How do we love God?
Commentary
The question about how we love God in our lives is essential to the meaning of life itself. If we are creatures of God, made in God's likeness but sufficiently rebellious to remove any resemblance, then remade into that likeness by the death of God's Son Jesus Christ, then loving God would seem indeed to be the motive and the focus for living our lives in the world.
We might well imagine that the way we love God is keeping open the communication through worship and prayer, living out morals and values that we glean from the Bible, and obeying the statutes and ordinances and commandments.
What gives perspective to all our attempts to love God and what tells us how to love God is the subject of two of our lessons for today. When it is all said and done, it might not even sound all that religious.
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Chapters 17 through 26 of the Book of Leviticus form the so-
called "Holiness Code." The code as a whole contains collections and individual pieces that date from approximately the tenth to the sixth centuries B.C. The collections consist of legal prescriptions, cultic ordinances, and moral exhortations -- all of which, independently or collectively, probably served the function of catechetical instruction.
The name "Holiness Code" derives, of course, from verse 2, the first verse of the Lord's speech to Moses. The spokesman is commanded to deliver to the whole congregation of Israel the message, "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." Holiness on the part of the people is a derived holiness. It belongs first and foremost to the nature of God. The Hebrew word for "holy" means basically "to be separated, set aside for particular use." God is holy, therefore, because God is distinct from the creation and even from the people of his own choosing. God is not aloof or unconcerned but so totally different, "other," that knowledge of God cannot be ascertained by finding divinity in trees or sunsets or even in people.
As God is, so the people of God are called to be distinct from all other peoples with whom they relate. They are not called to exclude others or to dominate others but to be distinct by the way they conduct their lives so that they honor a holy God.
Among the instructions for such holiness are the verses of our pericope, verses 15-18. Actually they represent the last six commandments of a Decalogue, the first four of which occur at verses 13-14. Taken as a whole this set of Ten Commandments looks like this:
1. You shall not defraud your neighbor or steal.
2. You shall not keep for yourselves the wages of a laborer until morning.
3. You shall not revile the deaf.
4. You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind.
5. You shall not render an unjust judgment.
6. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great.
7. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people.
8. You shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor.
9. You shall not hate in your heart any of your own kin.
10. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your own people.
The positive side of all those ten prohibitions is: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The command appears elsewhere only in the New Testament (Matthew 5:43; 19:19; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8).
The basis for that position against all the alternatives is simple: "I am the Lord." This self-disclosure occurs 164 times in the Old Testament, most often in terms of the Lord's judging and saving actions. The Lord acts in history for and against the people in demonstration of his jealous claim to be the Lord. Here, however, and throughout the Holiness Code the expression is a straightforward announcement about the identity and the authority of the Lord. That authority is all that is necessary to motivate the people of Israel to love one another rather than commit the offenses prohibited in the list.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
In a sense this portion of Paul's letter has more to say to today's preachers than to our audiences. It explains how Paul refused to use the rhetorical devices of the day so that he could be faithful to the commission from God to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
First Paul had to overcome his fear of preaching because of the rejection he and his colleagues experienced at Philippi. In that city they had done irreparable damage to the divination trade by exorcising the demon that enabled a young slave girl to predict the future. Her owners, who had made a fortune off her, managed to rouse the town against Paul and Silas. The locals beat the apostles severely, ripped up their clothing, and had them thrown in prison (Acts 16:19-40). Leaving that city, they came to Thessalonica where they preached the word of God and got into more trouble. Admitting his sense of vulnerability in this letter was his way of demonstrating that only confidence in God enabled them to preach God's gospel.
Now contrary to the rhetoricians of the day, Paul and company did not preach errors or act out of impure motives or beguile the listeners (v. 4). Neither did they resort to flattery or greed or seek glory from their fellow human beings (vv. 5-6).
Rather their style of preaching and pastoral ministry was devoted to pleasing God, because God was the one who entrusted them with the gospel. Pleasing God meant gentleness among them and sharing not only the gospel but their very selves.
We often hear that someone really "gives herself to her work." In contrast to that devotion, Paul expresses their willingness to give themselves to the congregation, along with the gospel, because they are so dear. The metaphor of a nurse taking care of her children (v. 7) was a fitting one for the relationship that existed between preachers and congregation.
Such sacrifice for the audience defies every rule of rhetoric. It is, however, the nature of the gospel itself.
Matthew 22:34-46
The games people play, especially if those people were the Pharisees in Jesus' day, tend to boomerang into their faces. Of course, the other parties, too, like the Sadducees, managed to get caught periodically in their own games. They didn't duck quickly enough in the preceding paragraphs when they tried to trick Jesus with their question about problems with levirate marriage in the afterlife. When the discourse was finished, the Sadducees only contributed to the popularity of Jesus among the crowds who "were astonished at his teaching" (v. 33).
Committed to one-up-personship, the Pharisees got back into the act after being pelted in parables from 21:28 through 22:14. Matthew reports their approach to Jesus was a deliberate "test," and so they pushed forward one of their legal experts to ask Jesus about the greatest commandment. The possibilities were endless, of course. Jesus could have selected from the grand list of 613 statutes. He could have picked one of the Ten Commandments, and considering there were several lists of Ten Commandments (see the discussion in the first lesson), he could have picked any one of thirty or forty.
Faced with the same question, many people would cite the one that prohibits the sin they like most to harangue about. Often it is the one that threatens them most. Or the one they are fighting within themselves.
Jesus, however, does not select a prohibition at all. He cites not one of any list of Ten Commandments. Instead he quotes as the first and greatest commandment the one that follows the Shema at Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." (In our pericope "might" is changed to "mind.") With that big picture in mind, the people of Israel were commanded to place a copy of the Ten Commandments -- given at Deuteronomy 5:6-21 -- in the phylacteries they wore on their bodies and in the mezzuzahs on their doorframes. The command to love the Lord their God completely was illustrated in concrete terms by the Ten -- not only the ones dealing with the exclusiveness of worship, the prohibition against idols, the Lord's name, and the Lord's Sabbath, but also with all those that deal with the relations with the neighbors.
Apparently to ensure that his listeners understood the entire scope of loving the Lord, Jesus added, "And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Here, of course, he quotes Leviticus 19:18, which we said in our discussion of that pericope sums up and puts a positive twist on the ten prohibitions that precede it. Any expert in the Jewish law would recognize immediately that the commandment to love their neighbor is followed in Leviticus by the divine claim, "I am the Lord." The combination is powerful: acknowledging the Lord as God means loving the neighbor.
Through the contexts of these two commandments, therefore, loving the Lord your God includes respecting the neighbors and their property, and loving the neighbor means acknowledging the Lord as God. In this light they are not two separate commandments but one.
That understanding might explain why the two are not mentioned together again apart from this instance in Matthew and the parallels in Mark and Luke. In fact, the first commandment about loving the Lord does not appear again in the New Testament. The command to love the neighbor, however, occurs three times in addition to these parallels. It is said to be the summation of the whole law at Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14 and is considered "the royal law of scripture" at James 2:8.
Statistically the command to love the neighbor wins hands down over the one about loving God. But this is not a matter of statistics. Each commandment carries over to the other. Indeed, the author of 1 John explains the issue beautifully when he says that "those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars ... The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 John 4:20-21).
In my own theological tradition we point also to Martin Luther's explanation of the Ten Commandments in his Small Catechism. As Luther begins each explanation of the neighbor commandments, he teaches, "We should so fear and love God that we...." Each explanation provides positive examples of how we love God by protecting the lives and limbs and property of our neighbors.
Is it any wonder that the command to love the neighbor is considered by the apostle Paul to be the sum of the whole law? And is it possible, then, to say we love God while we fail to provide protection for the most vulnerable in our society -- children, the elderly, the poor, the green carders in our midst? Is it possible to tout love for God when accumulation of personal wealth far outweighs our concerns for those who hunger throughout the world or for those who have little or no medical care or for those whose addictions to drugs, alcohol, and gambling are destroying their own lives as well as their families?
All that seemed to make little impression on the Pharisees in Jesus' day. Matthew reports no response from Jesus' profound teaching. Jesus hardly gave them a chance. He decided to ask them a question: "Whose son is the Messiah?" True to their tradition, they answered quickly, "David's!" Their response led Jesus to quote Psalm 110:1 to demonstrate that David, as author of the psalm, called the Messiah "Lord." That stumped them and put an end to their questions.
Why would Jesus have allowed them to play an academic game rather than wrestle with the meaning of the two great commandments? Clearly the answer is not provided in the text. But on seeing the two issues together in this sequence, one might conclude that the two commandments, taken directly from the Hebrew Scriptures, now take on even more profound significance as Jesus himself, the Messiah, speaks the law with the authority of God. Matthew has already portrayed Jesus in this light as he reported the words of the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said to the people of old ... But I say unto you" (see 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 38-39, 43-44). This new interpretation by Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah, points to a "righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees."
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
In the scriptures, the first five books of the Old Testament, or the Pentateuch, are sometimes called "The Law of Moses" (e.g. Luke 2:22; 24:44), and the Book of Deuteronomy has the traditional title of "The Fifth Book of Moses." Fundamentalists therefore often hold that Moses is the author of Deuteronomy. But as has often been pointed out, if that were so, Moses would be said to have written the account of his own death. We know, further, that the list of the tribal boundaries in this text are later than the time of Moses. Therefore, while many of the Old Testament's laws come from Moses, scholars generally agree that the core of Deuteronomy dates from the seventh century B.C., while this chapter is from the hand of the Deuteronomic editors of about 550 B.C. We have no reason to doubt, however, that Moses was forbidden to enter the promised land, that the site of his grave is unknown, and that Joshua was his successor.
Moses has led his people out of Egypt, borne with them through their complaints in the wilderness, represented them in the establishment of the covenant relationship with the Lord at Mount Sinai, delivered the Ten Commandments and the Covenant Law to them from God, and traveled with them as far as the land of Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan opposite Jericho. In addition, he has delivered the three long sermons that we find in Deuteronomy, presenting the final pre-exilic form of the torah to his people and entering into a covenant renewal ceremony with them.
Now the elderly lawgiver is commanded by God to ascend Mount Nebo in the Abarim range in Moab (Deuteronomy 42:48-49). He does so and then crosses a mountain saddle to climb up to the tip of Mount Pisgah, from where the Lord shows him the promised land laid out before him. Moses sees it all, from the territory in the north where Dan will reside to the southern regions that will be Judah's home, and then beyond, even to the desert of the Negev and the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Finally the homeland toward which Moses and his people have struggled for so many years is in sight. But Moses is not allowed to enter into it. Why?
There are two reasons given in the Old Testament, although one of them is obscure. Both Numbers 20:10-13 and Deuteronomy 32:51 say it is because Moses "broke faith" with God at Meribah and did not revere God in the eyes of the people. There have been numerous attempts to explain what that means on the basis of the stories in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, but the explanation remains unclear.
The other reason, however, is not a puzzle. Moses takes the sins of the people upon himself and dies outside of the promised land in order that Israel may enter into it (Deuteronomy 1:37; 3:26; 4:21). Repeatedly, the people have not trusted the Lord and repeatedly his anger has risen against them for their faithlessness. But also repeatedly, Moses has interceded with God for his sinful people, asking that God forgive them. As we heard two Sundays ago, Moses has been the intercessor before the Lord for his faithless folk, fulfilling the function of a true prophet. But because prophets are intercessors on account of sin, they are suffering intercessors, bearing in themselves instead the punishment that God would otherwise bring upon his covenant people. (Cf. Hosea's marriage to a harlot, or the command to Jeremiah not to marry or to attend a party or a funeral, or the commands to Ezekiel to eat unclean and rationed food and water, or the Suffering Servant's abuse and death -- all are substitutions for what God would have done to sinful Israel.) So it is too in the New Testament that the One who fulfills all the prophets bears our sins on his cross and dies the death that we should have died, in order that we may have life.
Our text makes a point of saying that no one knows where Moses is buried. The Israelites are thereby prevented from making pilgrimages to Moses' grave, from worshiping the dead, and from giving their loyalty and adoration to anyone but the Lord. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and all are to live to him (Luke 20:38).
The spirit of wisdom to lead was passed on to Joshua when Moses laid his hands on him (Deuteronomy 34:9). Joshua can successfully lead the people into the promised land only by the power of God's Spirit that was first given to Moses. Human abilities will not suffice. This is God's enterprise, and not man's (cf. Joshua 1:1-9).
Moses was a towering figure in Israel, and because he was the prophetic mediator of the Word of God and the suffering intercessor for Israel's sins, for centuries after Israel expected that the new age of the kingdom would be ushered in by the appearance of a new "prophet like Moses" (Deuteronomy 18:15). Repeatedly, the New Testament reflects that expectation (John 1:21, 15; 6:14; 7:40), but it was not until Jesus of Nazareth appeared that Peter and Stephen could preach that the new age had broken into history and that the new Moses who suffered for the sins of the world was Jesus Christ, who was not only the expected prophet, but also God's Messiah and Son.
Lutheran Option -- Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Among the commandments that Moses gave to the people of Israel while they were in the wilderness, we find Leviticus 19:11-18, which is known as the Levitical Dodecalogue and which is part of the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17-26. Leviticus 1:1-18, form the priestly version of the Ten Commandments, and concern the subjects contained in that Decalogue.
The aim of this material is to make Israel a holy people, as God is holy (v. 2), and the passage gives numerous examples of the holy manner of life. Verses 3-8 concern holiness in relation to God. Verses 9-18 deal with holiness in human relationships. It is from verse 18 that Jesus takes the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31 and parallels), which Paul sees as the summary of the law (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; cf. James 2:8).
We have repeatedly said that to be God's holy people means to be set apart for his purpose. But how are we to live in that separateness? What are the covenant people and we, as new persons in Jesus Christ, supposed to do? This text gives very concrete illustrations, and the preacher can use any one or several of them to deal with the congregation's daily living. These are very practical commandments and obviously they can be followed. But two emphases assert themselves.
First, the holy life is one of growth in sanctification, in holiness, in goodness. No one of us is good all the time, and indeed, goodness no longer seems to be a goal in our society. We want to be rich, slim, beautiful, admired, accomplished, fun, talented. But good? How many of you sincerely want to be good? How many of you want to grow daily in goodness? That's kind of out of fashion in our society, isn't it? But we are not slaves to the ways of our society; we are slaves of Jesus Christ, as Paul says (Romans 6:16-18). And part of our discipleship for Christ is growth in goodness. Well, Leviticus here gives us some ways to grow.
These commands are laid upon us, in the second place, not as rules of human society or as mere suggestions for our conduct or as tips on how to make friends and influence people. These are commands of the Lord our God, teachings about how to have his abundant life, directions about how to walk in our daily paths according to his will and not our own. "I am the Lord your God" occurs eight times in Leviticus 19:1-18, emphasizing over and over that these commandments concern the will of God. We sometimes ask, "How do we know what God's will is?" Here is part of the answer. Here are concrete descriptions of what God wants and does not want us to do. And because we love God, and because he has given his Son that we may have eternal life, we strive for holiness, and in overwhelming gratitude, we obey this merciful guidance of our Lord.
We might well imagine that the way we love God is keeping open the communication through worship and prayer, living out morals and values that we glean from the Bible, and obeying the statutes and ordinances and commandments.
What gives perspective to all our attempts to love God and what tells us how to love God is the subject of two of our lessons for today. When it is all said and done, it might not even sound all that religious.
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Chapters 17 through 26 of the Book of Leviticus form the so-
called "Holiness Code." The code as a whole contains collections and individual pieces that date from approximately the tenth to the sixth centuries B.C. The collections consist of legal prescriptions, cultic ordinances, and moral exhortations -- all of which, independently or collectively, probably served the function of catechetical instruction.
The name "Holiness Code" derives, of course, from verse 2, the first verse of the Lord's speech to Moses. The spokesman is commanded to deliver to the whole congregation of Israel the message, "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." Holiness on the part of the people is a derived holiness. It belongs first and foremost to the nature of God. The Hebrew word for "holy" means basically "to be separated, set aside for particular use." God is holy, therefore, because God is distinct from the creation and even from the people of his own choosing. God is not aloof or unconcerned but so totally different, "other," that knowledge of God cannot be ascertained by finding divinity in trees or sunsets or even in people.
As God is, so the people of God are called to be distinct from all other peoples with whom they relate. They are not called to exclude others or to dominate others but to be distinct by the way they conduct their lives so that they honor a holy God.
Among the instructions for such holiness are the verses of our pericope, verses 15-18. Actually they represent the last six commandments of a Decalogue, the first four of which occur at verses 13-14. Taken as a whole this set of Ten Commandments looks like this:
1. You shall not defraud your neighbor or steal.
2. You shall not keep for yourselves the wages of a laborer until morning.
3. You shall not revile the deaf.
4. You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind.
5. You shall not render an unjust judgment.
6. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great.
7. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people.
8. You shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor.
9. You shall not hate in your heart any of your own kin.
10. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your own people.
The positive side of all those ten prohibitions is: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The command appears elsewhere only in the New Testament (Matthew 5:43; 19:19; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8).
The basis for that position against all the alternatives is simple: "I am the Lord." This self-disclosure occurs 164 times in the Old Testament, most often in terms of the Lord's judging and saving actions. The Lord acts in history for and against the people in demonstration of his jealous claim to be the Lord. Here, however, and throughout the Holiness Code the expression is a straightforward announcement about the identity and the authority of the Lord. That authority is all that is necessary to motivate the people of Israel to love one another rather than commit the offenses prohibited in the list.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
In a sense this portion of Paul's letter has more to say to today's preachers than to our audiences. It explains how Paul refused to use the rhetorical devices of the day so that he could be faithful to the commission from God to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
First Paul had to overcome his fear of preaching because of the rejection he and his colleagues experienced at Philippi. In that city they had done irreparable damage to the divination trade by exorcising the demon that enabled a young slave girl to predict the future. Her owners, who had made a fortune off her, managed to rouse the town against Paul and Silas. The locals beat the apostles severely, ripped up their clothing, and had them thrown in prison (Acts 16:19-40). Leaving that city, they came to Thessalonica where they preached the word of God and got into more trouble. Admitting his sense of vulnerability in this letter was his way of demonstrating that only confidence in God enabled them to preach God's gospel.
Now contrary to the rhetoricians of the day, Paul and company did not preach errors or act out of impure motives or beguile the listeners (v. 4). Neither did they resort to flattery or greed or seek glory from their fellow human beings (vv. 5-6).
Rather their style of preaching and pastoral ministry was devoted to pleasing God, because God was the one who entrusted them with the gospel. Pleasing God meant gentleness among them and sharing not only the gospel but their very selves.
We often hear that someone really "gives herself to her work." In contrast to that devotion, Paul expresses their willingness to give themselves to the congregation, along with the gospel, because they are so dear. The metaphor of a nurse taking care of her children (v. 7) was a fitting one for the relationship that existed between preachers and congregation.
Such sacrifice for the audience defies every rule of rhetoric. It is, however, the nature of the gospel itself.
Matthew 22:34-46
The games people play, especially if those people were the Pharisees in Jesus' day, tend to boomerang into their faces. Of course, the other parties, too, like the Sadducees, managed to get caught periodically in their own games. They didn't duck quickly enough in the preceding paragraphs when they tried to trick Jesus with their question about problems with levirate marriage in the afterlife. When the discourse was finished, the Sadducees only contributed to the popularity of Jesus among the crowds who "were astonished at his teaching" (v. 33).
Committed to one-up-personship, the Pharisees got back into the act after being pelted in parables from 21:28 through 22:14. Matthew reports their approach to Jesus was a deliberate "test," and so they pushed forward one of their legal experts to ask Jesus about the greatest commandment. The possibilities were endless, of course. Jesus could have selected from the grand list of 613 statutes. He could have picked one of the Ten Commandments, and considering there were several lists of Ten Commandments (see the discussion in the first lesson), he could have picked any one of thirty or forty.
Faced with the same question, many people would cite the one that prohibits the sin they like most to harangue about. Often it is the one that threatens them most. Or the one they are fighting within themselves.
Jesus, however, does not select a prohibition at all. He cites not one of any list of Ten Commandments. Instead he quotes as the first and greatest commandment the one that follows the Shema at Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." (In our pericope "might" is changed to "mind.") With that big picture in mind, the people of Israel were commanded to place a copy of the Ten Commandments -- given at Deuteronomy 5:6-21 -- in the phylacteries they wore on their bodies and in the mezzuzahs on their doorframes. The command to love the Lord their God completely was illustrated in concrete terms by the Ten -- not only the ones dealing with the exclusiveness of worship, the prohibition against idols, the Lord's name, and the Lord's Sabbath, but also with all those that deal with the relations with the neighbors.
Apparently to ensure that his listeners understood the entire scope of loving the Lord, Jesus added, "And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Here, of course, he quotes Leviticus 19:18, which we said in our discussion of that pericope sums up and puts a positive twist on the ten prohibitions that precede it. Any expert in the Jewish law would recognize immediately that the commandment to love their neighbor is followed in Leviticus by the divine claim, "I am the Lord." The combination is powerful: acknowledging the Lord as God means loving the neighbor.
Through the contexts of these two commandments, therefore, loving the Lord your God includes respecting the neighbors and their property, and loving the neighbor means acknowledging the Lord as God. In this light they are not two separate commandments but one.
That understanding might explain why the two are not mentioned together again apart from this instance in Matthew and the parallels in Mark and Luke. In fact, the first commandment about loving the Lord does not appear again in the New Testament. The command to love the neighbor, however, occurs three times in addition to these parallels. It is said to be the summation of the whole law at Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14 and is considered "the royal law of scripture" at James 2:8.
Statistically the command to love the neighbor wins hands down over the one about loving God. But this is not a matter of statistics. Each commandment carries over to the other. Indeed, the author of 1 John explains the issue beautifully when he says that "those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars ... The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 John 4:20-21).
In my own theological tradition we point also to Martin Luther's explanation of the Ten Commandments in his Small Catechism. As Luther begins each explanation of the neighbor commandments, he teaches, "We should so fear and love God that we...." Each explanation provides positive examples of how we love God by protecting the lives and limbs and property of our neighbors.
Is it any wonder that the command to love the neighbor is considered by the apostle Paul to be the sum of the whole law? And is it possible, then, to say we love God while we fail to provide protection for the most vulnerable in our society -- children, the elderly, the poor, the green carders in our midst? Is it possible to tout love for God when accumulation of personal wealth far outweighs our concerns for those who hunger throughout the world or for those who have little or no medical care or for those whose addictions to drugs, alcohol, and gambling are destroying their own lives as well as their families?
All that seemed to make little impression on the Pharisees in Jesus' day. Matthew reports no response from Jesus' profound teaching. Jesus hardly gave them a chance. He decided to ask them a question: "Whose son is the Messiah?" True to their tradition, they answered quickly, "David's!" Their response led Jesus to quote Psalm 110:1 to demonstrate that David, as author of the psalm, called the Messiah "Lord." That stumped them and put an end to their questions.
Why would Jesus have allowed them to play an academic game rather than wrestle with the meaning of the two great commandments? Clearly the answer is not provided in the text. But on seeing the two issues together in this sequence, one might conclude that the two commandments, taken directly from the Hebrew Scriptures, now take on even more profound significance as Jesus himself, the Messiah, speaks the law with the authority of God. Matthew has already portrayed Jesus in this light as he reported the words of the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said to the people of old ... But I say unto you" (see 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 38-39, 43-44). This new interpretation by Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah, points to a "righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees."
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
In the scriptures, the first five books of the Old Testament, or the Pentateuch, are sometimes called "The Law of Moses" (e.g. Luke 2:22; 24:44), and the Book of Deuteronomy has the traditional title of "The Fifth Book of Moses." Fundamentalists therefore often hold that Moses is the author of Deuteronomy. But as has often been pointed out, if that were so, Moses would be said to have written the account of his own death. We know, further, that the list of the tribal boundaries in this text are later than the time of Moses. Therefore, while many of the Old Testament's laws come from Moses, scholars generally agree that the core of Deuteronomy dates from the seventh century B.C., while this chapter is from the hand of the Deuteronomic editors of about 550 B.C. We have no reason to doubt, however, that Moses was forbidden to enter the promised land, that the site of his grave is unknown, and that Joshua was his successor.
Moses has led his people out of Egypt, borne with them through their complaints in the wilderness, represented them in the establishment of the covenant relationship with the Lord at Mount Sinai, delivered the Ten Commandments and the Covenant Law to them from God, and traveled with them as far as the land of Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan opposite Jericho. In addition, he has delivered the three long sermons that we find in Deuteronomy, presenting the final pre-exilic form of the torah to his people and entering into a covenant renewal ceremony with them.
Now the elderly lawgiver is commanded by God to ascend Mount Nebo in the Abarim range in Moab (Deuteronomy 42:48-49). He does so and then crosses a mountain saddle to climb up to the tip of Mount Pisgah, from where the Lord shows him the promised land laid out before him. Moses sees it all, from the territory in the north where Dan will reside to the southern regions that will be Judah's home, and then beyond, even to the desert of the Negev and the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Finally the homeland toward which Moses and his people have struggled for so many years is in sight. But Moses is not allowed to enter into it. Why?
There are two reasons given in the Old Testament, although one of them is obscure. Both Numbers 20:10-13 and Deuteronomy 32:51 say it is because Moses "broke faith" with God at Meribah and did not revere God in the eyes of the people. There have been numerous attempts to explain what that means on the basis of the stories in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, but the explanation remains unclear.
The other reason, however, is not a puzzle. Moses takes the sins of the people upon himself and dies outside of the promised land in order that Israel may enter into it (Deuteronomy 1:37; 3:26; 4:21). Repeatedly, the people have not trusted the Lord and repeatedly his anger has risen against them for their faithlessness. But also repeatedly, Moses has interceded with God for his sinful people, asking that God forgive them. As we heard two Sundays ago, Moses has been the intercessor before the Lord for his faithless folk, fulfilling the function of a true prophet. But because prophets are intercessors on account of sin, they are suffering intercessors, bearing in themselves instead the punishment that God would otherwise bring upon his covenant people. (Cf. Hosea's marriage to a harlot, or the command to Jeremiah not to marry or to attend a party or a funeral, or the commands to Ezekiel to eat unclean and rationed food and water, or the Suffering Servant's abuse and death -- all are substitutions for what God would have done to sinful Israel.) So it is too in the New Testament that the One who fulfills all the prophets bears our sins on his cross and dies the death that we should have died, in order that we may have life.
Our text makes a point of saying that no one knows where Moses is buried. The Israelites are thereby prevented from making pilgrimages to Moses' grave, from worshiping the dead, and from giving their loyalty and adoration to anyone but the Lord. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and all are to live to him (Luke 20:38).
The spirit of wisdom to lead was passed on to Joshua when Moses laid his hands on him (Deuteronomy 34:9). Joshua can successfully lead the people into the promised land only by the power of God's Spirit that was first given to Moses. Human abilities will not suffice. This is God's enterprise, and not man's (cf. Joshua 1:1-9).
Moses was a towering figure in Israel, and because he was the prophetic mediator of the Word of God and the suffering intercessor for Israel's sins, for centuries after Israel expected that the new age of the kingdom would be ushered in by the appearance of a new "prophet like Moses" (Deuteronomy 18:15). Repeatedly, the New Testament reflects that expectation (John 1:21, 15; 6:14; 7:40), but it was not until Jesus of Nazareth appeared that Peter and Stephen could preach that the new age had broken into history and that the new Moses who suffered for the sins of the world was Jesus Christ, who was not only the expected prophet, but also God's Messiah and Son.
Lutheran Option -- Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Among the commandments that Moses gave to the people of Israel while they were in the wilderness, we find Leviticus 19:11-18, which is known as the Levitical Dodecalogue and which is part of the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17-26. Leviticus 1:1-18, form the priestly version of the Ten Commandments, and concern the subjects contained in that Decalogue.
The aim of this material is to make Israel a holy people, as God is holy (v. 2), and the passage gives numerous examples of the holy manner of life. Verses 3-8 concern holiness in relation to God. Verses 9-18 deal with holiness in human relationships. It is from verse 18 that Jesus takes the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31 and parallels), which Paul sees as the summary of the law (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; cf. James 2:8).
We have repeatedly said that to be God's holy people means to be set apart for his purpose. But how are we to live in that separateness? What are the covenant people and we, as new persons in Jesus Christ, supposed to do? This text gives very concrete illustrations, and the preacher can use any one or several of them to deal with the congregation's daily living. These are very practical commandments and obviously they can be followed. But two emphases assert themselves.
First, the holy life is one of growth in sanctification, in holiness, in goodness. No one of us is good all the time, and indeed, goodness no longer seems to be a goal in our society. We want to be rich, slim, beautiful, admired, accomplished, fun, talented. But good? How many of you sincerely want to be good? How many of you want to grow daily in goodness? That's kind of out of fashion in our society, isn't it? But we are not slaves to the ways of our society; we are slaves of Jesus Christ, as Paul says (Romans 6:16-18). And part of our discipleship for Christ is growth in goodness. Well, Leviticus here gives us some ways to grow.
These commands are laid upon us, in the second place, not as rules of human society or as mere suggestions for our conduct or as tips on how to make friends and influence people. These are commands of the Lord our God, teachings about how to have his abundant life, directions about how to walk in our daily paths according to his will and not our own. "I am the Lord your God" occurs eight times in Leviticus 19:1-18, emphasizing over and over that these commandments concern the will of God. We sometimes ask, "How do we know what God's will is?" Here is part of the answer. Here are concrete descriptions of what God wants and does not want us to do. And because we love God, and because he has given his Son that we may have eternal life, we strive for holiness, and in overwhelming gratitude, we obey this merciful guidance of our Lord.
