A Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.

—Saint Matthew 22:40

If you were asked to do so, could you sum up the whole message of the Bible in just two sentences? Jesus could, and he did. And we hear those two sentences at the beginning of every Eucharist. We have already heard them twice this morning, and here they are for a third time: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

We call these two sentences Jesus’s “summary of the law.” You have probably, at one time or another, heard that they are the summary of the Ten Commandments: the first four commandments are about loving God; and the other six are about loving one’s neighbour. But Jesus does not call them that. He says that these are the two most important commandments in the Law, and that on them everything in the Law and the Prophets depends.

In the first century, “the Law and the Prophets” was the name of the Bible, or of what we call the Old Testament. But the name “Bible” had not yet been invented; and the Jews in those days certainly did not talk about an “Old Testament,” because as yet they only knew about one testament—the new testament was only then being revealed to them. The “Law”—the Hebrew word is “Torah”—was the name of the first five books of the Bible (the five books of Moses); and the “Prophets” were the rest of the Old Testament. So when Jesus says that “on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets,” he is saying that on them depends the whole Bible.

Let us look at the context of this saying of Jesus’s, as it is presented by Saint Matthew. What we know as the twenty-second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel shows Jesus putting an end to the opposition to his ministry from three groups. When these three final confrontations have taken place, no one durst ask him any more questions: that is, no one dared to challenge him again in argument. After this, the opposition turned to treachery and violence.

The first group to confront Jesus was the Herodians, the supporters of the royal family. Of Herod the Great, who was made king of Judea by the Roman Senate after Rome had conquered the Middle East. Herod the Great died while Jesus was still a child; but his sons—including Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee—still held power under the Roman Empire. The Herodians were those who accepted Roman domination.

The Herodians challenged Jesus with the question whether it was right for a Jew to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. He silenced them with his reply: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

The next group to confront Jesus was the Saducees, who were closely allied to the Temple authorities. The Saducees denied that the dead would rise again; they thought that salvation was promised to the Jewish nation, not to individuals, and that immortality was to be found in one’s family and one’s reputation.

The Saducees challenged Jesus with a hypothetical question about a woman who was widowed six times, and each time remarried. If there were to be a resurrection, they asked, whose wife would she be then. Jesus put the Saducees to silence with his answer that after the resurrection human beings would be like the angels, neither marrying nor giving in marriage.

Finally, Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees, those who were zealous of the Law (i.e., of Torah). The Pharisees, diligently studying the five books of Moses, found in them 614 separate commandments; and they thought it important for a Jew to keep each and every one of those commandments.

The Pharisees challenged Jesus by asking him to say which of all the commandments was the greatest. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind,” Jesus replied, “This is the first and great commandment.” And then he added that the second was like the first, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” All of the commandments in the Law and all of the teaching of the prophets depend on these two commandments. And his reply put the Pharisees to silence as well.

When Jesus had answered the questions of the Herodians, and the Saducees, and the Pharisees, he then asked a question of them. “What think ye of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” It may seem as if Jesus is changing the subject, but he really is not. This, too, is a question about the Scriptures and about how they are to be understood. The prophets said that the Messiah would come, and the Jews were all waiting for the Messiah to come; but because they did not understand the Scriptures, they were waiting for the wrong kind of Messiah.

The question, “Whose son is the Messiah?” really asks, “What sort of Messiah are you waiting for?” All of those about him answer that the Messiah is the son of David. Now David was the great military and political hero of Israel. A thousand years before the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry, David the warrior had defeated all of Israel’s external enemies as well as his own enemies within the nation of Israel. David was anointed king, and, from his capital city of Jerusalem, he ruled over a united kingdom of Israel.

In the intervening centuries, the kingdom was divided in two, and, after periods of misrule, both kingdoms were defeated and destroyed. The northern kingdom, which was simply called “Israel,” was overthrown by the Assyrians in the eighth century before Christ, and its inhabitants were scattered throughout the Assyrian Empire. These are the so-called “lost tribes.” The southern kingdom, which was called “Judah,” was conquered by the Babylonians in the sixth century before Christ, and its inhabitants were carried off into captivity in what is now Iraq.

Eventually the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians, and the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and to rebuild Jerusalem. But they remained a subjugated people, first under the Persians, then under the Greeks, then under the Syrians. Finally, in the first century before Christ, the Romans took over, installing Herod as a puppet king.

What the majority of the Jewish people expected in the way of a Messiah was an anointed warrior king like David. They were looking for a son of David, who would, like his famous ancestor, defeat and expel the foreign invaders and re-establish a united kingdom of Israel that would be a major world power. They expected a Messiah who would be their saviour, but what they wanted to be saved from was military defeat and political insignificance.

In the speech that is recounted in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the Jews that they have been waiting for the wrong kind of Messiah, the wrong kind of saviour. He refers them to the 110th Psalm, in which David himself wrote: “The LORD said unto my Lord, ‘Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.’” The 110th Psalm is one of the great messianic prophecies in Scripture, and it has traditionally been thought to have been written by David. The prophecy goes on: “The LORD shall send the rod of thy power out of Sion: be thou ruler, even in the midst among thine enemies. In the day of thy power shall thy people offer themselves willingly with an holy worship. . . . Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”

In the psalm, David refers to the Messiah as “my Lord,” which he would hardly do if the Messiah were simply one of David’s descendents. The form of address indicates that the Messiah is greater than David, who was the greatest king in the whole history of Israel. If the Messiah is greater than David, then the Messiah must be the son of someone greater than David. What Jesus leaves unsaid, but which all of those around him understood him to mean, was that the Messiah is the Son of God. “And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.”

So long as the Messiah was understood to be the son of David, the messianic expectation was for the restoration of the kingdom of David. But if the Messiah is known to be the Son of God, then the mission of the Messiah must be to restore the kingdom of God. Jesus, in effect, was telling all of the Jews, whether they were Herodians, or Saducees, or Pharisees that they had misunderstood the promise of Scripture. At the same time, he was telling them that what was happening was bigger and more glorious than anything they had ever imagined.

The rest of the good news he did not immediately share with them, because they were not yet ready to hear it; but we know it. The rest of the good news is that Jesus himself is that Messiah, the Son of God, of whom David prophesied. The kingdom of the Messiah has been established, and we—all of us who are baptized—are the citizens of that kingdom. And Jesus, the Messiah (the Christ), will return to rule his kingdom.

Let us therefore thank our God always, for the grace of God which is given us by Jesus Christ: that in every thing we are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in us: so that we come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall also confirm us unto the end, that we may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Church of Saint Andrew

Los Alamitos, California

07 October 2007