Loving Our Neighbour (Matthew 22:34-40)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

You can learn more about us and find contact info at Newsongportperry.ca.

This is the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

The call of a Christian is to put into practice the self-sacrificing, self-giving love of God toward all those whom God has placed in our path.

Jesus gives what's known as the summary of the law, or the great commandment, in the temple in Jerusalem, having triumphantly processed into the city on that first Palm Sunday, a day or two before.

Jesus is a controversial figure.

To some in this crowd, he's God's chosen prophet.

To others, like his opponents the Pharisees, he's a threat.

If you asked his disciple Peter, at least if you asked him on a good day, he'll tell you that Jesus is the Christ, God's chosen Messiah, his appointed Savior.

He's the Son of the living God.

So in the middle of a polarized and political time, we don't know anything about that, the gospel prompts us to act, pardon me, the gospel prompts us to ask, what do we do with this Jesus?

And what does this Jesus want us to do?

One Pharisee, an expert in the religious law, wants to test Jesus' theology.

So he asks Jesus a litmus test of a question.

What is the greatest commandment?

Jesus, you've read the Old Testament.

Well, you've read at this point the Testament, because the New Testament hasn't been written yet.

You know God's word, you know his commandments, you know what God expects of his people.

What's at the very center of it all?

What's the single thread that ties this whole law together?

I don't think Jesus' answer here should have necessarily surprised any of his hearers.

Loving God and neighbor was not a radical new idea or a complete paradigm shift for his listeners.

Jesus quotes from Scripture.

He quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 6 called the Shema, which is like the credo of God's covenant people Israel, the call to worship, and he quotes from a very well-known passage in Leviticus 19 calling us to love our neighbor.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

In his gospel, Mark records the Pharisees' reply to Jesus' answer.

Simply put, you're right, teacher.

Well done, Jesus.

Correct answer.

Passing grade, gold star.

See, love for God has always been bound up inextricably with love for neighbor.

The two go together.

And the rest of the law is commentary.

But for the keen reader, this raises another question or two.

See, Jesus' reply to a similar question in Luke chapter 10 prompts the self-justifying questioner to ask for a qualification.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Jesus replies to love your neighbor, and this questioner asks, Well, who then is my neighbor?

That's an important question, isn't it?

Are my neighbors simply those who happen to live next to me?

Are they the people I spend time with who are like-minded?

Are they the people who listen to the same podcasts that I listen to?

Are they the people who voted for the same party I did in the federal election?

See, Jesus answers this question in Luke with a parable.

The story of the good Samaritan who tends to a wounded and helpless Jewish man at great personal expense.

And this is a scandal of grace.

In a way, it's as if a Ukrainian citizen nursed a Russian soldier back to health.

Being a neighbor comes without qualification.

Demographics, politics, social status.

None of this matters.

So too does loving your neighbor come without qualification.

I'll love this person, you know, if.

We can all fill in the blank, can't we?

The call of a Christian is to put into practice the self-sacrificing, self-giving love of God towards all those who God has placed in our path.

And loving our neighbor is something we're used to hearing at this point at Newsong, isn't it?

What has loving our neighbor meant for Newsong in these past two years together?

Think back with me to the early days of the pandemic.

Back when you couldn't find toilet paper on the shelves, and when you could fill up your tank for 75 cents a liter, and when elbow bumps were still awkward and practiced, and when we all forgot to unmute ourselves on Zoom.

Although, if you're like me, you still struggle with that.

See, it was in these early days of the pandemic that Newsong's leadership team, together with our parish family, made a commitment: we're going to love our neighbor through abiding by recommended protocols.

If practicing what our healthcare authorities recommend means we act in our neighbor's best interest, then that's what we're going to do.

We're going to lead by example.

We're going to practice self-giving towards each person in our parish and beyond everyone who God puts in our path.

So right off the bat, loving our neighbor meant broadcasting our service online during lockdown.

First over Zoom, then over YouTube.

And when it came time for us to gather in person again, loving our neighbor meant wearing masks and distancing our chairs and limiting our capacity, filling out a screener form, sticking to our households and following the taped arrows on the ground.

Further along, loving our neighbor meant building plastic penalty boxes so that no song church could sing once again and do so safely in this space that God's given us.

Loving our neighbor has meant that we are willing to put the interest of others before ourselves, even if it was the harder road to take.

And along the way, some of our fellow parishioners have felt led, for one reason or another, to no longer journey with us.

And in a small parish like ours, their absence is felt.

Even so, they remain our neighbors.

And what's more, they remain our brothers and sisters in Christ.

And so it belongs to us to love them and to care for them, no matter what our differences may be.

And along the way, we've met some new brothers and sisters in Christ along our journey, and we've seen new ministries begin.

Loving our neighbor has not meant putting our parish mission to lift high Jesus Christ as we worship, grow, and serve on pause.

What will it look like to love, pardon me, what will loving our neighbor look like for New Song as we move forward?

See, if the pandemic has taught us anything, perhaps it's this.

We don't know the future.

I thought we were in for a weird four weeks when the pandemic first set in, and here we are, two years later.

All we can do is the best we can do with what we know, and we pray and trust God and we action accordingly.

And the steps we take today are steps to re-establish a togetherness as a church body, a step forward with confidence, because we believe it's the right thing to do and it's the right time to do it.

It's come with much prayer and discernment and conversation together.

But if the time comes where we're called to abide by restrictions, once again, that's going to be the choice we make.

Because the choice we've made throughout this pandemic is the choice that we make today, and it's the choice that we're going to continue to make in the season ahead.

And that choice is to love our neighbor.

We have some conversations ahead of us as a parish family.

Conversations about renewing our time of fellowship over tea and coffee after the service.

Conversations about small groups that gather in homes.

Conversations about who the Sunday live stream is intended for.

Is it intended for members of our church or for the unchurched that we'd like to reach?

Since the live stream we know is no permanent replacement for brothers and sisters gathering as the local body of Christ.

We might not be there right now.

Amen.

And we're going to take the time that it takes and journey together and discern for ourselves.

These conversations will happen in the right way and in the right time.

For now, the call is to love our neighbors here at the parish with a self-giving and self-sacrificial regard.

No qualifications, no caveats.

Giving some grace and space, not making assumptions about comfort level, and voluntarily putting on a mask when you're speaking in close proximity to someone who's chosen to wear a mask for themselves is a way of saying, I want to be a neighbor to you.

And there'll probably be bumps along the way as we re-enter together.

We'll have to be patient with one another.

I do believe that God has more ahead of us as a parish.

I believe that we've been through a pruning season together.

And God prunes those branches that he intends to bear even more fruit.

And I believe that whatever the next season of our life together looks like, it will look like loving our neighbor.

For Jesus' sake.

Because the call of a Christian is to put into practice the self-sacrificing, self-giving love of God towards all those who God has put in our path.

But herein lies the unsettling depth to Jesus' words, to Jesus' answer to this Pharisee.

Who among us can claim to have perfectly, unfailingly loved God with our whole being, and unceasingly loved our neighbor accordingly?

See, to love our neighbor as God intends, we must reckon with God's grace.

Commenting on Jesus' answer to the Pharisees' question, Bible scholar Michael Green writes that nobody has ever loved God with his whole being.

Nobody has ever loved her neighbor as herself, so no one can possibly merit eternal life.

Once again, it brings us back to grace.

If we are to have any place in the kingdom of God, it will be due to the unmerited grace of God for sinners who could never make it by themselves.

Grace is God's to usward movement in Christ.

It is God in Christ helping the helpless.

So before we think to love God, he is already loving us while we are still sinners.

Grace.

Before anyone ever successfully loved their neighbor, the word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood to love us perfectly, even through the cross.

Grace.

We didn't earn God's approval by good behavior.

We receive his grace by trusting in him and we walk accordingly.

Grace.

So loving our neighbor is not just a nice idea.

It is, it brings us to the very heart of God.

And so by loving our neighbor, we show our brothers and sisters, our community, our world, God's own heart.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, Jesus says.

If you love, if you have love for one another.

So, Lord, teach us to love our neighbor in this season and in every other.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow Him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is 100% funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit Newsongportperry.ca giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.