October 29, 2017 Proper 25 Semicontinuous Deut. 34:1 12 Ps. 90:1 6, 13 17 Complementary Lev. 19:1 2, 15 18 Ps. 1 1 Thess. 2:1 8 Matthew 22:34 46 The Two Great Goal for the Session In studying the two great commandments, adults will review the orientation of their lives toward loving God and their neighbors. Focus on Matthew 22:34 46 WHAT is important to know? From Exegetical Perspective, Patrick Gray This reading contains two discrete units. As is so often the case in Matthew s Gospel, both involve Jesus in a verbal joust with the Pharisees. To the first question Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5. This formula is the second part of the Shema, the standard prayer that all pious Jews are to recite daily. To this he appends Leviticus 19:18, a citation popular among early Christian writers (Romans 13:8, James 2:8), but never combined with the Shema in this manner. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands. The image conjured is that of a branch hanging from a tree or a door on its hinge. WHERE is God in these words? From Theological Perspective, Timothy A. Beach-Verhey In quoting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4 5), Jesus points out that the aim of the law is to orient one s entire life toward God. However, one cannot love God without loving what God loves! While the scribes and Pharisees used the law to place severe limits on those whom they were obliged to recognize as their neighbors, Jesus joins these texts in order to smash all the limits and boundaries of neighborliness. Jesus proves himself to be the true and faithful interpreter of Scripture, silencing his critics with knowledge and wisdom. Jesus is the Messiah who loves his enemies, who loves as God loves, who is God with us (Matthew 1:23). SO WHAT does this mean for our lives? From Pastoral Perspective, Earl F. Palmer It is the Monday of Holy Week. Jesus lives and teaches in the tension between Sunday s acclamation and Friday s execution. He has faced the opposition of religious leaders throughout his ministry, and that opposition only grows stronger in the first part of this chapter. Yet Jesus takes the risk of hearing the lawyer s question out and answering it in good faith. Sometimes the gospel provides people with a powerful answer to difficult questions. Sometimes the gospel provokes people to even deeper questions. The answers are a gift of the Spirit, and the questions may be, too. NOW WHAT is God s word calling us to do? From Homiletical Perspective, Allen Hilton When Pharisees ask Jesus which commandment is the greatest of all, his answer defines the central calling of the faithful for all time: Love the Lord your God with all your heart... soul, and... mind.... Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39). Here, Jesus opens a window to divine priorities. The One who touts these two love commands is no mere rabbi. This is Messiah, God s Son, Lord. Our hearts are drawn to the heavenly voice that boomed five chapters back: This is my Son... listen to him! (Matthew 17:5). 1
The Two Great FOCUS SCRIPTURE Matthew 22:34 46 Focus on Your Teaching Simple truths are often complex when we try to live them. The discussion of the importance of a spirit of thanksgiving in Christian community in the previous session may have provoked deep questions about your community. The focus scripture for this session is also deceptively simple. Many Christians can recite the greatest commandment, also known as the Golden Rule. Yet, living it is not always as straightforward as it seems. Jesus may have summed up God s law in two commandments, but the Christian life of obedience to Christ is a constant question to be lived. YOU WILL NEED Bibles pens or pencils board or newsprint markers copies of Resource Sheet 1 copies of Resource Sheet 1 for November 5, 2017, unless it will be e-mailed to participants during the coming week For Responding: option 2: Bibles; paper, pens, small boxes or containers (optional) option 3: copies of Resource Sheet 2 For information about Sadducees and Pharisees, go to http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/history/ sadducees_pharisees_ essenes.html Loving God, may your Word come fresh to me so that I may lead with enthusiasm those you have entrusted to me. In Jesus name. Amen. n LEADING THE SESSION GATHERING Greet the participants as they arrive. Invite comments about the previous session. Encourage participants to let you know if they have ideas for improving the spirit of thanksgiving in this group in the future. Ask the group to recall sayings they heard as children that were attempts to teach them about life, such as, Always save for a rainy day or A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Discuss what makes such sayings memorable. Explain that the focus scripture for this session is one of the best-known short teachings of Jesus. Lead the group in this prayer or one of your choosing: Holy God, we give you thanks for sending your Son into the world to teach us your commandments. As we seek to love you better, help us love our neighbors as well. Amen. EXPLORING Have the participants turn to Matthew 22:34 46. If participants have study Bibles or annotated Bibles, have them find where the greatest commandment passage is found in each Gospel. Write the references on the board or newsprint (Matthew 22:34 40; Mark 12:28 34; Luke 10:25 28). The Gospel of John is a little different from the others but John 15:9 13 is very close. Select volunteers to read each version, ending with today s entire text, which is Matthew 22:34 46. Ask: P What is similar about the four versions? P What is different? 2
The Two Great Distribute Resource Sheet 1 (Focus on Matthew 22:34 46) and pencils or pens. Instruct everyone to read the resource sheet and to underline or circle anything that seems especially important or raises a question. While they are reading, write these questions on the board: P According to Jesus, can you love God and not love your neighbor? P What is the difference between loving God and loving neighbor? P Name three examples of when Jesus smashed boundaries of neighborliness. If participants have read something on the resource sheet that they found troubling or have a question, simply note it and make sure you cover it before class ends. This is not a time for general discussion. Record the participants answers to the last bulleted question to use in Responding option 1. Form groups of three to five participants. Have the groups discuss the three questions on the board. Then turn to the second part of today s text, Matthew 22:41 46. Ask a volunteer to read those verses aloud. Then read aloud this longer excerpt from the Feasting on the Word commentary: The two pericopes [short readings] listed in the lectionary for this Sunday the greatest commandment (v. 34 40) and the question about whether the Messiah is David s son (vv. 41 45) may not seem related; yet a close inspection reveals similar themes. Both mark Jesus as an orthodox Jew, reveal the deepening crisis with the Pharisees, and provide a summary of Jesus identity and message. Timothy Beach-Verhey, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4. ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 212. Ask participants to identify how, in each section, Jesus, the Jew, is revealed, how the rift with Pharisees is deepened, and what summarizes Jesus identity and message. Call attention to the So What? excerpt on Resource Sheet 1. Have someone read it aloud. Ask participants to think about this question silently: P What questions of your faith are provoking you to still deeper questions? Acknowledge that sometimes we identify those questions only in hindsight. The Responding options provide three ways of posing those questions. EASY PREP RESPONDING Choose one or more of these activities, depending on the length of your session: 1. Smashing Boundaries This activity can be done alone or in small groups. Refer to the list of examples made in Exploring of Jesus smashing boundaries in his time. Then ask: P Who, individual or group, has successfully smashed boundaries today? 3
The Two Great Participants may name a national movement or an outreach effort of a Christian community in your area. Then ask: P Where are there boundaries that still need to be broken? P From what we have discussed today, what are some steps that might be taken to smash those boundaries? Suggest that they find partners to talk about a boundary that they want to destroy and what they might do. For information about mezuzahs, see http:// www.mezuzah.net/ basics.html. 2. Make a Mezuzah A mezuzah is a small box that contains a parchment scroll with Deuteronomy 6:4 9 and 11:13 21 written on it. The commandments that Jesus calls the greatest are found in these verses. Many Jews attach a mezuzah to the right doorframe of their homes and touch it each time they enter or leave their homes. Invite participants to read the two passages (Deuteronomy 6:4 9 and 11:13 21), which are known as Shema Yisrael. Explain that these texts are handwritten in Hebrew to specific guidelines. The mezuzah serves as a physical reminder of God s law and a faithful orientation toward God as one comes and goes. Invite participants to choose Scriptures to be their physical reminders of God s presence in their lives and the need to orient one s life toward God. If you wish, you can provide small boxes or containers to place their Scriptures in once they copy them onto a piece of paper. Encourage participants to display their Scriptures in their homes. 3. Today s Challenge to Love Neighbor Distribute copies of Resource Sheet 2 (Today s Challenge to Love Neighbor). Have participants spend some time quietly reading this longer excerpt from the Feasting on the Word commentary and thinking about the questions on the page. Then discuss the questions on the resource sheet. Following the second question, provide a time of silence for individual prayer about the boundaries they must break. CLOSING Invite participants to think of how they might answer the following question in one sentence: P What is the most difficult aspect of loving God and loving our neighbor today? After a minute, invite their responses, reminding them to keep them to a sentence. End with the following prayer: God, we fail at loving you with all our heart, soul, and mind when we fail to love our neighbor as ourself. As your followers smash the boundaries and walls of our time, give us the courage to join them. Amen. Distribute copies of Resource Sheet 1 for November 5, 2017, or e-mail it to the participants during the week. Encourage participants to read the focus scripture and Resource Sheet 1 before the next session. 4
October 29, 2017 The Two Great Adult Resource Sheet 1 WHAT is important to know? From Exegetical Perspective, Patrick Gray This reading contains two discrete units. As is so often the case in Matthew s Gospel, both involve Jesus in a verbal joust with the Pharisees. To the first question Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5. This formula is the second part of the Shema, the standard prayer that all pious Jews are to recite daily. To this he appends Leviticus 19:18, a citation popular among early Christian writers (Romans 13:8, James 2:8), but never combined with the Shema in this manner. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands. The image conjured is that of a branch hanging from a tree or a door on its hinge. WHERE is God in these words? From Theological Perspective, Timothy A. Beach-Verhey In quoting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4 5), Jesus points out that the aim of the law is to orient one s entire life toward God. However, one cannot love God without loving what God loves! While the scribes and Pharisees used the law to place severe limits on those whom they were obliged to recognize as their neighbors, Jesus joins these texts in order to smash all the limits and boundaries of neighborliness. Jesus proves himself to be the true and faithful interpreter of Scripture, silencing his critics with knowledge and wisdom. Jesus is the Messiah who loves his enemies, who loves as God loves, who is God with us (Matthew 1:23). SO WHAT does this mean for our lives? From Pastoral Perspective, Earl F. Palmer It is the Monday of Holy Week. Jesus lives and teaches in the tension between Sunday s acclamation and Friday s execution. He has faced the opposition of religious leaders throughout his ministry, and that opposition only grows stronger in the first part of this chapter. Yet Jesus takes the risk of hearing the lawyer s question out and answering it in good faith. Sometimes the gospel provides people with a powerful answer to difficult questions. Sometimes the gospel provokes people to even deeper questions. The answers are a gift of the Spirit, and the questions may be, too. NOW WHAT is God s word calling us to do? From Homiletical Perspective, Allen Hilton When Pharisees ask Jesus which commandment is the greatest of all, his answer defines the central calling of the faithful for all time: Love the Lord your God with all your heart... soul, and... mind.... Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39). Here, Jesus opens a window to divine priorities. The One who touts these two love commands is no mere rabbi. This is Messiah, God s Son, Lord. Our hearts are drawn to the heavenly voice that boomed five chapters back: This is my Son... listen to him! (Matthew 17:5). 2017 Westminster John Knox Press
October 29, 2017 The Two Great Adult Resource Sheet 2 Today s Challenge to Love Neighbor Read the following excerpt by Timothy Beach-Verhey: While Jesus defies conventional expectations concerning the Messiah, his knowledge and use of Scripture are unassailable. Jesus is a faithful Jew, yet he bursts the bonds of custom that limited God s concern to faithful Jews. God s purposes are larger than any single people. The Messiah s mission transcends the salvation of any particular group. Those who love God must love all God s creatures, even at great cost to themselves and their own privileges. Those who follow the Messiah must subordinate all particular interests, identities, and purposes to the Savior s universal mission. Jesus refuses to identify love of God with rigid religious requirements or to identify faithfulness to himself with loyalty to a particular community of people. As he approaches the cross, Jesus makes clear what it means to love God and be a follower of the Messiah: Just as you have done it unto the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me (Matt. 25:40). While the Gospel of Matthew is colored by the estrangement between Christians and Jews that characterized its own time, we should not imagine that Jesus criticism is limited to the Jewish leaders. Christians themselves are just as prone to the sort of religious conventionalism that uses faith in the service of power, prestige, and exclusion. Jesus words and deeds are as relevant to us today, and as painful, as they were to the scribes and Pharisees in first-century Palestine. We too need the Messiah and will undoubtedly be as troubled by him as anyone. Excerpted from Timothy Beach-Verhey, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 216. Questions for Reflection 1. Where do you see Christians today using faith to exclude others? 2. What boundaries do you need to break in order to love your neighbor? Be specific. 2017 Westminster John Knox Press