Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NIV) 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Leviticus 19:18 (NIV) Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
Matthew 22:34-40 (NIV) 34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
How many of us would like to find the “one thing?” How many of us would like to find one simple answer to the dilemmas and the difficulties we face in life, from raising our children, to doing well in our work, to generally coping with and leading a good life?
The Pharisees had a way to cope with life. They had six hundred thirteen laws. One need only follow the wisdom and advice of those laws to cope with and lead a good life. But sometimes following the six hundred thirteen laws was hard and confusing. They were constantly arguing about how to narrow that list down to the really important laws, to the “one thing.”
Jesus says the “one thing” is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.” The answer was pure orthodoxy, taken straight from the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus connected this pure personal devotion to God with care and commitment to people. The answer is simple. The “one thing” is to love God with a passion and to love others with compassion.
And yet the answer is also “confrontive.” It confronts the heartless Pharisee who has such zeal to the right thing and such hardness of heart in doing the loving thing. Can we see it in ourselves? We do the right thing, but without the heart and love and compassion of Jesus Christ. We lead decent lives but our hearts have become crusty and hardened. Jesus confronts our tendency to do what is right but to do it without love.
Preached August 25, 1996
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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