To Share Our Own Selves

October 25, 2027

Matthew 22:34-46

            Our reading from Matthew’s gospel today is another story from the time of Jesus teaching in the Temple but being interrupted by all these different people who come to test and hopefully discredit him before the people.  Listen as God continues to speak.

            READ

            Ok… let’s be honest.  This is a wonderful passage.  The lesson… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  It is a lesson without equal.  As the lawyer and all those in the story agree… it is the greatest of the commandments. 

            But here’s my problem this morning as a preacher behind the pulpit… what does that leave for me to say?  I mean… over in Luke’s gospel the lawyer at least asks a follow-up question… “And who is my neighbor?”  That gives me something to work with.  It gave Jesus something to work with because he goes on then to tell them the parable of the Good Samaritan.  That’s good stuff.  That will preach.  But here… here in Matthew… no follow up question from the lawyer. 

            Last week we heard, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” In between that one and today’s question from the lawyer, the Sadducees tried to trap Jesus with one of their favorite ridiculous questions about the resurrection… if a woman married seven brothers in life, whose wife would she be at the time of the resurrection.  None of these tricky questions ever got to anything of substance until the lawyer approaches… perhaps not so much with the purpose of trapping Jesus… but to see what he’s really about.  What does this Jesus stand for?  What is his central truth claim about God?

            Now… it really would have been good for preachers everywhere today if, after receiving Jesus’ answer, the lawyer’s follow question in Matthew would have been something like… “Yes Teacher, but how is it we are to love God and our neighbor?”  Because that’s what we’ve always struggled with… isn’t it?  That’s what the church has always struggled with.  How are we to love God and neighbor?  What does a faithful love look like?  What does it feel like? 

            The timing is funny… how just this past week the Public Religion Research Institute… or PRRI… released its findings of its 2026 American Values Survey.  What made the headlines from this survey was what they called an “empathy gap” in American public life, particularly along political and religious lines.  Overall, 68% of Americans agreed that “empathy is a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society.”  For our category… meaning white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants… 78% said empathy is a foundational moral value.  That number went up to 83% for the group of people they call religiously unaffiliated.  Only 42% of white evangelical Protestants agreed that “empathy is a foundational value that helps build a healthy society.”  54%... the majority of white evangelical Protestants agreed that empathy can become dangerous when it leads people away from God’s truth. 

            While empathy and love are not one and the same… we can wonder and ask if an unempathetic love is truly love?  Can we truly fulfill the commandment to love God and neighbor without empathy?  We can also ask ourselves… when was it that Jesus chose God’s truth over the dangerous effects of empathy?  Does Jesus ever warn us… or come close to teaching us to avoid empathy because it may take us away from God’s truth?  There are all manner of paths this question about empathy can take us down.  Does God’s grace function on God’s truth or does it function through God’s empathy?  What is it that makes God go to the lengths God is willing to go to be with us… to save us and bring us into God’s heart?  Can we even come to God’s truth without empathy?  Can we truly say we love God without loving our neighbors?  The first epistle of John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first loved us.  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 him is this:  those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

            Again… love and empathy are not the same thing.  But can we love another without empathy?  Maybe we should also ask if we can hate another person for whom we feel empathy?  Is it more likely that a fear of empathy would lead to hate than it would lead to a more perfect love? 

            In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”  As Christians, we get into trouble when we start looking for the workaround to loving our neighbors.  If in maintaining God’s truth I need to harden my heart against the hurt I’m bringing upon my neighbor… because I fear the punishment I may receive for violating God’s truth… am I really maintaining God’s truth or am I more like the Pharisees who are accused of ignoring the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith.  Have I replaced God’s truth of love with my interpretation of what I believe is God’s greater truth?  Grace itself seems to be how God’s love breaks through those barriers created by what we determine to be God’s greater truth.  Harming our neighbor should be a clear sign that perhaps I am confusing my interpretation of God’s truth for God’s actual truth of love.  If I am taught that through empathetically feeling the pain of someone I am harming is a danger to my ability to maintain God’s truth… then again, maybe it’s not God’s truth I’m maintaining.

            Jesus’ wordplay against the Pharisees at the end of our reading this morning is really the opening salvo against the faith practiced by the Pharisees.  The whole next chapter of Matthew’s gospel is Jesus saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”  The critiques all sound like they are being aimed at a group where there is an empathy gap.  They do not practice what they teach.  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  Inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Inside they are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  They know the answer to the greatest commandment question.  What they do not know is how to love God and their neighbors.  The Pharisees… those great maintainers of God’s truth… are not the model we want to be following.

            The question, then, is what does this love actually look like when it is lived? If Jesus gives us the commandment and if the Pharisees show us one of the ways we can fail to live it, where do we find a picture of what faithfulness looks like? Perhaps we find it in Paul. Not because Paul is perfect. Not because Paul always gets everything right. But because in his letters we encounter a man whose love for Christ cannot be separated from his love for the people Christ has entrusted to him.

            I'm always struck by the genuine affection in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians: "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our very selves, because you have become very dear to us." Paul is not writing about an idea, a movement, or an institution. He is writing to people he loves.

            It is easy to forget that. We make scripture lofty and holy and sometimes forget the real people behind the words. Paul is writing to a real congregation with real struggles and real hopes. And in that sense, nothing has changed. This church, Parkway Presbyterian, is not merely an institution that exists through the years. It is us. It is the people gathered here in Christ's name, those who came before us and those who will come after us.  I believe… I hope… that it is love that is the basis of this community.

            For me, Paul is showing us what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves. The commandment is not abstract. Your neighbor is not an idea. Your neighbor is the person sitting beside you in the pew, singing with you, serving with you, learning with you, growing up or growing old with you. The commandment to love is personal because people are personal.

            Maybe that is why Jesus does not spend much time explaining it. We already know what love looks like. We know what it is to be listened to, to be shown mercy, to have someone stand beside us in our suffering. We know what it is to have another person share not only their words but their very self with us.

            Jesus tells us to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The hard part has never been understanding the commandment. The hard part has always been remembering that our neighbor is a person.  The church is at its best when we remember that. Not when we win arguments. Not when we defend our own righteousness. The church is at its best when we love one another so deeply that we are willing to share… to commit… not only the gospel of God but our very selves.

            For in the end, that is how Christ has loved us. Amen.