Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
Sunday 26th
October 2014 11.00am
You can listen to this sermon here https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/bloomsbury-morning-service-26-october-2014mp3#t=27:10
Matthew
22.34-46
When
the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered
together, 35 and one of them,
a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the
greatest?" 37 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.' 38
This is the greatest and first commandment.
39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.' 40 On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
41 Now while the
Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 "What do you think of the
Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of
David." 43 He said to
them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord,
saying, 44 'The Lord said to
my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your
feet" '? 45 If David
thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" 46 No one was able to give him an
answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Leviticus
19.1-2, 15-18
The
LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall
be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
You
shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or
defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 16 You shall not go around as a
slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your
neighbor: I am the LORD.
17 You shall not hate in
your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will
incur guilt yourself. 18 You
shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
The people of my country have been awaiting his
return for a thousand years.
All the prophecies and legends are clear that he is
coming back;
every
child learns the stories of his great deeds at their mother’s knee,
how
his kingly rule united the country,
how
he brought peace and prosperity to the people,
and
how he will come again to aid us in the hour of our greatest need.
He’s coming again, we all know it,
the
question is when, and why is it taking so long?
Albion has suffered many trials,
and
still King Arthur has not returned.
The Jews are not the only nation to have a messiah
mythology,
and
the archetype of a absent-but-returning hero,
of
one who has now gone, but will come again,
runs
deep within the psyche of many people-groups and religions.
From the Graeco-Roman gods of Dionysus and Mithras,
to
the Redivivus belief that the emperor Nero
would
return from the grave to re-take Rome,
to
the English Arthurian legends of the middle ages,
to
the heroes of the ancient Welsh Mabinogion,
to
Gandalf returning from the fires of Mount Doom
to
the death and return of Superman;
the trope of a hero who dies, or goes away,
only
to return victoriously, in the nick of time, to save the day,
is
one which we find repeated through many cultural incarnations.
For the Jews, the figure they were waiting for
was
called ‘the Messiah’ in Hebrew, or ‘the Christ’ in Greek.
Originally, for the Jews, the Messiah was a word that
had been used to describe
someone
who was anointed with oil to perform their role;
either
as a Priest, or as a King (Lev. 4.3, 5).[1]
So, King Saul is ‘anointed’ by the prophet Samuel as
the first king of Israel (1 Sam 10.1),
and
David, who succeeded him, is similarly ‘anointed’.
In many ways, as time went on,
David
became the quintessential ‘anointed one’ in the Old Testament,
and a couple of places even record
promises by God
to secure David’s kingship forever
(2 Sam 7.12-13, Ps. 89).
His kingship acquired mythic status,
not
dissimilar to that of King Arthur in the culture of the British Isles.
In the Judaism of the few hundred years leading up
to the time of Jesus,
the
term ‘Messiah’ developed further,
and
came to play an important function in the Jewish imagination.
Though variety exists,
messianic
expectations from this period
are
typically of a coming Davidic military leader,
who
will free the Jewish people from foreign occupation,
and restore Israel’s borders to the
extent
that
the David stories claimed for them.
(e.g. Psalms of Solomon 17)
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from about the time
of Jesus,
reveal
an interesting expectation of not one, but two Jewish Messiahs;
one
militaristic, and the other priestly.
And Jesus certainly wasn’t the only important
historical figure
to
be named the Messiah.
For example, it was also a term that was applied
to
the non-Israelite King Cyrus of Persia (Isa 45.1),
who
brought an end to the Babylonian exile of the Jews in the sixth century BC,
And much closer to the time of Jesus,
‘Messiah’
was used of the leader of the Bar Kokhba Revolt
which
took place in the second century BC.
All of this lies behind the gospel writers’
invitation
to
identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, or the Messiah.
It seems that questions over whether Jesus was the
long-awaited Messiah
had
been asked of him during his lifetime,
with, for example, John the Baptist asking Jesus
if
he was ‘the one who is to come’
or
whether John and his followers should wait for another? (Luke 7.20).
However, a related question, to sit alongside that
of whether Jesus is the Messiah,
was
the question of, what kind of Messiah is he?
Is he a priestly Messiah, or a militaristic Messiah,
Will
he restore the temple, or the monarchy?
Whose messiah will he be?
The
messiah of the religious radicals?
Or
the messiah of the political radicals?
And it is these questions that underlie the exchange
that
Jesus has with the Pharisees
in
our reading today from Matthew’s gospel.
The Pharisees have heard that Jesus has managed to
out-smart the Sadducees,
and
they decide that it’s now their turn again to play ‘Ridicule the Rabbi’.
So they wheel in their specialist lawyer,
to
ask Jesus a tried-and-tested no-win question
with
the intent of trapping him whatever his answer.
‘Tell us, teacher’, they say, ‘which commandment is
the greatest?’
The idea is that whichever command Jesus picked,
would
get him into trouble.
If, for example, he picked ‘having no other gods
before the Lord’,
they
would accuse him of moral laxity
because
he was relegating the command about adultery.
However, if he picked ‘thou shalt not commit
adultery’,
he’d
be accused of idolatry because he’d ignore the first command!
And so on – the perfect no-win question
to
derail the cock-sure carpenter from Nazareth.
But, as with the Pharisees previous trap,
the
one about paying taxes to the emperor, which we heard about last week,
Jesus shrugs off their trap with ease;
giving
them an answer that covers all the bases:
‘Love
God, and Love Neighbour’, he says.
Both commands, but neither ‘commandments’.
Jesus takes the popular Shema command from
Deuteronomy (6.4-5)
and
combines it with a lesser-known injunction
to
love of neighbour from Leviticus (19.18)
The Pharisees would have been right in there
with
the ‘Love of God’ part of Jesus’ answer,
but by adding to it the love of one’s neighbour, as
an equal command,
Jesus
highlighted to the Pharisees
the
weakness inherent in their own super-religious ideology.
So far, so clever.
Well
done Jesus!
Not only has he, once again, dodged the trap that
has been set for him,
but
he has also managed to prick the pomposity of the Pharisees,
unmasking
their potential for heartless religious conservatism.
However, this is not just a story
about
Jesus beating the Pharisees at their own game.
Because the story continues,
with
Jesus taking the opportunity to push the Pharisees a bit further
by
setting them a riddle of his own.
‘Tell me,’ he says, ‘What do you think of the
Messiah? Whose son is he?’
This is a classic riddle, one with a seemingly
obvious answer,
which
will turn out to be unsustainable.
The clue to this being a riddle is in the phrase,
‘what do you think…’,
which
is something we’ve heard from the lips of Jesus before
as
he has asked a variety of difficult questions
to
stimulate thought from both disciples and opponents alike.
(17.25,
18.12, 21.28).
But
most recently, it is the phrase that the Pharisees have used
when
asking Jesus their previous question about paying taxes.[2]
‘What
do you think,’ they asked Jesus,
‘is
it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ (22.17)
‘So’, says Jesus back to them, ‘what do you think… whose son is the Messiah?’
And
the Pharisees, after a few moments of careful thought,
supply
what they believe to be the safe and scriptural answer:
‘He’s
the son of David’.
He’s not the son of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth,
he’s
not the son of Kokhba,[3]
he’s
not the son of righteousness,[4]
he’s the son of David.
However, in giving this answer,
the
Pharisees have been forced into revealing their hand,
because it turns out that what you hope for, tells a lot about what you believe in,
and
the Pharisees were hoping for a Davidic Messiah,
a
military messiah,
a
messiah who would overthrow the oppressors,
and
restore the nation to its former glory.
The answer they give to this seemingly innocent
question from Jesus,
is
far more revealing of the Pharisees’ deeper motives
than
they realise.
So Jesus decides to push it a bit,
and
takes his riddle to the next level:
‘Right then,’ he says, ‘so the Messiah is David’s
son, is he?’
‘So
how then is it that, in one of the worship psalms written by David himself,
he
calls the messiah his “Lord”?’
The logic is simple:
If
David calls the Messiah ‘Lord’,
how
can the Messiah be his son?
At this point the Pharisees back off,
but
not simply because they’ve been caught out on a technicality
in
some obscure game of Hebrew Bible proof-texting.
Rather,
they back off
because
the whole basis of their belief in a Davidic Messiah
as a military, politically centrist,
nationalistic hero
has
just been unmasked and exposed to ridicule.
They have just discovered
that
what you hope for, reveals a lot
about what you believe in.
And Jesus, in subverting the neat logic of their
hoped-for Davidic Messiah,
has
also subverted the cold logic of their militaristic, nationalistic God.
This, it turns out, is not simply a story
about
how Jesus is cleverer than the Pharisees.
Rather, it’s a debate about the nature of faith
itself,
and
it raises fundamental questions about what is meant by salvation.
Is our hoped-for salvation
simply
synonymous with divine vindication of our shared ideology?
Is salvation to be understood in terms of victory
for ‘me and mine’?
With
‘them and theirs’ of, at best, secondary concern?
You see, the answer we might give to the question
of
what kind of Messiah we hope for,
will tell us a lot
about
the God we believe in.
And Jesus, it seems, is challenging in no uncertain
terms,
any
kind of belief in a Messiah that is understood
as
a politicised, nationalistic, tribal, partisan, Davidic hero.
And yet, the people of God, both in the first
century,
and
in the twenty-first century,
and
in all the centuries in between,
have found it all-too-easy
to
become trapped in a belief system
that
is predicated upon a Davidic ideology.
Any attempt to equate national identity with the
people of God
represents
an expression of Davidic messianic ideology.
From the Christianisation of the Roman empire under
Constantine,
to
the development of Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire,
to
the alliances of the middle ages between Church and Monarch,
to
the contemporary tabloid-esque assertion
that
‘we are, after all, supposed to be a Christian
country!’
to
the anointing of the Monarch in Westminster Abbey
by
none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury…
We have repeatedly, through Christian history,
revealed
that what we long for is a Davidic Messiah.
The people of Christ have joined their voices with
those of the Pharisees,
in
answering that the Messiah is the son of David.
But this is not how Jesus describes himself.
Every time, in the gospels, that Jesus is called
‘Son of David’,
it
is someone else using the language.
He never calls himself the ‘son of David’,
and
in fact, when he does use the term, here in Matthew,
and
in the parallel passage in Mark’s gospel,
he
does so to undermine its use of him.
Jesus does not, it seems, see himself as a Son of
David,
he
is not the Davidic Messiah.
He is not the answer to the put-upon-people-of-God’s
desire
to
have their powerlessness reversed,
and he is not the ‘just cause’ in whose name
armies
might march to overthrow the evils of the ‘other’.
Rather, Jesus uses a different title for himself:
Consistently
through the Gospels,
Jesus
describes himself not as the ‘son of David’
but
as the ‘son of man’.
The pursuit of a Davidic ideology has taken the
people of God
into
conflict, division, and violence.
It is a failed ideology based on nationalism and
power-politics,
and
it is not the path that Christ sets his face to.
He does not go to Jerusalem to overthrow the Romans,
leading
the longed-for rebel-army to victory over the oppressors
and
establishing the kingdom of Davidic justice and peace on earth.
Rather, he breaks out of the Davidic ideology,
by
identifying himself not as the son of David,
but as the son of man from the Jewish apocalyptic
tradition.
The Messiah Jesus is the son of man,
he
is the son of the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel,
he
is a child of the margins,
not
of the centre,
he
is the offspring of the oppressed,
not
the progeny of power.
He
is the scion of the kingdom of heaven,
not
the spawn of the kingdom of David.
And as such he challenges those of us who bear his
name,
and
in whose lives his spirit is active,
to turn our backs on our dreams of a Davidic
messiah.
He challenges us to give up our dreams of power,
and
our hopes for vindication for our deeply held convictions.
He calls us to step away from our ideologies
of
militarism, nationalism, and imperialism.
He calls us to abandon the cause of the ‘Christian
Country’
and
to look instead for the in-breaking kingdom of heaven,
which
knows no national borders,
and
transcends all political creeds.
He calls us to relinquish our dogmas of certainty,
and
to embrace the quest for questions
He calls us to love the Lord our God,
with
all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind,
And also to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
The ‘love of God’, on its own, gives birth too
easily
to
a tribal understanding of faith,
where we are defined in opposition to those who love
God differently to us,
or those
love a different God to us.
The ‘love of God’ on its own, all too easily makes
Pharisees of us all,
as
the quest for the Davidic messiah takes shape in our midst
and
we seek to ‘take the world’ for the God we believe in.
The ‘love of God’ on its own, all too easily
justifies a desire to win the world for Christ,
it
justifies the Cross of St George on the Shield of the Crusader,
and
it justifies the all-too-frequent equation
of
earthly territory, with the kingdom of heaven.
The current crisis in Iraq and Syria is predicated
upon an ‘us and them’ dogma,
where
two sides, each believing that they are right, and that the other is evil,
are
fighting for territory, resources, and ideological superiority,
all
in the name of God.
Both sides believe that the end justifies the means.
And
so Islamic State fighters are prepared to perpetrate terrible acts of brutality
on
innocent aid workers and local populations alike,
because
they believe that this furthers their divinely sanctioned objective.
But
we in the West are prepared to live with the unfortunate phenomenon
which
we call ‘collateral damage’
because
we believe that we are in the right
and
that the enemy must be stopped.
This is where Davidic messianism take us.
This
is where devotion to our God, and our God alone, takes us.
And so Jesus says to the Davidic Pharisees,
that
they need to learn to love their neighbour as they love themselves.
And who is my neighbour?
Well,
that’s another story for another day…
But what if my neighbour in this global village of
ours doesn’t look like me,
or
believe like me, or speak like me.
What if my neighbour in this great city of ours
is
an immigrant family from another part of the world,
‘coming over here…’
(Actually, my neighbour is an immigrant family,
they’re
from India, and they’re really nice,
but
you know what I mean!)
The rise of xenophobic, anti-immigration, racist
politics
in
the so-called Christian countries of the western world,
is another function of our embracing of a Davidic
ideology,
that
sees us-and-ours as more important than them-and-theirs.
And it’s got to stop, and it’s got to stop with us.
because
if it doesn’t stop with us, it’s not going to stop.
It is directly challenged by Jesus, the son of Man,
who
calls us all to love God,
with all of our hearts, and all of
our souls, and all of our minds.
But not just to love God, and not just to love
ourselves,
but
to love our neighbour as ourselves.
[1]
See ‘Christ’ in Beavis, Mary Ann, and Michael Gilmour, eds. Dictionary of
the Bible and Western Culture: A Handbook for Students. Sheffield:
Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012, p.87.
[2]
See Tom Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler, 2006.
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhba
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_of_Righteousness
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