sermons — Page 15 — Andy James

John, the Unexpected Advent Guest

December 14, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on John 1:6-8, 19-28
preached on December 14, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

A week or so ago, I lamented to myself a bit that it seemed like the usual flow of Christmas cards just hadn’t started yet this year. Even with a shorter-than-usual time between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, people—me included!—hadn’t done a particularly great job of getting out their Christmas cards yet. But this week they started coming in, filled with fun pictures of recent events and the quick updates on life and living that come with the now-ubiquitous Christmas letter.

In this era of Facebook and Twitter, with near-immediate reports and photographs from our friends, the Christmas letter sometimes seems like a dying tradition, but there’s still something wonderful in hearing a more complete perspective from those friends who haven’t been in as close touch in recent months for one reason or another, even when it is all written in the strangest third-person perspective ever! One Christmas letter this year, though, stood out to me as I journeyed through this week. One friend, in writing about his three-and-a-half-year-old son, reported a bit of confusion that seems familiar amidst our gospel reading for this week:

Don’t correct him when he brings home a picture of John the Baptist, because he sees God in that picture!

My friend’s son was not the first to get John all mixed up. Most scholars think that there was a sizable group of people in or around the early church who remembered and celebrated John the Baptist and his teaching more than we do today, so the gospel writers and others seemingly felt that it was important to include him in the story somehow. There are by my informal count more clear and direct references to him in the gospels than to Jesus’ own mother!

Yet John is a pretty unexpected guest for this season of Advent. His rugged appearance and harsh message aren’t exactly the best fit for this season when we expect to be talking about peace, joy, and hope. Yet here we are, eleven days before Christmas, faced with a gospel reading about a man who insisted that he was not who people thought he ought to be. In our reading from the gospel according to John today, John the Baptist—no relation to the gospel writer John—puts the major focus on describing who he is not.

John the Baptist clearly was regularly being mistaken for the Messiah, and in everything attributed to him in our tradition he refutes this. Even though he could clearly express who he was not, finding the words to say who he was was a little more difficult for him. When the religious leaders of Jerusalem sent messengers to try to get some answers about John, they engaged him in conversation about who he was. He acknowledged who he was, but that was not enough for them, so he told them directly, “I am not the Messiah.” They thought he might be Elijah, but again he told them that they were mistaken. Finally, when they asked him again who he was, John, like Jesus after him, answered with something of a roundabout answer, quoting scripture to say,

I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’

John the Baptist, then, was the one who called on the people to get ready for the days ahead, to prepare their hearts and minds to receive this one who was coming, to clear the old, tired pathway to make a way for something new. His message of repentance, so prominent in the other gospels, is missing here, so the gospel of John’s message about John the Baptist is perhaps less clear than some of the others. We are told that John baptized the people with water, which raised plenty of questions along the way, but that’s about it.

Yet the author of the gospel summarizes John the Baptist’s work by calling him “a witness to testify to the light” in Jesus Christ, though not the light himself. Throughout it all, John pointed beyond himself to someone greater, to one who was already emerging among them, to one who was far greater than John could ever be, for John was “not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” Yet as my friend’s son so well recognized, there was something beyond special—maybe even strangely divine—about our unexpected Advent guest.

In our day and age, in a season when we are so easily consumed by all the consumption around us, John’s message of preparation easily falls on deaf ears. We are too busy to stop and slow down to prepare the way of the Lord. We are so interested in fixing our own problems and saving ourselves that we neglect to pay attention when others show us a better way. And we are even a bit afraid of anything that emerges from the wilderness, of anything that is different and new, even if it is a voice crying out for justice and righteousness that will transform us and our world.

John is just not the guy we want to shape our preparations for Christmas. He’s a bit like that relative who always shows up for Christmas, even when you don’t want him to. He never quite fits in with anyone and he talks so strangely that he often doesn’t make sense, but you can’t tell him not to come because he’s ultimately part of the family just as much as anyone else. So what do we do with John the Baptist in these days of preparation? How do we deal with this unwanted intruder—I mean unexpected guest!—into the joy of our Advent season?

Rather than throw him out or ignore him, I think we are called to embrace John and his strange ways as we prepare to welcome Jesus in our midst. First, John gives us an important message of preparation. The coming of Jesus at Christmas is something that needs real preparation. Just as we can’t host an incredible Christmas feast without lots of preparation around the house, our hearts and minds need some preparation, too. The cobwebs of our past understandings of salvation and justice need to be cleaned up so that we can welcome our God who comes to us in unexpected ways. The dirt and dust of underused spirituality that pile up in our lives need to be swept away. And the longstanding practices and systems of our lives and our world that perpetuate injustice need to be the focus of our repentance.

Beyond this, John reminds us that this season is not about us or our practices. Ultimately the coming of Jesus at Christmas is not about the words of the greetings that we share in this season, the songs that we sing about Christmas, or what we call the symbols that we have developed ourselves for this season. Just as John insisted that none of this was about him, so we are called to make this season not about us or our favorite practices or the people we want but rather about the birth of a baby to an unwed mother in the midst of a troubled empire who ended up being tortured and killed because he insisted that all lives matter. In his actions of pointing the way to Jesus, John insists that we need to stop pointing to ourselves, our churches or institutions, or our traditions or past understandings. Instead, John tells us that we must always point to Jesus, the one who comes to make all things new.

And John finally reminds us to always be reflecting and testifying to the light that has come and is coming. All that we say and do in our lives should point to the light of Christ. Like John, we are not worthy of even reflecting this light or pointing to this gift, but we are nonetheless given this privilege by the power of this one who comes to transform us and our world.

So whatever we do with our unexpected guest John the Baptist, whether we get him a bit mixed up or try to send him away, whether we claim his message of proclamation for ourselves or seek to put him off for another day, may God help us to heed his call to prepare this new way of the Lord, to get ourselves out of the way of it, and to always bear witness to this new light, so that as we watch and wait for the coming of Christ this Advent and in the days to come, we might join in all that God is doing to make all things new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A Reflection on “Comfort ye…”

December 7, 2014 By Andy James

a reflection on Isaiah 40:1-11 and the opening movements of Handel’s Messiah
offered on December 7, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The music we just heard is some of the most beautiful I know. The opening notes of “Comfort ye my people” that were just sung so tenderly bring a chill to my spine and a tear to my eye every time I hear them. The impassioned words of the prophet Isaiah that form the basis for Handel’s incredible music speak volumes today.

Our world needs comfort—comfort amidst the violence that swirls around us, comfort for the pain that so many face every day, comfort for injustice revealed when we fail to recognize the full humanity of some of those who walk this journey with us. We know all too well the pain that the prophet describes when he speaks of the city Jerusalem that has “served her term,” paid her penalty, and “received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” Some two and a half millennia after these words were first uttered, Jerusalem itself is still in need of comfort. So many other nations and cities and towns and families face similar pain and heartache. People near and far find brokenness to be the norm in their lives and in our world. Amidst the depth of pain and the harsh reality of injustice, words of comfort seem almost inappropriate, for the brokenness we face is not something that can be dealt with through simple platitudes or assurances that God will make everything okay in the end.

Maybe we, like those of Isaiah’s day, also need someone to cry out for a new way. There are plenty of voices crying out in these days:

Hands up, don’t shoot!
I can’t breathe.
All lives matter.

These voices are joining with those of so many other times and places, with the voice of even the prophet, who proclaimed, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” Before they suggest a new and different way, all these voices make the difficulty of these days clear. The wilderness of these days is thick and real. The deserts of our world are dry and thirsty. The valleys around us are deeper than ever, and the mountains that challenge us are higher than we can remember. If we are to follow the prophet’s instruction and make a highway of peace and justice for our God, we will surely need the largest highway construction project ever—even bigger than the incredible reconstruction work going on in Isaiah’s day as the people of Israel returned from exile to rebuild their homes and lives in their beloved homeland after forty years of waiting.

In these days of waiting, as we look for the glory of the Lord to be revealed, as we long for signs of justice and peace amidst all the brokenness of our world, as we watch for evidence that things are really going to change in all the deserts and wilderness and valleys and mountains of our world, there is much work to do to make things new and different. How do we listen to one another along this way so that we can truly hear the pain and hurt faced by our sisters and brothers? How do we work to transform the systems—the powers and principalities, as the apostle Paul sometimes called them—that perpetuate injustice and allow some lives to matter more than others? And how do we join the great divine construction project to prepare the way of the Lord and make things different and just and right for everyone who journeys with us along the way?

The way forward in these days is not clear. Some days I wonder what good any action will do, thinking that it might just be best to throw in the towel and just wait until Jesus comes again. Yet I am convinced more than ever that God’s comfort is real, that the way things are can and will change now, that God is working in us and through us and even in spite of us to bring hope and justice and peace.

The way forward to reveal all these things is not clear, yet God calls us to step out in faith and hope to make God’s love and justice real. May Advent open us and our world to a new way ahead, to the things that are coming and especially the One who has come and is coming to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Times and Seasons

November 16, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
preached on November 16, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It doesn’t take much these days to figure out that we’ve entered a new season. The trees show it off well—we’re well past the peak of fall colors, and the remaining leaves will disappear completely over the next couple weeks. The air is starting to show it too—after a fall that at times felt more like summer, it finally seems cold enough to be headed into winter very soon. And the days are showing it as much as anything—between the end of Daylight Savings Time a couple weeks ago and the generally shorter days that come at this time of year, it seems like we’ve shaved two hours of sunlight off each day in only a couple weeks! So where there is clearly a new season around us, the apostle Paul is right to say that we don’t need anything written to us—we know exactly what he is talking about.

Even beyond this shift in seasons that is so obvious around us, other things are changing, too. The midterm elections of a couple weeks ago are signaling a change in politics in Albany and Washington that will have limited immediate impact but may change things for us over the long term. The circumstances of our lives are shifting and changing in ways that we can’t always see when we’re dealing with the details of them up close but that can’t be missed when you take a step or two back. And even the world of our church is changing in ways that we don’t fully understand or see as leadership and generations shift, the world changes around us, and God keeps calling us to work and act in this day and age.

As constant a reality as change is in our world, Paul’s point may be a bit different than the shifting times and seasons of our world. Rather than focusing on the signs of the times and the marks of the changing seasons, Paul seems to encourage the Thessalonians to be thinking about and looking for “the day of the Lord.” The “day of the Lord” is surely nothing new to the Thessalonians, and it should come as no surprise to us, either. It is a longstanding concept of biblical time that is quite distinct from “the Lord’s Day,” which comes every Sunday. The day of the Lord is a bigger thing that reflects a day of judgment and transformation. It was first mentioned by some of the prophets of the Old Testament, and later John the Baptist and Jesus picked up on it in their own teaching and ministry. In the early church, in the time of Paul, the day of the Lord was assumed to be coming any day, and it is clear from some of the writings of Paul and others that people were starting to get frustrated that it had not yet come.

So here Paul assures the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord is coming, but that seems almost like a secondary point to him. Because they have been waiting longer than they thought they would have to wait for this day, because they are starting to feel the effects of their faith in their daily lives as the people around them respond to them differently, because the urgent sense of expectation that came at the time of their conversion has begun to shift to a more patient and measured—and even difficult—way, Paul here encourages the Thessalonians to be prepared for this day to come by living faithfully every day. He insists that it is on the way and will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, like labor pains coming upon a pregnant woman, with no way to escape the realities of this changing time and season.

But Paul is certain that the Thessalonians are ready for this sudden day that is to come. They are already living in the light, aware of everything that is emerging around them. They are already awake for the coming of this new day, open to the movement of the Holy Spirit as things shift and change in the world. And they are already equipped with everything they need to approach the fullness of this new day, with the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation. Ultimately, Paul’s hope for himself, the Thessalonians, and all comes from his confidence that “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

For us, in our own time and season, separated from Paul’s words by nearly two thousand years and nearly as large a gulf of culture and experience, our preparation and readiness for the day of the Lord is necessarily different from and yet guided by Paul’s encouragement to the Philippians. The day of the Lord seems as distant a possibility as ever, yet Paul’s insistence that it will come as a thief in the night or as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman should still give us pause if we think that it won’t come at all. There is certainly a time ahead when God’s judgment upon individuals, institutions of society and even the church, and our whole world will become clear in that time when God completes the transformation of all things begun in Christ.

But as real as that time promises to be, it isn’t part of our experiences and our lives quite yet. And so we are called to be ready for such a time, to work on getting our house in order, to keep our eyes open for the things ahead, to stay awake and be ready for the things ahead. This preparation is not so much about setting up booby traps or burglar alarms to warn us when the thief approaches in the night but rather more like having the bags packed so we can be ready to head to the hospital when the labor pains begin—and to keep changing the things in that suitcase based on the changing times and seasons of our world. This preparation involves faithful living in our daily lives, the promotion of justice, peace, and righteousness in the broader world, and our attention to the work of salvation being lived out in our lives and our world as we stand with those in need of a new way in their lives. The great St. Augustine, in reflecting on this text, even suggested that our readiness is critical as the day of the Lord comes

So what is this day which the Lord has made? Live good lives, and you will be this day yourselves.

We are not the day of the Lord on our own, but we can be a part of making it real in our world.

As we join in this work of getting ready, we can also be encouraged by the confidence that Paul offers the Thessalonians. We belong to the day, Paul says, and we have everything that we need to keep awake and be ready for the day that is coming. Even more, “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” When we face the challenges of our lives and our world, when the powers and principalities that obstruct God’s reign seem to have the upper hand with God and with us, when pain and hurt that seem to overtake us so easily, God is still with us, giving us everything that we need to be ready for the day of the Lord as it nears us and our world.

The life of faith that we share does not excuse us from the pain of the world or remove the hurt from our lives, and any attempts to write it off as “part of God’s plan” or something that will “work together for the good of those who love God” denies the real challenges of life for those of us who live awaiting the day of the Lord. This pain and suffering, though very real, will not have the last word. Our destiny will not be decided by these things but rather will emerge as a new and different way of life through Jesus Christ, and we can live in confidence and hope, placing our fears and concerns in their right place, trusting that they will not reign but rather than God’s new life will indeed be ours.

So as the seasons change and new times come, as our world emerges into a new and different day, as we wait and work for the transformation of all things, may God strengthen us in hope for this new day ahead so that we may be a part of the day of the Lord as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

November 2, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 John 3:1-3
preached on November 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate several different kinds of storytelling. As a child, I tended to enjoy those stories that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, stories that began “once upon a time” and ended “happily ever after.” As satisfying as those sorts of stories can be, as I’ve grown older I’ve started to also enjoy stories that are a little less “finished,” stories that leave a bit more of the beginning and end to the imagination.

These latter kinds of stories can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes you just want to know what really happens to a character that you have come to know and love, but there’s no obvious ending in sight! However, I’ve come to realize that these stories are often the most realistic, as sometimes things aren’t quite that clear in the stories of our world and especially of our lives. As hard as we may try, we may not be able to understand how everything fits together. We may look back and look forward and still not have the whole picture of things. And we may wonder how things will end in a story—or for us, too.

Our scripture reading from 1 John this morning centers around our story with God, and it fits very well into those stories that have a clear beginning, middle, or end, those stories that leave us scratching our heads and wondering how everything will come together in the end. For the writer here, the past, present, and future of our stories will all connect, but not in ways that we will immediately understand.

The past where this story begins is almost unimportant for John. Our individual histories and stories are all wrapped up in “the love the Father has given us,” in the love that makes us children of God, but that’s about all he says about them. The present of our stories is fully wrapped up in just that, too, in our status as children of God that is very much ours here and now. And yet amidst all that confidence from the past and present, the future of our stories is a bit unclear, as “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” As much as we might have images like our bulletin cover this morning, with heavenly mansions, streets paved with gold, and reunions with loved ones, these visions are incomplete revelations of what is ahead for us. Not only do they miss the parts of our lives on earth that still lie before us, they ignore John’s reminder here that we simply don’t know what heaven will look like, what exactly will happen when we die, or when or even how our stories will end. Our human minds cannot understand these things that are beyond our knowledge and comprehension. All that is certain, John tells us, is that “when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In that day, our vision will be clear. Through God’s power, our lives and our world will be made new. And as God guides us to this new life, our story will be complete.

John’s look at the stories of our lives is a wonderful way to start thinking about the multitude of stories that are on our minds today. Today on All Saints’ Sunday we remember the many stories of our sisters and brothers in the faith who have journeyed with us along the way. We especially remember the faithful witness of George Lenz and Jackie Danas, two of our own number who died over the last year after sharing a portion of their stories with us as we journeyed together in the faith, giving us wisdom and hope to walk a little further along the way together. Their two stories are only the beginning of the great cloud of witnesses who have walked before us and beside us—those who have shown us even a little something of what it means to be children of God. I suspect that each of us can point to any number of people who have been a part of the stories of our lives and have guided us to new and deeper understanding of God’s love for us.

But these stories do not stand alone. All these stories—and our own, too—are a part of God’s one big story, part of God’s divine plan not so much for each of our lives but for the life of the world, part of God’s new revelation and new creation that is coming into being through Christ. So today we also begin a time of thinking about our own stories, about the ways in which God has been at work in our lives to show us how we are God’s children now and to give us a glimpse of the things yet to come, about how our individual stories link to the larger ones around us, to the story of this congregation, our broader church, and all creation.

It’s easy to dismiss our stories as unimportant or uninteresting, but we are all God’s children now. We all bear a portion of this story in our lives. We all are a part of what God is up to in our world. Each of us has a part to play in the ongoing revelation of God’s story, and when we listen to one another’s stories, we get a little better glimpse of how we are connected to one another and to God. Over the coming weeks, starting next Sunday, we’ll be hearing the stories of some of our sisters and brothers who walk this journey of faith with us. They will tell us how God has been at work in their lives, both in this congregation and beyond. They will help us understand a bit of how they see God claiming them as God’s children here and now. And they might just give us a little glimpse of the things that are ahead for us in our common stories as we move into the days that God is preparing for us. If you’re interested in telling your story to us as part of this process, come and talk to me, or if you’re not, at least prepare yourself to hear from some others who walk with us a bit of the way as we get a better picture of how God’s story gets lived out in our midst.

As we live out God’s story here, as we embody our status as God’s children now, as we keep our eyes and hearts open to what is ahead, God’s story flows through us on the journey of faith. It is, then, our privilege and our responsibility to respond. So the last part of God’s story among us today comes as we consider our stewardship commitment for 2015. For some people, giving money to the church is like writing a check to any other charity, but I believe that what we give here is an important part of our story with God. Our gifts are our grateful response to the wonderful story that God has placed in each of our lives, and by God’s grace, our gifts too become part of God’s story in our midst. As we begin making our stewardship commitments for 2015 today, I hope and pray that you will think of how these gifts are a part of your story with God. Ultimately, our response to God’s presence in our lives is measured less by the size of our financial gifts and more by the depth and breadth of all the things that we bring to God along the way.

So may our story with this church and our story with God be broadened into this new day. May we look back to all the things that have made our story what it is before today, to all the saints who have shared a bit of it with us along the way. May we look around us now with gratitude for all the ways that we are God’s children here and now. And may we look forward to a day that has not yet been revealed and yet will be a most wonderful revelation when we will see the fullness of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Everyone Needs a Good Pharisee

October 26, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 and Matthew 22:34-40
preached on October 26, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I spent most of this past week being a good pharisee. Last Sunday after worship, I flew to Louisville, Kentucky, for the annual Polity Conference of the Presbyterian Church (USA). This conference brings together presbytery staff and stated clerks like me to talk about the rules and regulations of our church and how we live them out. Most people would find the discussions quite boring and esoteric, but for folks like me it can be quite interesting! Then yesterday, I spent the day at Stony Point Center attending part of the annual synod assembly of the Synod of the Northeast, where we also talked rules and regulations all day long as the synod considered new bylaws and sought to implement a new understanding of their mission. I think all this attention to church law over the past week probably solidifies my qualifications and perhaps even my reputation as a good pharisee.

Now in Jesus’ time, the Pharisees were one of several groups of Jewish leaders who brought a particular focus to their religious practice. They along with the Sadducees show up in our text from Matthew this morning. The Sadducees were mostly known for their belief that there would be no resurrection of the dead, and the Pharisees were known for their attention to Jewish law. The Pharisees had a pretty negative reputation with Jesus, and that has carried over to his followers. They were always challenging him on his actions and interpretations of the law, always seeming to try to catch him in a mistake that would give them the chance to declare that he was not a faithful Jew, always pushing back on his words and actions that seemed to imply that the law was only a guide and not something that needed to be followed carefully.

So it is no surprise that one of Jesus’ last encounters with the Pharisees in the gospel according to Matthew comes as they ask him to identity the greatest commandment in the Jewish law. Matthew tells us that this question was meant to test Jesus, but even so it’s still a surprisingly good question. No matter what you think about the law, it ought to be a good thing to consider which commandment is the greatest among them all. As much as the Pharisees may have been trying to quiz or entrap Jesus here, they also picked a question that is pretty open to differences in interpretation and an issue that actually matters for the life and practice of faith.

So when they asked him to identify the greatest commandment, Jesus responded quickly and thoughtfully, giving not just the greatest commandment but the second-greatest, too. First, he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence,” with all your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus chose what might be to some an obvious response—this commandment, understood to have been offered by Moses as part of his own summation of the law toward the end of his life, stands very prominently at the center of Jewish life and liturgy. The Pharisees could find no objection to this at all.

While they had just asked Jesus for the greatest commandment, Jesus continued and offered a second commandment that “is like it:” “Love others as well as you love yourself.” This was perhaps a more unexpected choice, but it was still very much in keeping with Jewish law and Jesus’ practice. This specific law to love neighbor is buried in a longer list of the more obscure commandments in Leviticus, a book known today more for its restrictions on idolatry, eating and cooking techniques, sexual practice, and cotton-polyester blends, among other things. However, most of the commandments near this particular one focus on treating others and especially the poor and outsiders with respect, honor, kindness, and justice. When Jesus lifted up the command to love neighbor as self alongside the command to love God, he made it clear that attention to God’s commandments means attention to God’s people, too.

Jesus then concluded his discussion of the greatest commandment by insisting that these two commandments are more than just the greatest—they are the pegs on which everything else hangs. Without these two commandments, the other ones mean nothing. Without the perspective that these commandments offer, everything else is just legal mumbo-jumbo. Without the center of love for God and love for neighbor that we find here, everything else falls to pieces on the floor.

So the Pharisees of Jesus’ time were likely a bit astonished at his moves here, but what really matters in all this is not Jesus’ ability to interpret the law but rather his wisdom to sort out what is really important in all of it. For Jesus, the specific details of the law clearly mattered far less than the broad scope of it. The principles of love for God and love for neighbor that lay behind the law mattered far more than any particular provision. And the emphasis on love as right relationship with God and neighbor took much greater priority for Jesus than any policy regarding Sabbath observance, any restrictions on eating or cooking techniques, or any prohibition on wearing blended fabrics.

So even from my somewhat biased place, I think we need a few good Pharisees these days. We need people who can help us understand what God’s commandments lead us to believe and to do. We need people who can open the texts that define us in new ways and help us understand how they can be more than law books to be followed carefully. And we need Pharisees who can remind us that all the law that we follow hangs on these two pegs—these two laws—of loving God and loving neighbor.

In another account of this exchange in Luke’s gospel, Jesus goes on to offer a definition of neighbor by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was an insightful moment, because Jesus’ questioner was challenging him to define “neighbor” as narrowly as possible. In the same way, I think we could bear some similar attention to the definition of “love” here, for we too are tempted to define love so narrowly or find ways to limit our love for one reason or another. What does it mean for us to love God and love neighbor nowadays? How do we deal with the challenges of this word in our world where it is so easily defined as a human feeling between two people, with all sorts of limitations and possibilities that might emerge from that? How do we experience and show our love for a God who can seem so distant and disconnected from us and our world? And is it even possible to love our neighbors in this world where we are so easily paralyzed by fear of them—by fear that they might have a deadly virus, by fear that they look or act or love differently from us, by fear that they might harm us as we help them, even by fear that we might be opened to new and different ways of life as we encounter them along the way?

The temptation for Pharisees like me is to put even matters of love for God and neighbor into a law-based way of thinking, to give specific guidelines for what this love might look like and what it should not look like, to set up laws and rules that define love for God and love for neighbor in specific, quantifiable ways, to codify our fear because we are afraid to love. But the Pharisees of every time and place must instead welcome the ambiguity and uncertainty of love—love that can’t be checked off a list, love that can’t be defined by simple laws or limited by human understandings, love that defies human limitations, breaks any restrictions on it, extends beyond our own understanding, and shatters our fears of the other, all because it is divine love, shaped and formed and directed by God and shared with every neighbor we can imagine.

So I think we need some good Pharisees—people who understand these two pegs of love of God and love of neighbor, people who can open us to the broader gifts of love as we direct our attention, affection, and devotion to the divine, people who can show us a broader understanding of what it means to be a neighbor to everyone we encounter, people who can remind us that all that we say and do must reflect our love of God and our love of neighbor.

So may God guide us to understand all the more these greatest commandments, how we are called to love God and love neighbor, so that we might live in that kind of real and deep love each and every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.