Advent 1: Making Room

Jeremiah33:14-16     

Advent always gets here before I am ready for it. No matter how good my intentions, I am never quite prepared; I am surprised by the arrival of Advent, wishing time would slow down. But if the season of Advent is about making time and space to get ourselves ready, then maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe I don’t need to get ready to begin getting ready.

However it may be, here we are…at this special time…Advent 2021. And like it does every year, Advent takes us as we are – where we each are personally, where we are as a congregation, where we are in the world.

And where we are in the world is still kind of a hard place. We have been in this COVID season way too long for us to keep it in the forefront of our minds – and yet, even while not in the center of our consciousness, it is always lurking around the edges. Because it is always still here.

During this season, we may long for other times. We may long for the Advent and Christmas of our youth…or even just 2019. O, for a simpler time, a mask-free time. Yet, strange as it may be, here is where we are; now is the time we are in, so let us open our eyes and see where God has placed us.

There are three words that I have heard used to describe this time we are living in: uncertainty, exhaustion, and isolation.

Perhaps we should say that every age is full of uncertainty, and that would be true. None of us has access to a crystal ball telling us just what the future will bring. But these past two years have been a more uncertain time than usual, I think. And as time has gone on, and the pandemic has worn on – we surely thought it would be over and gone by now. Yet, here we are facing another winter, watching cases spike once more, reading about the new omicron variant, and realizing that there will be several more months of uncertainty ahead of us.

And all this uncertainty makes us exhausted. Just how long can we balance on the knife’s edge? We are tired of the constant watchfulness, tired of the constant adjustments.

And even while we are all experiencing essentially the same thing, there is isolation. Ever since the pandemic began in early 2020, it has changed the way we look at other people. Now we keep our distance. We shield our faces with masks. Now we are more likely to shop from home, work at home, even have doctor visits from home. We isolate. There is less community, and more a sense that each one of us is on our own.

Uncertainty. Exhaustion. Isolation. I don’t know if times like these make it easier or harder to hear the Old Testament prophets come crashing our season of comfort and joy.

We can tell that even back in the 6^th century BCE they didn’t want to hear the prophet Jeremiah. Like most of the prophets, he was not welcome. He was full of doom and gloom, bad news. But the thing we should recognize is that the people who mostly didn’t want to hear Jeremiah were the kings. Because Jeremiah spoke truth to power.

Kings always like to put their own spin on everything that is happening. That’s the way of powerful people, they don’t want to acknowledge bad news and they certainly don’t like anyone broadcasting the negative impact of their policies. But this is what Jeremiah was doing. Jeremiah saw the failures of their kingdom; he saw the inevitable fall of Jerusalem, and he refused to close his eyes to it.

Jeremiah was called by God to listen and carry God’s message to the kings and the people of the land, a message that was hard to hear. There was so much that had gone wrong in Judah and Israel. Under the leadership of their kings, the people had abandoned the teachings of God. They had wandered off to try their luck with other deities. They had forgotten God’s law and drifted away to address other priorities.

To be fair, I am sure these were hard times in the kingdom. They had been pressured on all sides by adversaries who were greater and stronger than they were. They endured tremendous economic hardships. And then they did what nations often do – they turned inward.

The people got the message: we are each on our own. Of course, what happened then was predictable: the stronger ones survived while the weaker ones suffered.

Now, this is ancient history, I know that. But if we keep our eyes and our hearts open, as God asks us to do, we cannot help but see how this works in our own time as well. During the pandemic the strongest survived, more than survived, actually. Those with the most resources adjusted quite nicely. We adapted. We registered our Zoom accounts, we upgraded our home computers. We even built new rooms in our houses so everyone can have their private workspace. And for some reason, our retirement accounts grew by leaps and bounds. Our hardships were offset, you might say, by certain benefits.

But those with the least, those who were the weakest, grew even weaker. They did not have jobs they could work at home. For many of the most vulnerable, when the pandemic came, they no longer had jobs at all. Their children were sent home with inadequate heating, inadequate food, inadequate educational materials. Their schools were ill equipped to make the needed adjustments the pandemic demanded.

Well more than 2,000 years after Jeremiah, the problems remain the same: somehow, the ones who have the most are empowered by crisis to gain even more. And the ones who have the least, lose even more. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way – God’s way of righteousness.

When we see that word, righteousness, in the holy scriptures, we should understand just what it means. The Old Testament often speaks about God’s righteousness, and the word suggests things like God’s salvation, God’s deliverance, God’s vindication. We see it frequently in the Psalms, where the psalmists lament the ways they have suffered wrongs, and look toward God’s righteousness to save them. God’s righteousness is a thing that gives us hope.

God is righteous, and we may understand that to mean that God can be relied on to deliver us from affliction, from evil of all manner, from the suffering we may bring upon ourselves as well as our suffering at the hands of others. God will deliver us from the careless treatment of the ones in power, the ones with the power to take away from us and leave us desolate.

Here is good news: God is righteous; but the scriptures don’t leave it there. They also speak of righteous nations and righteous persons. And these righteous ones are those who put their trust in God’s vindication, who live as ones who believe in bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry with good things, as Mary sings in her hymn of praise. They believe that every valley shall be filled, every mountain made low, the crooked made straight and the rough ways made smooth, that all flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord – as John the Baptist proclaimed, quoting the Hebrew Scriptures . The righteous ones are those who believe in God’s plan, step forward, and say, “Sign me up.”

Jeremiah was one, and he had so much to say about the way things were. Jeremiah spoke up and said things that the king found so unpleasant and inconvenient, he tried to silence him. The king couldn’t see that through this hard news, Jeremiah pointed the way to hope. Today we hear him say these words: “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill my gracious promise with the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David’s line, who will do what is just and right in the land.”

We know the one, don’t we? From a tree that had fallen so long before, God raised up a righteous branch – Jesus of Nazareth. And through Israel will be the salvation of the world.

As we await his coming, we might ask ourselves how we ought to prepare. How does one prepare for the one called The Lord Is Our Righteousness?

Our theme during this Advent season turns our focus to the familiar story of Jesus’ birth. The well-loved story of the family who had no place to stay, so they bedded down with the animals. A baby who had no crib so they laid him in a manger. This is a story about making room for the ones who are in need.

During these next few weeks, as we prepare ourselves for Jesus, we will consider the ways we make room, and the ways God might be calling us to make more room, for what is holy. As the prophet Micah said, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Following the one who is called The Lord Is Our Righteousness. How are we being called to open the door wider?

May the light of hope shine in our hearts, in our lives, and in our church.

Photo by Pratik Gupta from Pexels

Freedom

Genesis 2:4-7,15-18,21-25, 3:1-8  

Several years ago, I saw a film about Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.  He was a fascinating person, a bit of an enigma.  What was it about Jobs that made him so successful? He was not especially kind or likeable.  He was not a gifted programmer, like his partner Wozniak.  He was not a businessman.  What was he? What was his genius?  He was a creator.

There is one scene in the movie where he obsesses about the dimensions of his new computer, the Next.  It was a black cube, but apparently the dimensions had to be off just a fraction of an inch for the human eye to perceive it as a cube.  The production staff got it wrong, and Steve was not satisfied with the results.  He actually had a million other problems more urgent than this, but this was the one he obsessed about.

It had something to do with his vision about what people want.  He knew that if he created things that were good for something – that is, useful – and a delight to the eyes – that is, beautiful – people would desire them.  Covet them.  Lust after them.  He was right, wasn’t he?

The trick was just to get the price at a manageable level, something attainable.  If Apple computers were a lot more expensive than other computers, it was just too great a hurdle for most people, as badly as they might want it.  But when they found the sweet spot, that price which was a little higher than the others, but justifiable to the consumer, the sales would come rolling in. 

We are irrational beings, but we are rational too.  We want what we want, and then we want to justify our wants.

That’s the story of Adam and Eve and the fruit. 

Here they are in this beautiful, perfect garden.  They have everything they need to be content.  They have all the food they need, they have every variety of plant and animal, and they have each other.  They are free to eat, sleep, play, work – whatever they want whenever they want.  And they have a close, intimate relationship with God, their creator.  What more could they want?

Well, it turns out there is something more, and it’s right in the middle of the garden.

They didn’t seem to pay it much attention in the beginning.  They had what they needed; they were content.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there, but it was not to be touched.  End of story. 

But then here comes the serpent with that nasty thought: Here is something nice that you don’t have.  You want it, don’t you?   It’s tasty, it’s beautiful, and it will make you smart.  This fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” is pretty great stuff.  Why shouldn’t you have it? 

It took a minimal amount of arm-twisting for Eve and Adam to find justification for taking the one thing that had been forbidden.  Unfortunately for us all, it was kind of a deal-breaker. 

We turn to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden again and again to try to understand what went wrong and why.  Granted, it’s not a factual account of creation.  It’s not history.  It’s a story – one that has much to teach, but today I want to look at what it says to us about freedom. 

The story of Adam and Eve is a story of two people created for freedom – within the bounds of the garden.  This garden, where God has dominion, provides for all their needs.  In this context, Adam and Eve are free of want, free of fear, free of pain.  They are free to love and free to enjoy. 

But the moment they shift their focus from what they have to what they do not have, their freedom doesn’t seem like enough.  Suddenly, they are bored with every other fruit in the garden.  Suddenly, life is unfair because there is something they need, something they have to have, something everyone else has so why can’t they have it too.  Well, maybe not that last part, since there wasn’t anybody else around back then.  But we all know what this feels like – to covet something.

It’s very hard for us to distinguish our wants from our needs; this is something we learn at a very young age.  I remember once having a little boy explain to me the difference between a want and a need; all the while I was imagining his mother teaching him that very lesson in the supermarket checkout line, the valley of temptation for all boys and girls.

We’re not good at knowing the difference, and we spend a lot of time fretting about what we have and what we don’t have, being anxious about having enough.  And when we are anxious about what we have or don’t have, we have lost our sense of gratitude.

When we have lost our sense of gratitude, when we have succumbed to the belief in scarcity, that we don’t have enough, it is because of one thing: we have forgotten who is the Lord of our lives. 

To whom does this all belong?  To God.  To quote Madeleine L’Engle, “Time is God’s.  We are God’s.  Creation is God’s.” Everything we have is a gift from God.  From that perspective, why ever not be grateful?

I’m not a doctor or a therapist, but I can tell you this: Gratitude is an antidote to anxiety.  Do you remember, a couple of years ago, when we practiced a month of gratitude? We kept daily gratitude journals, where we practiced writing down three things every day for which we were grateful.  Before we started, I heard from some of you that you doubted you would be able to come up with even one thing every day, let alone three things.  Soon we discovered how easy it was.  For many of us, this one little practice improved our lives: the daily practice of gratitude.

Perhaps Adam and Eve simply forgot that the garden of creation was God’s.  That they were part of God’s creation, and as such, cared for and loved by their creator.  What they definitely were not, were the masters of the garden.  If they only could have remembered this important truth, they would have danced through the garden day after day, enjoying the colors, the scents, the tastes and the music surrounding them.  This would have been their worship.

A wise man, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said that you are sure to lose your ability to truly worship when you start to take things for granted.  He said, “Indifference to the sublime wonder of being is the root of sin.”   

The sin that enslaves us – this is what Jesus told us.  But Jesus also told us that he came to set us free again.  God made this good creation – and that includes us.  God made us free for love and joy; for the peace that passes understanding, for contentment.

We will always do battle with sin.  We will always be susceptible to the fear of scarcity over the trust in God’s providence. This fear will prevent us from giving the way our hearts really want to give. Our fears and false beliefs will hold us captive.  But the truth will make us free, once again, free.

We are free to know the Lord.  And we are free to enjoy the Lord – like the first words we say in the Westminster Catechism: that our purpose is to love God and enjoy God forever. We are free to enjoy all that God provides for us, and free to share. As Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them out, “Freely you have received; now freely give.”

Ask yourself this question: What are the impediments, the fears, that hold you back? 

Give these to Jesus, the one who makes us free … again.

Photo: Churchart.com  

Giving Our Best

1 Samuel 1:4-20

This is such a sweet and tender story, such as we find occasionally, here and there, in the Old Testament. Amidst the stories of violence and greed and all varieties of evil. Here, surrounded by troubles of all kinds, struggles for power and domination, war and famine, abuse and death, we have a little family.

The head of the household, Elkanah, seems to be a good man, a godly man. You shouldn’t hold it against him that he has two wives, because that was fairly commonplace at the time. And it seems as though he tried to do right by both of them, Hannah and Peninnah.

Peninnah, apparently, has been blessed with many children. She has a houseful of little Peninnahs and little Elkanahs tumbling around, but Hannah has no children, and in the way that the scriptures tell it, this is because God has closed her womb. Children, like all good things, are special gifts from God. So important it is that we remember this, that the biblical stories remind us frequently. They tell of numerous women who are in similar circumstances: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, the wife of Manoah, the Shunammite woman. There is Tamar, a less conventional member of this club. In every case, we are to understand, God provides children in God’s time and God’s way. Children are God’s special gift to us.

And we should know that. It is not our birthright. It is not something we are entitled to. It is God’s special gift.

Even so, we have sympathy for these barren women of the Bible, because we see their pain – the desolation, the loneliness they feel. And sometimes, their suffering is made worse by the cruel taunting of others. Peninnah, who never missed an opportunity to make Hannah feel like less of a woman. Hagar, no longer the submissive slave of Sarah once she gives birth to Abraham’s son. Co-wives become rivals. Childless women ache with emptiness.

There were, of course, many reasons for wanting children. The luxury of a little perfect being to love and hold, who will burrow into our shoulder and love us back. A baby to dress up in cute outfits and show off to our neighbors, who will ooh and aah at their little faces. Who doesn’t enjoy that? There were also practical reasons for wanting to have children: someone who will care for us in our old age. A widow in the Bible is a woman who has no husband and no sons – no one to care for her.

Hannah wanted a child, probably for all the same reasons anyone else wants a child of their own. But her wanting was perhaps a little deeper than others. There was nothing that could distract Hannah from this emptiness. Elkanah would gently tease her, “Oh Hannah, am I not worth more than ten sons to you?” Perhaps Hannah smiled through her tears. She did love her husband, but the love she had for him was not enough to fill the space of childlessness.

When Elkanah went up to the sanctuary to make sacrifices to God, Hannah and Peninnah would go with him and make their sacrifices, too. It was something they did every year. Their sacrifice was their act of worship, their offering to God, in thankfulness for all God’s blessings.

On this particular journey, this particular year, Hannah was filled with emotion. She left the feast, alone, and went to the sanctuary of the Lord, and she prayed.

Her prayer rose up from the deepest places inside of her, and came out in sobs of anguish and longing. We know what Hannah was praying for. Even if the text didn’t tell us, we know what Hannah prayed for: the one thing she wanted, the only thing she wanted – a child.

Hannah made a vow that day: O Lord, she prayed, if you will remember me, and give me a son, I will give him back to you.

If you will give me the only thing I want and need, the only thing that is missing from my life; if you will fill this emptiness inside of me, Lord, I will give your gift right back to you. And so she did. Hannah went home with Elkanah and Peninnah. She became pregnant and bore a son, whom she named Samuel. And when Samuel was weaned, she returned with him to the sanctuary and gave him to God. Her offering, her sacrifice, to God.

More than anything, this is puzzling, bewildering, because when she at last receives what she has prayed for, she returns the gift. And we feel the loss on her behalf. Hannah, you have this beautiful little boy, a precious gift from God, why do you give him away? You should have him by your side for years to come. You should help him choose a wife, you should dote on his children, your grandchildren. Hannah, you should bask in the glory of your perfect little family.

But Hannah gives him away. She offers him back to the Lord.

Hannah knows that a child is a special gift from God, that a child is given in God’s time, in God’s way, for God’s purpose.

God’s purpose for Samuel was to become a prophet, a priest, a leader of Israel through some very trying times. Samuel was a very important man, he has two volumes of the Bible named for him. He was a kingmaker, a royal consultant, a seer, all this because Hannah gave him back. Hannah knew how to handle gifts from God.

Many of us know that everything good we have, children included, is a gift from God. But not everyone does know that. Some of us forget, and we think everything we have is ours by rights, everything is owed to us to use as we please. Yet people of faith should remember that everybody and everything in creation belongs to God. God gives to us generously, and when we give back we have the chance to feel that same feeling God has – generosity. Goodness. Blessing.

When we give back to God as Hannah did; when we give our best, as Hannah did, we are not left with a feeling of emptiness, but fullness. Giving makes us feel full.

Hannah did not go back to her former state of aching loneliness. She gave birth to a son and she dedicated him to the Lord. Hannah was full.

When we dedicate our lives to God – becoming a member of the church, making our pledges of offerings, committing ourselves to serving God in our service to others – we give up something, maybe something big. But we do not feel loss. Giving our best to God leaves us feeling full.

May you know the richness of God’s gifts in your life.

May you give back, as you are called to do, freely.

May you have that wonderful fullness that only comes from giving your best. 

Photo by Billy Pasco on Unsplash

The One Who Makes All Things New

Revelation 21:1-6a     

Frederick Buechner wrote an essay describing a dream he once had. In it, he was staying in a hotel. He was aware that he really, really, loved this room. Much more than you should, actually, love a hotel room. Somehow, in this room he felt happy and at peace. It seemed like everything in the room was exactly as it should be. And it felt as if he, himself, was exactly as he should be.

At some point he wandered off to other places and did other things, the way it often happens in dreams. Eventually, he returned to the hotel, but this time he was in a different room and it was not a comfortable experience. He went to the front desk. He explained to the clerk that he would like to have his old room back, that everything about it was perfect and he would much rather be there. Unfortunately, he told the clerk, he couldn’t recall the room number or where it was located. The clerk said, “I know exactly what room you’re talking about. And you can return there whenever you like. All you have to do is ask for it by name.”

He said to the clerk, “I don’t remember the name of the room. What is the name?” And the clerk told him the name of the room is Remember.

Then he woke up. But he never forgot this dream. It was a good dream, but not only that. Buechner felt it was a true dream.

Remembering is something so central to the story of God and God’s people. Time and again the scriptures tell us that God remembered God’s people, which is another way of saying God cared for them, loved them. And in the same way, the scriptures continually urge us to remember God and all the many ways God has provided for us.

In remembering, the way the scriptures encourage us to remember, we know how we have come through so much in our lives. When we remember we see the highlights, but also the dark moments from our past. We see the triumphs but also the losses, every life has both, and all manner of stuff in between.

In remembering, we see all the other people who mattered to us along the way. We remember how they supported us, guided us, loved us. Maybe we remember how they said just the right thing at the right time; that when there was something we needed, they were there to provide it.

When we remember in truth, we know that we came through all the highs and lows of our lives not on our own power. No one does this alone. We have the help of one another, but yet…in the room called Remember we sense that there is even something more than that.

In remembering, we know that what has carried us through it all is something called grace; we know that we are only here, in this place and this time, by grace.

And so we are able to remember with a sense of gratitude – grateful for God’s grace, with us through every step of our lives. By the power of God, which we receive through God’s grace, we may remember our lives in their totality – the joys we experienced, but also the very difficult and painful times when we even thought it might be better to die than to have to live with such pain. When we remember, we know that God was with us through those moments, too. We know that we survived it all by God’s grace.

Yet, even in our gratitude, the pain may remain. The act of remembering the saints, as we do every year at this time, is by its very nature painful. We ache for the losses – the ones we loved, the ones we now long for. We cannot deny that even in gratitude, the pain remains.

But there is also this: In remembering the ways that God has been with us and for us through all that life has dealt us, we know something about God that allows us to have hope for the future.

And this is more than a garden variety hope. This hope we have is much more than the way we might hope that it won’t rain tomorrow or that we will have a good night’s sleep. This is a stronger kind of hope, the kind of hope John tells us about.

John’s revelation was something like a dream; a dream that told him a story I am sure he never forgot because it was true. And as he wrote these things down, he faced the challenge of conveying things to us that we cannot yet imagine. In the revelation there are terrible things that stretch our imaginations in one way, and then there are beautiful things that stretch our imaginations in another way. John’s revelation shows us that, in this world where the worst things can happen, and have happened, the God who works through all things can bring us to a future that is beautiful beyond anything we know.

In faith, by the grace of God, we have hope for a time and place where there will be no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain. We have hope for a new heaven and a new earth where God will dwell in the midst of it, with all God’s people. We have hope that the ones we have lost, the ones we remember today, will be with us once again.

In the room called Remember, we are strengthened by the knowledge of God’s presence with us in the past and into the present, and the hope for a future filled with the light of God. We have this hope because through faith, by the grace of God, we have already seen it. In the room called Remember, we see through the eyes of hope, and know that God makes all things new.

Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash

Coming Home to You, Part 6: Choose Love

 

Mark 12:28-34  

When I was a child I went to sleepover parties with my friends. The goal of sleepovers was to stay up all night, and the best way of doing that was to play at scaring ourselves silly. We played with a Ouija board and convinced ourselves that some spirit was moving the piece around the board, and we screamed.

We played some kind of levitation game where one girl would lie on the floor and the others would kneel around her and place two fingers underneath the girl’s body. The girl would start to rise from the ground and we screamed.

We played a game we called Mary Worth, where we had to look at ourselves in the mirror in a dark room, and repeat, I believe in Mary Worth, until the face of Mary Worth would appear in the mirror. No one had any idea who Mary Worth was, but we were sure we saw something and then we screamed.

I think we just loved to scream.

And when it got really late, we played truth or dare. Which was a different kind of scary. There were no ghosts involved, just daring one another to either speak some hard truth or perform some frightening act. We were forced to choose: truth or dare. But it didn’t matter which one you chose, they were both risky.

So many of the games children play are ways of practicing the stuff of life. We play house, we play war. We play at taking risks, and this is what much of life consists of. Do you take the safe way, or do you take the risk? And if you choose the safe route, what are you actually at risk of losing?

Life involves taking risks all the time. The risk of learning something new, trying for a new and better job, buying a house, asking someone to be your friend, asking someone to marry you. Saying yes, when someone asks.

There is always risk. We are always measuring the risk.

When Jesus came to Jerusalem and drew the attention of all the religious authorities, that’s what they were interested in: calculating the risk. How risky was this man? The political position of Israel, under the Roman Empire, was tenuous. What kind of risks did Jesus pose with the things he said? Would it be more of a risk to challenge him or to let him be, hoping that the frenzy around him would just die down? Maybe people would lose interest. Or he would show himself to be a fool or a fraud.

Well, at this point, in this chapter, they have decided to take the first route, challenge him. They begin to ask Jesus questions meant to entrap him. A crowd has surrounded him, everyone is listening. If they pose just the right question, then they might get lucky. He will either say something that could get him arrested, or something that will disillusion his followers. One way or another they think they can manage to get rid of him. If they play their cards right.

It’s a risky thing, though. They need to be careful they don’t end up making themselves look like fools.

They start with their best shot, hoping they can get this done quickly. Jesus, they say, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor? Sounds like a simple question, but it is not. It’s full of landmines. It is a question about how God’s law might clash with the civil laws. It is a question that will arouse the interest of the revolutionaries among them, as well as the religious purists. Whether Jesus says yes or no, he is bound to make some faction angry or disappointed.

No such luck, though. He replies so skillfully he evades the trap. So the next team of adversaries approaches him with a different question, a sort of word problem. Jesus, they say, a man marries a woman but then dies, leaving her childless. Then each of his seven brothers, in turn marries the woman, each one dying and leaving her still childless. (All this in accordance with the law of Moses, which says the younger brothers have a duty to give this woman children in their brother’s name.) But here’s the question: In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?

It is the Sadducees who pose this challenge. And, as a matter of fact, they are the ones who do not believe in the resurrection, the life after life, so it’s a funny one coming from them. Will Jesus get into an argument with them about the resurrection? Or will he make up something illogical just to answer the question?

Neither. Once again, he sidesteps the trap and offers a richer, more meaningful answer than they could have anticipated. The Pharisees and the Sadducees, the elders and the chief priests are getting frustrated. They are all arguing at once. Then one lone scribe steps forward. One last question is posed. Jesus, which of the commandments is first? Which one is greatest?

Behind this question, is the reality that it was not uncommon for religious authorities to argue this kind of question among themselves. In Judaism, argument is sacred. In fact, there is a story about two rabbis, Rabbi Eviatar and Rabbi Yonatan, who were arguing some point of law, and not getting anywhere close to a resolution. It happened that Rabbi Eviatar bumped into the prophet Elijah on one of his regular earthly tours (you know that Elijah didn’t actually die, and he might show up anywhere at any time). So Rabbi Eviatar said, So tell me, Elijah, Tell me, what is the Holy One into right now? And Elijah answered that, as a matter of fact, God was engrossed in the very same topic that Rabbi Eviatar and Rabbi Yonatan were arguing. Rabbi Eviatar got all excited, thinking he would get a resolution to the matter. And what does God have to say on the topic, he asked? Elijah answered, God says, My child Eviatar says this, and my child Yonatan says that. Evidently, God enjoys a good argument, too.

There were, after all, 613 laws in the scriptures. There were more extrabiblical rules, all meant to help people better understand the law, so there was plenty to argue about. Still is.

Jews still argue about God’s law. And Christians argue about the whole of the scriptures; like it or not, we don’t all agree. In Reformed Christianity, we believe that arguing about it is a good thing, because when we dig in and ask questions and explore the meaning, there is truth to be found. If we dare.

Yet, it is helpful to have some rules to guide us in our argument, some common ground from which we can begin. And in our Reformed tradition, there are a few rules, set out by Augustine, and developed further by Jean Calvin. And one of these, the one I have no trouble remembering, is the rule of love.

Any interpretation of scripture must comport with the knowledge that God is love. And so, my friends, our efforts to understand the word of God must always lead us toward greater love.

And, actually, that is where this whole discussion amongst the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Scribes, the Chief Priests and the Elders and Jesus is going. Our understanding of who God is, who we are in relation to God, it begins with love. And wherever our exploration takes us beyond that first step, it will come back to love. And this is why no one dared to ask him any more questions.

When Jesus was asked what is the greatest law, what is really the foundation of the law, he answers, You shall love the Lord your God with your heart and soul and strength and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. What is the first, the last, and everything in between? It is love. Not in a schmaltzy or sentimental way. This is no Hallmark valentine card. It’s about loving God and others with everything we have – body and soul, mind and heart. If. We. Dare.

It is not the easy way. So often, hate tastes better in our mouths. So often, anger fires up our energy, our interest, gives us something to talk about. Apparently, Facebook knows the truth of this; angry-face emojis get a whole lot more traction on the social media site than happy faces do. Anger. Hate. We think they make us stronger, but they just eat us up.

True now, true back then. True for all time.

Every question the religious authorities brought to Jesus, they were armed for combat. They saw him as their enemy in a righteous battle. It may be too strong to say they hated him, but they didn’t seem to love him. Every question they brought to him was an attempt to bring him down, to defeat him. To crush him under their heels. And every time, he confronted them with a deeper truth than what they were asking for.

Finally, he gives them the greatest, the most important truth of all. Love.

And somehow, when they were face to face with this truth, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Scribes and Elders and Chief Priests understood. The scribe who brought the question to him said, You are right. There is nothing more important than that.

No one dared to ask him another question.

Life is full of risks. Uncertainties. You can try to choose the easy way, the safe way, but we all know that what looks easy often ends up being wrong – even, in the end, harder.

We might never be certain where our choices will lead us. But if we choose love, in the end, we won’t go wrong.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash