Loving God of the journey, journey closely with this dear reader and their needs; in Christ Jesus I pray, amen.
Our text for today comes from Matthew 22: 34 When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. 35 One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: 36 "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" 37 Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' 38 This is the most important, the first on any list. 39 But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' 40 These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them." 41 As the Pharisees were regrouping, Jesus caught them off balance with his own test question: 42 "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said, "David's son." 43 Jesus replied, "Well, if the Christ is David's son, how do you explain that David, under inspiration, named Christ his 'Master'? 44 God said to my Master, "Sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool." 45 "Now if David calls him 'Master,' how can he at the same time be his son?" 46 That stumped them, literalists that they were. Unwilling to risk losing face again in one of these public verbal exchanges, they quit asking questions for good. (The Message)
If you deliberately set a verbal trap for somebody, you might just be the one who gets caught. Such was the case with those who tried to trick Jesus into answering wrong so they might pounce on Him. Today's question for Jesus: Which is the most important command in God's Law? That one, for any regular Sabbath attender and worshiper, was easy: Love God with all you got. In this version it reads, "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence." I read that to mean love God with every ounce of emotion in your heart, every spiritual breath that counts as prayer, and every particle of thought in your brain. Let all of those work together as love towards God and that's the command! Then Jesus adds, "Don't forget the one that goes with this: Love others as well as you love yourself." To this crowd, the Pharisees, that meant as much love as you put into primping before a mirror and making sure your beard is just right and your curls fall right where you want them, spend that much attention to God's other children, and that's the second command.
Now it was Jesus' turn to ask the question to this paternal linage freaks: About this Messiah we hear is coming, Whose Son is He? That was for them, they believed, an easy one; David's son, of course! Then Jesus asked, then why did David call his own son, Master and Lord? Not one of those in that crowd would dare think of his own son as better than he, and Jesus knew that and used it to stump their attempt to trick Him. And Matthew writes that that was the end of the questions "for good." We know the plotting never ended, and we know how the Story ends. The questions that Jesus asked of them stay for us to answer daily: How do we treat God? How do we treat others? How do we treat ourselves?
PRAYER: Loving God, let me apply what the Bible teaches about loving You to my life. Let me love myself in the proper way and may I seek to love others in that same way. I ask this in Christ Jesus' precious and powerful name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord.
Eradio Valverde
