The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Year A
A sermon based on Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; and Mathew 18:15-20
In the name of Jesus; amen.
Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was. His answer was “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22)
The two commandments are interconnected and intertwined. You cannot have one with out the other; you cannot love God and not love your neighbor. The man who asked the question then asked who his neighbor was and Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. This is a story about 2 men; one man the crowd would have not cared for at all: a Samaritan. The other man was a person in great need.
Loving our neighbor means loving even those we don’t like or have the worst opinion of and loving those who are in the greatest of need.
You can’t show love for your neighbor without also loving God. When we love others we also love God. Atheists might disagree, but when we care for someone else we are also caring for God.
Not long ago letters that were written by Mother Teresa were published where she writes about a deep struggle she experienced with her faith. She often felt the absence of God in her life, but she knew that in loving the people of Calcutta, India she was also loving God and it kept her going in her work.
Commandments are not simple rules or guidelines that God wants us to follow to make us good people. And while the word commandment is often translated: law, the commandments are much more than laws we are supposed to follow.
We know that Jesus saved us through his death on the cross and that God’s grace was the reason Jesus would do this. We can never do enough on our own to earn our salvation, no matter how good we try to be, but the commandments are a gift of grace that help us to live the life that God intends and wants for us.
Our readings for today offer guidelines of the ways God would have us live our lives; not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole community.
Ezekiel is appointed by God to remind the people to follow God’s word and turn from their wickedness. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of the stories of Israel’s wickedness and how they turned away from God’s desires for them. This turning away brought down punishment and disaster on the whole community.
Living apart from God and God’s word brought about physical suffering and death in these ancient stories.
As we approach another anniversary of 9/11 and remember the devastation of hurricane Katrina as other storms batter our coastlines we can fall into a terrible trap of believing that God was punishing us for our wickedness and sin, but to do that would be to uplift a theology that misses the point of God and our relationship with God.
How we love God and how we love our neighbor can either build up or destroy a community. How we care for one another, even if that requires tough love, can lift up or tear apart a community.
Paul tells us that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Then he tells us to wake up and smell the coffee; recognizing what time it is: time to put aside the unimportant desires of the self and instead live wearing the armor of light.
We are to act as a public community, where the things we do are public. Where the things we do in private are as honorable as the things we do in public.
Jesus’ words are similar: we are to confront, with love, the things and the people who hurt us, not for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole community.
God values each and every one of us as individuals. We are all precious and Jesus tells us that God has every hair on our heads counted. But we were made for community. It is why God didn’t just make one human but two in the beginning and it is why God gave us the gift of church… so that we could live in community.
Love God, love neighbor – the whole of scripture can be interpreted into these four words with only one addition:
God loves us and this is why we were sent the prophets, and the psalmists, and the evangelists, and Jesus, so that we would know just how deep that love goes. And these commandments- these gifts- offer us a way of experiencing that love the way God intended for us to experience it.
Love God, love neighbor- because God loves us.
Amen.
A sermon based on Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; and Mathew 18:15-20
In the name of Jesus; amen.
Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was. His answer was “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22)
The two commandments are interconnected and intertwined. You cannot have one with out the other; you cannot love God and not love your neighbor. The man who asked the question then asked who his neighbor was and Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. This is a story about 2 men; one man the crowd would have not cared for at all: a Samaritan. The other man was a person in great need.
Loving our neighbor means loving even those we don’t like or have the worst opinion of and loving those who are in the greatest of need.
You can’t show love for your neighbor without also loving God. When we love others we also love God. Atheists might disagree, but when we care for someone else we are also caring for God.
Not long ago letters that were written by Mother Teresa were published where she writes about a deep struggle she experienced with her faith. She often felt the absence of God in her life, but she knew that in loving the people of Calcutta, India she was also loving God and it kept her going in her work.
Commandments are not simple rules or guidelines that God wants us to follow to make us good people. And while the word commandment is often translated: law, the commandments are much more than laws we are supposed to follow.
We know that Jesus saved us through his death on the cross and that God’s grace was the reason Jesus would do this. We can never do enough on our own to earn our salvation, no matter how good we try to be, but the commandments are a gift of grace that help us to live the life that God intends and wants for us.
Our readings for today offer guidelines of the ways God would have us live our lives; not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole community.
Ezekiel is appointed by God to remind the people to follow God’s word and turn from their wickedness. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of the stories of Israel’s wickedness and how they turned away from God’s desires for them. This turning away brought down punishment and disaster on the whole community.
Living apart from God and God’s word brought about physical suffering and death in these ancient stories.
As we approach another anniversary of 9/11 and remember the devastation of hurricane Katrina as other storms batter our coastlines we can fall into a terrible trap of believing that God was punishing us for our wickedness and sin, but to do that would be to uplift a theology that misses the point of God and our relationship with God.
How we love God and how we love our neighbor can either build up or destroy a community. How we care for one another, even if that requires tough love, can lift up or tear apart a community.
Paul tells us that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Then he tells us to wake up and smell the coffee; recognizing what time it is: time to put aside the unimportant desires of the self and instead live wearing the armor of light.
We are to act as a public community, where the things we do are public. Where the things we do in private are as honorable as the things we do in public.
Jesus’ words are similar: we are to confront, with love, the things and the people who hurt us, not for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole community.
God values each and every one of us as individuals. We are all precious and Jesus tells us that God has every hair on our heads counted. But we were made for community. It is why God didn’t just make one human but two in the beginning and it is why God gave us the gift of church… so that we could live in community.
Love God, love neighbor – the whole of scripture can be interpreted into these four words with only one addition:
God loves us and this is why we were sent the prophets, and the psalmists, and the evangelists, and Jesus, so that we would know just how deep that love goes. And these commandments- these gifts- offer us a way of experiencing that love the way God intended for us to experience it.
Love God, love neighbor- because God loves us.
Amen.
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