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Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity, September 29, 2024

Like the situation last Sunday at the ruler of the Pharisees’ home, Jesus is being tested. Jesus is holding court in the Temple, under examination, as was the Passover Lamb, to ascertain any fault or blemish, and proving quite capable of fending off the examination by turning the questions back on his interrogators. A lawyer, a supposed expert in the law, puts Jesus to the test challenging him to evaluate the Law of Moses and choose the greatest of them all (vs. 35). Jesus (as was discussed in the Table Talk 2 for the 17^th Sunday after Trinity) turns the question around and makes it about obtaining the spirit of the law vs. obedience to the letter of the law. The Pharisees have proved to be experts at the latter but rather poor at the former.

For Jesus, the spirit of the law entails love… love of God and love of neighbor. Obedience to a command cannot produce love. Love must flow spontaneously from the attitude of the heart. It cannot be forced or coerced or bribed with reward or punishment. For sinners… for those of us to whom the flesh still adheres… for we who live between the sacramental death of going down beneath the water and word of baptism and the physical death of going down beneath the dust from which we came… for you and I who do not know the content of our hearts or what their true attitude is… we must be content with what God’s Word tells us about our hearts (cf. Mt. 15:19 & Ge. 6:5 among many). The Word tells us our hearts do not have a loving attitude. The best we can manage is obedience. Obedience may point to love; it may approximate love; but it will not be love. The Law demands that sinners be the one thing they cannot be and that is a person who loves, fears, and trusts God above all things. Sinners must die so that they can be raised up to walk in newness of life. This newness of life is nothing less than Jesus reigning from the throne of our conscience… nothing less than Jesus’ clean heart replacing our sin-blackened and stoney heart. When Jesus reigns, the love of God and the love neighbor flow spontaneously without any commandment… with no obedience… without the Law.

Table Talk: Discuss situations where you may have loved God or loved neighbor spontaneously.

Pray: Heavenly Father, grant me newness of life as I die to sin and am raised up with Christ as my life. Amen

Matthew 22:34-46

34 But 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 is the great commandment in the Law? 37 And 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 great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, The son of David. 43 He said to them, How is it then that David, in 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 then David calls him Lord, how is he his son? 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.