, the Torah, so really he was probably a lot closer to our idea of a clergy person than he was to our idea of a lawyer. He’s more Moses than Matlock.
And we know that his question to Jesus in the gospel is about testing and not truth seeking. The Bible makes that clear. You see, Jesus had just gotten into an argument with another sect of Jews called the Sadducees. Like Americans are politically separated into Democrats and Republicans, first century Jews are separated into Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus just came back from winning a debate with some Sadducees, and now the people on the other side of the divide, the Pharisees, they want to know if Jesus is truly on their side or not. They want to check his positions on the issues they care about. So they send one of their own to test him and to ask him a question, for which they already have an answer.
“Teacher,” the man asks, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Of all the commandments in scripture, or in God’s law, what is the most important. And Jesus gives a very standard and correct answer from the Book of Deuteronomy, what we would call the Shema, the basic statement of Jewish belief “Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” and “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That is an abbreviated version. Now remember, Jesus was a good Jewish boy, and contrary to what some people like to think, he didn’t go around refuting the Old Testament. He didn’t deny God’s law. What he did do, and did frequently, was interpret God’s law in light of the larger story of God’s love and faithfulness. So when someone or a group of folks were getting stuck on one passage of scripture and its interpretation, Jesus would often counter by providing other scriptures that painted a bigger picture. Other rabbis did this too, Jesus wasn’t the only one, but we Christians just believe that Jesus’s interpretation is definitive, because his resurrection from the dead confirmed for us that he is the son of God.
So Jesus, who knows that he is being tested by the Pharisees because they dislike the Sadducees, gives the correct answer, but then he adds a little more scripture to the mix. Jesus throws in another commandment that is also in scripture and says that it is related to the first commandment: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That is a passage from a different book of the Bible, but it is still a part of God’s sacred story and doesn’t want to be forgotten. Jesus uses this second passage of scripture to put the first in context a little bit. Yes, love God, that is a commandment, but if your love for God is leading you to hate everyone else, then maybe you need to read more than one verse of the bible. That is a challenge in our day as much as it was in Jesus’s day. You get folks that come to the bible looking for validation and not information. You get folks that already have their opinions set when they open the book; they aren’t looking to make a connection with God’s saving story; they are looking for scriptural support for what they already believe. Well if you are looking for a scripture passage that you can take out of context to support almost anything you believe I have good news for you, you will probably find it. If you want to just skim through the bible and find passages that used independently support your point of view, then there is a very good chance you will find them, but knowing a verse of scripture and knowing the gospel is not the same thing.
Because the gospel is about the whole story of God’s saving love. And by gospel I don’t just mean Matthew, Mark, or Luke or John, I mean the fundamental message that we Christians have to proclaim. The gospel is about a God that gives laws, but also loves law-breakers so much that he is willing to die for them. The gospel is about the hope that we have that the struggles and failures and pains we have in this life are NOT all that there is. The gospel is that we believe that the God that gave the law to Moses also lived and died as one of us, and then rose again from the dead, so that we would not be enslaved to a world of sin and death. And yeah, loving God is important, but Jesus reminds those who are testing him, that loving this God means loving a God who also commands us to love others. That is a part of the law too. And that is not so simple.
Since God first gave the law to Moses and since God’s faithful people first started recording God’s story and writing the scriptures, there has always been this temptation to just focus on the laws and the passages that we like, and to ignore or overlook the rest. Christians do it, Jews do it. The Pharisees did it; the Sadducees did it. Roman Catholics do it. Protestants do it. Liberals do it. Conservatives do it. We all do it from time to time. We get a verse or two of scripture memorized and we think we know it all. I seem to recall the devil knowing some scripture when he tempted Jesus in the desert. But Jesus knew the Bible better than the devil, and he knew it better than those who were trying to test him. Jesus knew what answer, and what scripture passage that the lawyer wanted him to say. He knew he was being tested. He affirmed that yes, we are commanded to love God with everything we have and that yes, that is the greatest commandment. BUT, Jesus doesn’t leave it there, because that is NOT all that God had to say.
To be a person of genuine faith, that is about more than having the right answers all the time. Quoting the bible does not make you a follower of Jesus Christ, and knowing a scripture passage does not necessarily mean that you know the gospel, the whole story of God’s saving love. So when you talk to Jesus, when you approach him to ask him questions, whether it is in prayer or in reading the scriptures, make sure that you are actually looking for his answers, and not just testing him to see if he agrees with yours.
