Have the Conversation

 

Based on Matthew 22:34-46

            It’s a strange question to ask. Today’s scripture reading marks the end of a section in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus and the religious leaders have a public confrontation. Starting off by questioning Jesus’ authority, they go back and forth. The chief priests and Pharisees try to trap Jesus in questions to make him look bad and diminish him. But Jesus turns it around by asking them questions and telling them stories that forces them to condemn themselves by their own words. We get to the end of the confrontation. Jesus has come out on top in every argument. I guess we would suspect that they are going to ask one last zinger they have been saving up to finish Jesus off. So, what question do they ask? A lawyer among the Pharisees steps forward and asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the greatest?”

            Of all the questions Jesus was asked in this series of confrontations, this one is a softball. How is this a trick question? It is obvious what is the greatest commandment. Everyone knows this. It is the commandment that every pious Jew recites at least once a day. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Here in Matthew’s gospel, for some reason, the word “might” is exchanged for “mind.” Maybe that is done to suggest that this is a commandment that calls for the whole person, heart, mind, and soul, is to be engaged in love for God. Everyone knows this is the first and greatest commandment.

            It makes you wonder. Did they think Jesus was going to give some kind of off-the-wall response to such a simple and straightforward question? It makes me wonder if at this point they have just given up. They just throw a question out just to ask one. It’s just a strange question to ask when they are trying to undermine Jesus’ authority.

            But Jesus doesn’t let this easy question go to waste. He gives the answer that everyone already knows. The first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our being. Then Jesus goes further. He says that there is another commandment that is like the first in importance. We are to also love our neighbor as ourselves. Scholars have looked and looked and have yet to find anywhere in Jewish writings where love of God and love of neighbor are connected the way Jesus does it here. What we have in Matthew 22:37-40 is a new teaching that the Pharisees and the crowd had not considered before. They knew the command to love God. They knew the command to love the neighbor as you love yourself. That’s in Leviticus 19:18. But never before had these two commands been connected in this way.

            Specifically, Jesus says that the second commandment of loving your neighbor is like the first commandment of loving God. By “like” is to mean “equivalent to.” The two commands are equal in importance. They are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. To do one, you do the other. To love God, you love your neighbor. To love your neighbor, you love God. They go hand in hand. This is the new teaching that Jesus gives here. This, by the way, is a teaching that gets further development in 1 John 4:20-21:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

           As followers of the way of Jesus, central to that way is to live out this teaching: we love God by loving our neighbor. We love our neighbor by loving God.

            Speaking of love, we affirm that Jesus lived a perfect life of love. Everything he did when he walked the earth was motivated by love for God and love for the world. Jesus is love in the flesh. The way of Jesus is the way of love. I think we all would agree with that.

            Yet, Jesus had rivals. Just because Jesus lived a perfect life of love did not mean that everyone loved him back. As we have seen over the past few weeks, his way of life was seen as a threat to the authority of the chief priests and the Pharisees. Not everyone chose to believe in and follow Jesus. There were those who resisted Jesus and wanted no part of him. The one who is love incarnate had enemies that saw to it that he suffered and died on a cross. Just by observing how people responded to the way of love that Jesus walked, we see that this way of life can be perceived as a threat by some. Not everyone gets it. And the resistance can be extreme.

            So, if Jesus is love incarnate, the one who perfectly loves God and his neighbor, how did Jesus respond to his accusers, the chief priests and Pharisees? He had to respond motivated by love. Jesus loved the chief priests and Pharisees. We must not overlook this. The crowd needed to recognize this. Matthew’s church needed to recognize this. Hopefully the chief priests and Pharisees were able to recognize this. Jesus did not hate anyone. He did not hate them. He loved them. He loved those who publicly called him out and sought to undermine him, and eventually have him killed.

            How did Jesus express love to those chief priests and Pharisees? He did not say, “Hey, let’s agree to disagree” to avoid the confrontation. He didn’t blow them off by saying, “I don’t have time for this. You do you and I’ll do me.” Obviously, he didn’t get his disciples together to wait until the chief priests or the Pharisees were alone so they could beat them up and threaten them. When Jesus was confronted by those chief priests and Pharisees, people whom Jesus loved perfectly, he engaged by asking questions and telling stories that got to the deeper issue. Last week was a great example. The question about paying taxes to Caesar was not really about taxes. The deeper issue was, what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God. Through his questions and little stories, Jesus was trying to get the chief priests and Pharisees to realize on their own where they were getting things wrong. I will grant you, Jesus called them hypocrites. That goes to show that you can love someone and also call them out. But Jesus was not about trying to humiliate them or to best them in some debate to boost his ego or make him look better before the crowd like this was some kind of blood sport. Jesus responded to his opponents in a way that could potentially convert them, to come to an understanding that Jesus really was the messiah. Jesus was trying to get them to see who he really was so that they too would believe in him and follow his way of life, to become his disciples.

            What can we learn from this when we find ourselves in confrontations with others? We all have people in our lives we have issues with. None of us can get along with everybody. There are various reasons for this. Personalities clash. Jealousy or envy can get in the way. Stereotypes or bad first impressions can set up a roadblock in a relationship. Deeply held beliefs sometimes create what we call irreconcilable differences. There are all kinds of reasons why, as we go along in life, we have confrontations with people and maybe even pick up an enemy or two.

            It’s unrealistic to expect when we find ourselves in a heated discussion or argument that we will be able to come up with the perfect question or have a great story like Jesus could. How many times after an argument with someone and you are replaying the argument in your head and you think to yourself, “Ah! I should have said…” We come up with all kinds of great come-back lines long after the fight is over. Some people have a knack for debate and making good arguments on the fly. But to be able to ask great questions or tell probing stories like Jesus could? We should not expect to be able to do that.

            But what we can do is to engage in the argument. Easier said than done. I for one am wired to avoid conflict. I’m the kind of person who wants to rush to agreement or fall into the “agree to disagree” move that avoids deeper engagement with the issue at hand. Is that always what love requires? This is the issue when we find ourselves in a situation where there is a disagreement or some kind of personal conflict. Love for the person you have the conflict with challenges us to find ways to engage with that person so that there can be some kind of back and forth conversation. Not rushing to agree to disagree. Not blowing it off and saying, “you do you and I’ll do me.” Not calling names or getting verbally or even physically aggressive, obviously. Love challenges us to engage in an attempt to go to the deeper issue.

            Even though we can’t ask great questions in the heat of the argument like Jesus could or tell amazingly rich little stories that leaves everyone pondering the deeper issue, we do have for us a guide on how to engage with those who are against us, whatever that means in the situation. But before getting into that, we need to go back to those commandments: love God, love neighbor. To engage with opponents as Jesus did, the prerequisite is love. Can you honestly say that you love the person you are having a problem with? And, again, love is not a feeling or emotion. Love is an act of the will. Love is to desire the well-being of the other and the willingness to contribute to that well-being. It seems to me that before any of us can engage with our opponents the way Jesus did there has to be a commitment to love. If it’s not there, it becomes too easy to tell each other off or use any other method to avoid the conflict. And even then, it’s hard. Hardly anyone enjoys conflict and most of us try to avoid it by any means necessary, especially toward those we love. The point is that Jesus was committed to loving God and neighbor. Love for God and neighbor was the central motivation of his life. For us to follow the way of Jesus, that commitment to love God and neighbor needs to be there.

            When you are engaged in some kind of confrontation, ask questions. Be curious. I know it had to be so annoying to Jesus’ opponents but almost every time they asked him a question, he would throw it back at them with another question. But that’s how conversations get going. When you get into an argument, try to respond first by asking a question.

            Keep the conversation going by telling stories. Again, they probably won’t be deep and profound like the stories Jesus told. But tell stories about your own life experiences. Tell stories about how you came to hold the opinion you have. Tell your story. Make it personal. Try to get your opponent to tell their story. Telling each other stories, sharing from personal experiences, can take a confrontation to a much deeper level that can draw out something good, even transformative.

            But don’t forget this: even Jesus couldn’t convince the chief priests and Pharisees that he was the messiah. So, it is foolish to think that we can “win” our opponents over to our side or way of seeing things or whatever. It could happen. But don’t feel bad if the two of you walk away still not seeing eye to eye or even still on bad terms. Let’s face it. There are some people we just don’t want to be around. And asking questions of each other and telling our stories isn’t going to change that. There is truth in the old saying that strong fences make good neighbors. That’s just part of the human experience. At some point you and your opponent will have to settle with agreeing to disagree.

            The main thing though is having the conversation. If you get to the point of agreeing to disagree after the conversation; after asking questions and telling stories, then that’s fine. You were engaging from a place of love for your opponent, someone who is loved by God. You honored that person’s dignity as one who bears the image of God. The engagement in conversation motivated by love for God and the person you are having the conversation with, that’s what love requires.