Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 1, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So this morning we have what is a favorite New Testament passage for a great many Christians. We know it as The Great Commandment. In Mark’s version, a scribe asks Jesus which commandment is the first. Jesus replies that the first commandment is to know that God is one and to love God with all our being, quoting the creed of Judaism from Deuteronomy. Then he adds a second commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves. These two commandments really do sum up the life of faith.

But there’s a part of Mark’s version of the Great Commandment that we may overlook. Mark has the scribe who asked Jesus the question about the first commandment respond to what Jesus says. He says that indeed to know God as one, to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves “is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus approves of the scribe’s response, but we may overlook it because we’ve never thought that burnt offerings and sacrifices were important, that they were what God wants from us. Mark’s audience, however, and Jesus’ audience, would have heard something very different in this response than we do. They would hear a clear echo of Isaiah saying “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord….Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Isaiah 1:11a, 16c-17 And of Micah proclaiming “Shall I come before him with burnt offerings?....What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 7a, 8. And Amos thundering “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings…I will not accept them. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:22, 24 In other words, they would have heard Jesus putting himself squarely in the tradition of the great 8th century prophets of Israel, who taught that what God wants is not sacrificial worship—which is the only kind of worship there was—but justice for the poor, the marginalized, the vulnerable. Jesus saw himself most of all as a Jewish prophet who sought to revive that strand of the greater Jewish tradition, which the religious authorities of his time had pretty much forgotten.

But you may have noticed one difference between what the prophets said and what Jesus said. The prophets said justice is more important than worship. Jesus says love is more important than worship. And we ask why. Why did Jesus change the prophet’s justice to love? Here I think is one way to understand what Jesus did. On many different issues, Jesus took what had been understood as an external law and internalized it. One classic example is from the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus says "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’” Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus has internalized the law against adultery. It seems to me that Jesus is doing something similar when he changes the prophets’ justice to love. Justice is an external matter. Justice is something we do. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something we feel. When Jesus approves of the scribe quoting the prophets after Jesus has issued his Great Commandment of love without specifically mentioning justice he’s not rejecting justice. He’s internalizing justice. He’s not saying that what we do isn’t important. He’s saying that if what we do is to be authentic and effective, it must be grounded in our hearts, in the core of our being, in what we feel inside, in who we are in the deepest recesses of our souls.

Love isn’t something that is different from justice. It certainly doesn’t contradict justice. Indeed, it can’t be separated from justice. Love and justice are inherently related. Love requires justice. Justice is the social aspect of love. Justice is love active and effective in the world. Jesus is saying here that the justice for which the prophets bellowed must be anchored in our hearts. If we don’t feel justice, that is, if we don’t feel love toward those for whom we demand justice, justice will fail. Our commitment to justice will fail. We won’t be able to sustain it. The prophets demanded justice because they thought God would punish the nation for not doing justice. They saw the destruction of the Hebrew kingdoms in the eighth and sixth centuries BCE as God’s judgment on the nations’ injustice toward the poor. Jesus demands justice because he demands love. Jesus takes the prophets’ cry for justice and turns it into a matter of the heart, a matter of inner conviction, a matter of love.

So then, what does that mean for us? We don’t think God punishes nations for injustice, or at least I don’t. A lot of nations have prospered, ours included, even though they perpetrated and tolerated a lot of injustice. So why are we to care about justice? We care about justice because we try to obey Christ’s commandment to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. With our heads it’s easy to rationalize injustice. We say: “It’s inevitable. It’s someone else’s problem. It’s too expensive. We’d have to change how we live. The poor don’t deserve it. Things are just so complicated that it’s hard to know what justice is.” The mind is great at coming up with rationalizations like these, and there is ksome truth in them; but Jesus calls us to the heart of justice. In his commandment to love he makes justice a matter of the heart not the head. The heart can’t rationalize. The heart feels the pain of injustice, or it will if we’ll just get our minds out of the way and let it. Jesus’ commandment of love calls us to pay attention to that pain of the heart. It is the pain of love. It is the pain of the Christian. Amen.