Proper 25: Gospel, Matthew 22:34-46                                    

Matthew 22:34-46

People ask questions all the time. If you have noticed the practice in your own life, you might agree that asking questions is perhaps the primary way we learn. “I don’t know about that so I will ask someone who does.” However, it is somewhat clear that isn’t the reason many ask questions of the Lord Jesus. More than not, questions aimed at Jesus in the gospels are asked with the intent of tripping him up. In our text today Jesus has just left the Sadducees with egg on their faces when the Pharisees step up to take their crack at him. Oooo. egg … crack. Get it? Sorry.

One of the religious lawyers tests the Savior on what He deems to be the greatest commandment in the Law. They thought Jesus to be a radical and were probably poised to pounce on the type of answer they thought would go along with his dubious position. They were stumped. Jesus gave the exact answer many of them would have granted to the question asked. “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” (Matt. 22:37-40). 

Now what? Where could they go? He as much agreed with their “conservative” and always correct position. Not much ammunition there. But one thing we must not miss. Jesus loved his enemies. Perfectly. And Jesus would utilize the Law, His Law with the Pharisees in the same way He would with us. Break the hard heart and terrify the conscience. And draw them to His Father.  Luther: “Oh it is utterly impossible for a person to keep these two commandments. Yes, it is impossible for you to keep or perform them. You cannot do it; God must do it in you, for him it is possible” (AE 51:104).

How do you and I read these commandments? Are they the ones we would deem as most important? Or, like the Pharisees have we forgotten, or do we possibly neglect the weightier matters of God’s Law? The primary point is what Jesus wants every person to see in the bright light of the commandments. I stand without hope before their demands. And He and He alone is the singular provision to quell that dilemma. 

What matters most? We have a Savior!