Sermons Preached In Moody Texas

Moody-Leon United Methodist Church

Matthew 22:34-40When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, ” ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

The Pharisees returned to the scene. One of them, a lawyer, thought he would test Jesus. He said, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law.” “Which one of all our laws do you consider the greatest?” “If you had to pick just one, which one would it be?”

But Jesus didn’t give him just one commandment. He said to him,

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” -Matthew 22:37-40

Why, when asked for a single commandment, would Jesus give them two? Love GOD — Love NEIGHBOR as self. Jesus gave these two commandments priorities relative to each other. But why not just one.

Maybe we find the answer in a letter written to the early church. In 1John 4, we find a discussion of love for God and love for our fellow human beings. It is a discussion that began with the ten commandments. The subject of all ten commandments was love for God and love for our fellow human beings.

This letter to the early Christian church read:

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. 1 John 4:20

We often talk about how Jesus knew what it was like to be human. Jesus knew us pretty well. Jesus had witnessed our treatment of one another. As a baby his family had to go to Egypt to escape the senseless slaughter of innocent babies. We have watched in horror the senseless deaths in the D.C. area. Thank God, the snipers have been caught. Herod is still among us and will always be among us.

Jesus knew us so he commanded us to love one another, to love our neighbor. An early day Bill Clinton tried to get out of responsibility by questioning the definition of the word neighbor. Jesus’ response was to tell the story of the good Samaritan.

Haddon Robinson, a well known preacher, once shared this story about the good Samaritan. “When Haddon’s son, Tory, was just a small boy, they were coming home from Sunday school and church, and Robinson asked his son what he had learned that morning. Tory told him they had heard the story of the Good Samaritan. He proceeded to give a blow-by-blow description of what had taken place.

When he was all through, Haddon said, “Son, what was the spiritual lesson of the story?”

It was obvious Tory had taken by surprise, and he thought for a minute and said, “That story teaches that whenever I’m in trouble, you’ve got to help me.” It’s not the complete answer, but from the view of that man by the side of the road, it is one way of looking at a neighbor.”(1)

It is true that there are plenty of people who need our help. From their point of view, we can show our love in the help we give. The Blessing Club is a way that we reach out in love as a corporate body. There are times when we as individuals do all that we can for others.

One day a student asked anthropologist Margaret Mead for the earliest sign of civilization in a given culture. He expected the answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone. Her answer was “a healed femur.” Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person’s hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion is the first sign of civilization.(2)

We would like to think that civilization has advanced well beyond the healed femur. But have we. For the most part we are far more responsive to physical needs (broken bones) than we are to the emotional, relational, and spiritual needs of our neighbor. To love our neighbor is to be responsive to all their needs. Loving our neighbor is not all that easy.

Between two farms near Valleyview, Alberta, you can find two parallel fences, only two feet apart, running for a half mile. Why are there two fences when one would do? Two farmers, Paul and Oscar, had a disagreement that erupted into a feud. Paul wanted to build a fence between their land and split the cost, but Oscar was unwilling to contribute. Since he wanted to keep cattle on his land, Paul went ahead and built the fence anyway.

After the fence was completed, Oscar said to Paul, “I see we have a fence.” “What do you mean ‘we’?” Paul replied. “I got the property line surveyed and built the fence two feet into my land. That means some of my land is outside the fence. And if any of your cows sets foot on my land, I’ll shoot it.” Oscar knew Paul wasn’t joking, so when he eventually decided to use the land adjoining Paul’s for pasture, he was forced to build another fence, two feet away. Oscar and Paul are both gone now, but their double fence stands as a monument to how hard it can be to love our neighbor.(3) Seen any double fences around here?

I’m sure some of you have heard about the Indian brave who found an eagle’s egg. Since he couldn’t find the nest to put it back, he did the next-best thing. He put the eagle’s egg in a nest with prairie chicken eggs.

So the eagle was hatched and began to live with the prairie chickens. All it saw were chickens, so it clucked and scratched and pecked around and was a chicken for years. And then one day it saw a glorious sight in the sky, a great bald eagle soaring up there. He said, “What is that?”

The chicken said, “That is the eagle, the king of birds. But forget it. That’s not for you; you are a chicken.” And he lived the rest of his life clucking, pecking, and scratching, and not flying.(4)

You say, “That’s sad,” but we are eagles that soar like the eagle only when we are all that God has created us to be and God created us to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. God created us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

How do we do that? How do we love our neighbor as ourselves? Mother Teresa once said, “I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, but only more love.”(5)

1. Haddon Robinson, “A Case Study of a Mugging,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 102.

5. Mother Teresa. Leadership, Vol. 16, no. 3.

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