24th  Sunday  After  Pentecost    

Lev. 19:1-2, 15-18; Ps 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thess 2:1-8; Mt 22:34-46

         I am grateful that in today’s readings I found three things that really grabbed my attention.

         The first is our psalm, Ps. 90:14,  which says: Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, we shall sing and be happy all our days.  That reminds me of an incident 25 years ago when I was spending half the summer building my summer house in Doe Hill, Virginia. One Saturday my friends John and Carol Ann Dyer with their two children drove there to visit me and spent the night camping in their tents. On Sunday when it was time for them to return to Mt. Pleasant, their daughter (maybe aged 6) said that she would like to stay there the rest of her life. When asked why, she said: “I would wake up happy every morning.”
         I don’t know about you, but I do not wake up happy every morning. Partly it’s because I seem to have a lot of bad dreams, dreams of frustration. For example, I’m playing the lead role in “Hamlet,” it’s two minutes to curtain time, and I have not memorized my lines. Or I am to go on a trip and my suitcase is not packed and I can’t find the airplane tickets. Or I am wondering around the campus of Catholic University looking for a bathroom and I can‘t find one.
         Psalm 90 does not suggest that we ought to wake up happy every morning. It does suggest that every morning we should take stock of what? Of God’s unfailing love. Here is another translation of v. 14: Each morning fill us with your faithful love, we shall sing and be happy all our days. So happiness is by no means excluded. Rather, the psalmist is urging us to get our priorities straight. When we get up in the morning, it is good to set aside the dreams — good and bad — and temporarily set aside the day’s agenda, and, however briefly, say HELLO to God; and God will fill us with God’s unfailing love. As a way to start the day, that’s a lot better than Wheaties.
         The second thing that grabbed my attention was the second half of today’s gospel. It  recounts the peculiar conversation that Jesus had with the Pharisees concerning the Messiah. He starts with a seemingly innocent question: “Whose son is the Messiah?” Everybody agrees that the Messiah is the son of David. Then Jesus gets into an interpretation of Psalm 110, v. 1. The RSV translation of that verse is the following:
         The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.”
That’s confusing, because we have two different Lords: The Lord says to my Lord. In order to make sense of Jesus’ argument, we need to figure out who is the first Lord and who is the second Lord. I believe that all scholars agree that the author of the psalm meant the first Lord to be Yahweh and the second Lord to be the King of Judah. [Write on whiteboard] However, the last king of Judah was dethroned in 587 BCE. So by the time of Jesus, roughly 600 years had passed with no King. So during this period the pious Jew, reading this psalm, thought of the second Lord as being the Messiah — the King who was to come and restore the fortunes of Israel. [Write on whiteboard.]
         So Jesus says: We all agree that the first Lord is Yahweh, that the second Lord is the Messiah, and that the Messiah will be a  descendent of David. [Write on whiteboard.] But then Jesus argues that David, the author of this psalm, refers to the Messiah as MY Lord. How can the older guy refer to the younger as my LORD. It’s always the older guy who is Lord over the younger guy. 
         At first this seems like a rather silly argument. However, I think Jesus was trying to say: You guys better rethink your notion of Messiah. There has been no king for 600 years, and there is not going to be a king, and the Messiah is not going to restore the fortunes and pride of Judah. As Richard Rohr has remarked: The Messiah turned out to be a crucified loser, who nevertheless managed to turn everything upside down.
         Incidentally, this psalm verse is quoted about 15 times in the New Testament — more than any other psalm verse. For example, in the Acts of the Apostles [2:33-36] St. Paul preaches that Jesus is the Messiah — because  Jesus has been raised from the dead, has ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father; and the psalm said: … sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. In other words, Jesus has been made Lord of all the earth. [Write on whiteboard]

         The third thing that grabbed my attention was the beginning of today’s gospel — concerning the two great commandments. Jesus quoted a passage in Leviticus [18:18] that was also one of today’s readings: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
         Usually, when I thought seriously about this second great commandment, I  thought that it appeared to be a quantitative statement: Love your neighbor as much as your self. Well, that’s not exactly wrong: it does express the idea that love of neighbor needs to be powerful, not trivial. The basic problem, of course, is that it is impossible to quantify love. Sometimes we try by using fanciful  language: Oh, I love you oodles and oodles. We just don’t have the right language for it.
         I think there is another way of looking at the second great commandment, another angle of vision. And now I am following Yonce’s advice to think from the heart rather than the head — because I can only go a little way with this angle of vision.
         Let me explain with an example: Dora and me. Gender: woman … man. Place of birth: Lebanon … Washington, DC.  Ethnic background: Armenian … Irish.  Talents: great at languages … better than average at math. Personality: a people person … an introvert. I’m sure you could add to that list of differences.
         However, when you are finished with that list, there is another list of things that are perhaps spiritually more significant. Dora and I: We are both sinners, and we both know it. We are both profoundly aware of God’s forgiveness, without which life would be insupportable. We are both amazed at how we both receive God’s faithful love every morning without fail, even if we don’t stop to realize it. We both firmly believe that we can do at least a tiny bit to advance God’s work in the world. Same … same … same … same. I am to love Dora as myself because in some way she is myself and I am herself.  And the same goes for all of you.
         I don’t know. Maybe I am just backing my way into a question that has always been pondered. Greek philosophers talked about THE ONE AND THE MANY.  St. Paul in Romans [12:5] says: “…we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.”  I don’t know. I do know that it is less important that we understand all these things, and that it is most important that we just love one another. Amen
Dunstan Hayden
Oct. 26, 2008