Sermon on Matthew 22:34-46

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve been reading for the past four weeks about the conflicts between Jesus and various religious leaders between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Today, we’ll wrap up our informal sermon series by looking back at these readings and what questions they invite us to consider on this Reformation Sunday.

At the end of September, we read the parable of the two sons: the one who said he would do what his father asked but never got around to it, and the one who said, “no, thank you,” but eventually did it anyway. Jesus was calling out the religious leaders for not believing John the Baptistor Jesus’ prophetic messages and acting on them. We asked ourselves what prophets we’re ignoring now.

On Reformation Sunday, we remember Martin Luther in 1517 posting his 95 Theses, his lengthy list of things he thought the church should be doing better.

This got Luther into a lot of trouble, and when he wouldn’t apologize for what he said, he was excommunicated.Violence and bloodshed followed, and the Church had a lengthy time of reckoning.

Though violence and church schisms are worthy of grief, we do need prophets and reformers to help us examine where we as the Church fall short of God’s call to the fullness of Beloved Community.

What prophets and reformers like John the Baptist and Martin Luther should we pay attention to today?

In our Gospel reading the next week, Jesus continued with the parable of the wicked tenants, who not only didn’t hand the harvest over to their employer, but killed his messengers and even his son.

God has called each of us to bear good fruit in the world, and yet sometimes we view people as enemies and treat them with fear and anger. Maybe God is speaking to us through people we treat as enemies.

There was violence on both sides of the Reformation. Siblings in Christ were killing each other over their differing views on how God works and how the church should operate, as well as the political dynamics that played out alongside theological disagreements.

How can we stand up for what we believe in while still honoring the humanity and personhood of people who disagree with us? How can we love our enemies as siblings made in the image of God?

If that parable wasn’t violent enough, the next one which we read on the 11this the one I find most troubling in our recent readings.

In this parable, all of the invitations to a king’s wedding banquet were turned down and the messengers hurt or even killed, so the king had all the people on the guest list killed and burned their city.

After that, he invited anyone and everyone to fill the seats, which in itself is a nice image of God’s inclusive wedding feast. Except that one guest wasn’t wearing the right clothes, so he was thrown out of the feast, and the imagery is ominous and alarming.

If we can set aside Jesus’ attention-getting storytelling tactics, we can focus on the abundance and inclusivity of God’s banquet table. There’s a feast, where we’re invited—all of us, regardless of class or background or worthiness—to come as we are, clothed in Jesus’ love.

In Jesus’ life story, we are the ones who rejected his invitation to life abundant and inflicted violence upon him.

And he didn’t burn down cities or kill anyone. Instead, he broke the power of death and invites everyone, everyone, everyone to his banquet—now and for all time.

Martin Luther, who was an expert at beating himself up and trying to be perfectly pleasing to God, had a life-changing shift in his understanding of God. He directed his attention to passages like our reading from Romans that describe God’s grace: “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

He insisted that we don’t and, indeed, can’t earn salvation or God’s love. God’s grace saves us—not anything we do or don’t do.

Your invitation is secure. A place card with your name is on the table. You are clothed in Jesus’ love and grace.

And though our salvation is secure in Christ, there are times in our lives where God extends other invitations. Invitations to life choices, relationships, opportunities to serve, compassion to offer, joys to celebrate. And we might miss them if we’re not paying attention.

We have choices to make about whether to accept those invitations or stay in our comfort zones or nurse our egos.

What invitations from the Holy Spirit are we ignoring? What are we refusing to celebrate?How can we learn to trust God and offer an enthusiastic “yes”?

Then, last week, we read Jesus’ famous non-answer to the religious leaders’ clever verbal trap regarding paying taxes: “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

We talked about this being a question not just about taxes but about how to live out one’s faith when one’s government doesn’t fully align with one’s religious beliefs. No matter what party is in power, we’re not going to agree with everything our government does—it’s just a question of to what degree our government and our faith conflict.

Similar questions came up during the Reformation, when government and religion were more drastically intertwined in Germany and in Europe in general. The Reformation was a time of reckoning not just for the church but for all of life, including government.

Fortunately, we don’t have to change our religion based on who’s in power like the kings in 16th-century Germany. But our faith still has something to say about how we operate in this life, not just the next.

God is still calling us to reform—in the church, in the world, in our everyday lives. Though we’re human and miss the mark every day—every hour—God’s still calling us to learn and grow and change and imitate Christ.

How is God calling you and us to reform today? What parts of scripture do you turn to for grounding amid hard decisions and change in the world? How can we say “yes” to what God has in store for our next chapter?

And finally, this week Jesus summed up all of God’s teachings in two principles: love God and love your neighbor.

Instead of offering a perplexing parable or answering a question with a question like he did in the previous readings, Jesus answered this one directly and succinctly, quoting parts of the Lawas a summary of the whole.

We know what will happen after this series of Gospel readings. Jesus will have Passover dinner with his friends, wash their feet, offer them himself in bread and wine, pray desperately in a garden, be arrested, tried, beaten, and killed as an enemy of the State.

And we also know that the story doesn’t end there. He rose again. Even with all of humanity’s violence and evil intentions, we couldn’t keep him down. He broke death itself to bring us God’s grace—a gift we can never earn and, thankfully, don’t have to.

Jesus loved God and loved us: his neighbors, his beloved, made in God’s image.

And through God’s grace and love, we are freed to love God and our neighbors too, without the fear of trying to be worthy of any of it. God’s already taken care of it. You are right with God just as you are. And you reflect God’s love for you in how you live in the world.

Just as we can get caught up looking at our lives and only see the ways we fall short, we can look back on the Reformation and only see the division, the violence, the name-calling (which Luther did plenty of). Many things happened during the Reformation and throughout Church history that do not live up to loving God and our neighbor. We’re human. We get caught up in our egos and biases and defensiveness and dehumanization of others.

And God calls us to more. Not as a requirement for salvation—Jesus took care of that. But out of love for God and the freedom we’ve received, we can cocreate with God a more loving world here and now.

The Holy Spirit calls us to reform, not out of anger or disapproval, but out of love and compassion, desiring that every person feel their God-given worth and connection with everything God has created.

So, beloved children of God, freed in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, how are we being called to reform the ways we love God and our neighbor today? What is the Spirit calling us to next?

Listen, answer, and act bravely and full of God’s love.