What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?
Today’s lesson is the last in a series of stories from Matthew in which “the authorities” try to entrap Jesus, including, “Is it legal to pay taxes to the emperor?”; followed by: “Which of the woman’s seven husbands can claim her as wife in the resurrection?”; and now, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
I can almost hear Jesus thinking, “You want to do some legal sparring? I’ll show you legal!” before he poses his own questions:
What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?
Good questions. Legitimate questions. Orthodox questions.
I wonder if they invite in us the same sort of catechetical response we hear from the Pharisees: we’ve learned the “correct” answer and proffer it accordingly.
- The son of David, the Pharisees respond.
- Jesus, the son of God, we say.
But Jesus isn’t looking for a catechetical response. He doesn’t want to know the correct, or appropriated answer. This isn’t about vocabulary, or parsing a phrase; it’s not a quiz to see if we did our homework, or a check of our memory or a test of our faith – although I think we, like the Pharisees, are easily drawn into that world. Number two pencils in hand, erasers at the ready, we’ll bubble in the right response, fill in the blank…
What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?
And then, of course, Jesus muddles up our “correct” response, making us think a bit more deeply about what we’re saying, by posing another question. (It kind of reminds me of my childhood fascination with a friend whose babysitter was her niece – the teenage daughter of her mother’s oldest sibling. Or, the mind-bender riddles kids ask: “Someone at a party introduces you to your mother’s only sister’s husband’s sister-in-law. He has no brothers. What do you call this lady?”)
Jesus uses the Pharisees own focus on the law to shift the paradigm, to move us out of the world of legal gamesmanship. His riposte is semantic, as though to expose the emptiness of the legalisms and the tests: But, David calls him ‘Lord’ – how, then, can he be his father?
All of a sudden the questions aren’t quite so simple.
What is Jesus asking, anyway?
What do you think of the Messiah?
How would we answer, really answer, that question?
Forget our catechism for a minute. And our Sunday School lessons.
What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?
Jesus asks that question right on top of having discoursed on the two greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s no mistake, I think, that Jesus poses this question the way he does, placing it firmly in the context of love of God and love of neighbor.
- He doesn’t ask “WHO do you think the Messiah is?” – although I think that’s what we hear.
- He asks “WHAT do you think of the Messiah?”
- It isn’t the WHO that’s important; it’s the WHAT.
- It isn’t the name that’s important – but the action, and the interaction.
The Messiah comes to bring salvation to his people – and he does it in the context of love of God and love of neighbor!
We can all play the legalistic games of figuring out sonship and authority, or trying to name our neighbor – someone like me? Living within what radius? Looking like me? Similar lifestyle? Someone with whom I agree?
We have only more grown-up versions of my granddaughter’s foot stomping, tearful wail, as once again she expresses her frustration with her meddlesome older brother: “But I do love my neighbor. I just don’t love my brother!”
Our obsession with details can cause us to lose the message – or generate the exceptions and qualifications which render it meaningless.
- The power of the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves does not lie in the definition of neighbor, but in the mandate to love.
- The “what” of the Messiah is not in his lineage to David, but in his love of God and humankind.
If we’re focused on counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we lose sight of the fact that the angels are dancing!
Jesus’ question takes us out of that realm of “literal” and moves us into a more fundamental, more life-giving realm. It is underneath those designations – Lord, son, neighbor, brother, sister, wife, gentile, Jew – that we find the essence of the Messiah, the love of God and neighbor on which hang all the law and the prophets.
Jimmy Carter tells of learning the profound implications of love of God and love of neighbor, not from Scripture, not from theological commentary, but from the real life lessons of working with Elroy Cruz, a pastor from Brooklyn, in the dangerous alleyways of the barrio, rife with gangs and drug dealers and the desperate lives of the marginalized poor. “In the midst of all the violence and despair - where did you get your gentleness?” Carter asked him, “and your love?” “Well,” Elroy responded, “our Savior – the Messiah! – cannot do much with a man who is hard.” And then he added, “You only need two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.” (cited in Christian Century, October 4, 2005, p. 6).
Our Savior – the Messiah! – cannot do much with a man – a woman, a person! – who is hard.
And I am reminded of how easily we allow ourselves to become hard – shaped by pride or anger, or resentment, or bitterness, or hurt; how our hearts can be hardened by grudges or stubbornness or frustration or guilt…
The Messiah cannot do much with a person who is hard.
And, we need only two loves in our life: for God, and for the person in front of us at any particular time.
Soft hearts.
Love of God.
Love of neighbor.
What do you think of the Messiah?
I think Jesus challenges us to think of the Messiah as embodied in the loving relationships between us and God – and us and one another, our neighbors.
We find the Messiah in those two great commandments!
And, as we live them out, the Messiah is being born, again and again, into our midst!
Lord, son, brother, sister, neighbor, mother, wife…
Not in the name, but in the relationship, the love.
In the book Testimony: Talking Ourselves Into Being Christian, the author, Thomas Long, tells about an exchange between a young bookstore clerk and a Hasidic Jew. (p. 21) “Would you like any help?” the clerk asked. “Yes,” the man responded, “I want to know about Jesus.” She led him to the religion section where there were shelves filled with books about Jesus, academic as well as popular, and about the early history of Christianity, but as she turned to go, he called her back. “No,” he said. “I want to know about Jesus the Messiah. Don’t show me any more books. You tell me what you believe.”
Tell me what you believe.
Is it a name?
Jesus?
Whose son is he?
Or is there more, deeper? What does it mean?
What do you think of the Messiah?
Amen.
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