The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost - Matthew 22:34-46 - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr

 

With streaming TV, we don’t have to watch many commercials anymore. But there’s one commercial from a couple of years ago that I rarely fast-forwarded through because I wanted to watch it again.

It starts with three young boys walking into a barber shop. One jumps into the barber’s chair while his friends sit nearby, laughing as the barber cuts his long hair. When the barber is done, the boy looks in the mirror and says it’s not short enough. Take off more. So, the barber shaves his head.

The next scene shows the three boys standing on a porch. Two of them are holding up a sign, covering the face of their friend. The sign reads, “Will You Go to Prom With Me?”

The camera pans to the girl standing in the doorway, with a shaved head, presumably because she has cancer. The two boys lower the sign, and there stands their friend, with his own head shaved.

Suddenly, we understand why he wanted his head shaved. Now, he can't take away her cancer. He can't make the chemotherapy easier. But he can let her know that she's not alone. That he cares about her. That he wants to walk alongside her. He doesn't have to say a word. His actions say it all.

What is it about that commercial that makes it so moving? Is it the shaved head? Is it the surprise? Or is it something deeper? I think it's because we recognize what love looks like when we see it. We recognize it when someone puts aside their own comfort or concerns for the sake of someone else. And that's what Jesus is talking about in today's Gospel.

A lawyer comes to Jesus with a question. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" This wasn't an unusual question. Religious leaders often debated which commandments were most important. But Matthew tells us this lawyer was testing Jesus.

Jesus answers by quoting two passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. First, from Deuteronomy: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." And then from Leviticus: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus says these are the two greatest commandments. And then he adds: "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In other words, everything else comes back to love.

Think about that. Of all the things Jesus could have said were most important, he chose love. Not how much Scripture we know. Not how often we go to church. Not how perfectly we follow the rules. Love.

But here's where we sometimes get into trouble. We hear the word "love," and we think about a feeling. Affection, romance, friendship, or the warm feelings we have toward those closest to us. But Jesus is talking about a love that requires something of us. A love that shapes our choices, our priorities, and the way we treat other people.

It's easy to say we love our neighbor. It's another thing to live that love. Especially when our neighbor is someone we don't like, someone who disagrees with us, or someone who has hurt us. Jesus connects these two commandments. Can we really claim to love God if we refuse to love the people God loves?

But love isn’t always easy, is it? The boy in the commercial showed a great act of love. He was willing to put aside his own concerns about how he looked for the sake of someone else. And while we may never be asked to shave our heads for someone we care about, we are often asked to put aside our own wants and desires for the sake of others. 

We all have things in our lives that are important to us. Things we're passionate about. Things we believe in. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, some of those things are very good things.

But sometimes, without even realizing it, the things we care about can become more important to us than the people around us. We can become so focused on what we believe is good and right that we forget to ask how it affects someone else. And maybe that means that every once in a while, we need to ask ourselves whether the things we're holding on to so tightly are keeping us from loving others as Jesus calls us to love.

But here's the thing. Jesus isn't simply giving us another rule to follow. He's not just telling us to try harder to be more loving people. Because if we're being truthful, we don't always do a very good job of loving one another, do we? We get impatient. We get frustrated. We put our own wants ahead of someone else's needs.

But the good news is that God doesn't wait for us to get it right before loving us. God loves us first. God loves us when we're generous and kind. And God loves us when we're stubborn and selfish. God's love isn't something we have to earn. And that love has the power to change us.

When we recognize just how much God loves us, we begin to look at the people around us a little differently. We begin to recognize that their needs, their hopes, and their concerns matter just as much as our own.

We won't always get it right. But God keeps working in us, helping us to become the people God created us to be. And sometimes, without even realizing it, we become the way someone else experiences God's love. Just like that young man in the commercial. He couldn't take away the girl's suffering. But he could remind her that she wasn't alone. And isn't that one of the ways God works through us? Through ordinary people, doing ordinary things, that become extraordinary because they're done in love.

And that brings me to something you probably noticed when you walked into church this morning. Last week, I asked each of you to write on a flower something you love about St. Thomas'. And this morning, you saw what happened when all those flowers came together. They formed a cross. Each flower represented something different. A different reason someone loves this church. But together, they became something beautiful.

And I hope that cross reminds us of something important. All those things we love about St. Thomas' didn't happen by accident. They're the result of God working through the people of this parish, past and present. God has brought us together, given us different gifts, and continues to work through us to make God's love known.

But there's a reason those flowers are arranged in the shape of a cross. Because before we ever loved God, God loved us. Before we ever gave anything of ourselves, Christ gave himself for us. And before we ever thought about making something beautiful together, God was already at work among us.

Our calling is to join in what God is already doing. To love God. To love our neighbor. And to allow God's love to work through us. And just imagine what God can do with that. Amen.