Preached on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Scripture readings: Micah 6:6-8; Mark
12:28-34
There are
six-hundred-and-thirteen commandments in the Jewish Torah (our first five books
of the Bible). They all had to be followed and kept. Six-hundred-and-thirteen
commandments: It’s a mind-numbing number, or else it makes for a wonderful
puzzle or game.
 |
| Walking along the Columbia River at Desert Aire Late afternoon, January, 2018 |
I know some of you love
puzzles. You love putting each of a thousand things in their proper place. But
there was a wonderful puzzle or game that the Jewish rabbis and the Pharisees
loved to play. It was the game called: “Which is the most important
commandment?”
You can see the game way
back in Micah. Out of a dozen nearly impossible and terrible possible
requirements, what does the Lord really require of you? Of course, Micah wins
the game by cheating. He gives us three requirements: Do justice (or live
justly); love mercy (which is also translated as kindness); and walk humbly
with your God.
The Pharisees played the
same old game with Jesus. “Which is the most important requirement?” Jesus also
wins the game in the time-honored way of Micah: by cheating. Jesus makes the greatest
commandment into two; or the two greatest into one.
But what does he say about
these two? Matthew expands (a little bit) on what Jesus actually said about the
two: he says that they are alike. (Matthew 22:34)
They are alike! But how
can loving God and loving your neighbor be alike? How can they be the same, or
nearly the same? The very teacher who started the game agreed with Jesus, and
strung them both together into one single commandment.
Both commandments are
about love. Both commandments together have a way of putting all the ways of
love into one single love-package.
Some people try keeping the
two apart. You’ve met people who talk about their love for the Lord, but
they’re not very loving to people.
I knew a girl in college
who quoted the apostle Paul for her motto in life. She went around “speaking
the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15) That’s what she claimed that she was
doing. Well, she certain spoke the truth all the time: all the time! And when
you were around her very much, because she was very pretty, you wanted to wince
and tell her, “Please, Christy! Please stop doing that.”
I’ve known some who
separated their love in the opposite way. They loved people (or said they did)
and they hated God. God didn’t nearly live up to their standards.
Micah makes God’s three
requirements into one single love-package as well. You need to know that the
words for judgement and justice have two sides to them. There’s a justice and a
judgement that is punitive. It punishes wrong-doers. Then there’s the kind of
justice and judgement that is restorative. The judge restores what has been
taken, or lost, or deserved.
Punitive justice makes
some people very happy. If what was taken, or harmed, or lost cannot be
restored, then victims often take the side of punitive justice.
In the brutal Middle East,
some of the most brutalized and bereaved Christians are famous for forgiving
the perpetrators of the violence around them. Of course (to the perpetrators) forgiveness
is a sign of weakness. No amount of love can excuse an infidel for their irreverent
claim that God has a son named Jesus, and that God is simply like Jesus: not
even if those Christians truly succeed in the discipline of acting like Jesus.
In Micah’s love-package,
the justice must fit the pattern of mercy (which is also translated as kindness).
Justice must conform to mercy and humility, so it’s probably all about righting
the wrongs done to people, and forgiving all of the wrongs done by people, by
restoring what has been lost, or by healing what has been broken.
God’s restorative
judgement was carried out on the cross, where Jesus forgave us, and where Jesus
also forgave his enemies, just as he asks us to do.
Micah’s three requirements
are a love-package in three parts: the restorative justice looks backwards and
heals and replaces the past with healing, grace, life, love, fullness, newness.
It makes your abominable past into the productive past of a child of God.
Kindness and mercy look forward to the future. It’s like the title of the sad
movie “Pay It Forward.” You send your mercy and kindness, shown in the present,
to do its work in the future. So future and past are both held together by the
humility, and the grace, and the joy of the kingdom of God: walking humbly with
your God.
Sometimes it almost kills
me to be a forgiver. And that’s right because forgiving the sins of the world
killed Jesus on the cross. You have to swallow your pride and it almost gags
you to do it.
Swallowing your pride is
how you walk humbly with your God. Swallowing your pride doesn’t mean hating
yourself. Humility means loving God more than yourself, and loving others as
yourself. It could mean simply to love fully, and not to measure any of your
loves at all. To love without measure is the humblest love of all.
Lent, and the road to the
cross, and to the empty grave of Jesus, is this discipline of walking humbly
with God. If we know anything about God, we Christians know that God is like
Jesus. “He who has seen me has seen the father.” (John 14:9)
We take up our cross and
follow a Jesus-like God. This is what Lent is about. It’s the discipline of walking
with Jesus to the cross. It’s also about the Jesus-like God who’s Holy Spirit
empowers us to walk so humbly with our God.
The ashes of Lent and the
Lord’s Supper are the love-package of Jesus. It holds everything together and
there is so much in that package that it fills you up when you receive it: but
only if you receive it all.
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