Under Pressure
Matthew 22:34-46, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
John 3:16, Deuteronomy 6:5
The monster hissed and spat in the kitchen.
My mother was cooking.
My Mum sometimes worked as a temp. On the days that she worked, she didn’t have much time to prepare food. So the monster was brought in to help.
The pressure cooker.
There it sat hissing and spitting and rattling. Cooking the food in half the time, although needing careful attention to timing and weights. But the dog and I never quite trusted it and always felt that it would be a good idea not to be in the kitchen at the same time as it.
Delicious soups and stews always emerged for us to eat. Mum and Dad thought it a great invention, but the dog and I were not convinced.
One day, it was in the kitchen hissing away as usual, the dog and I were in the living room, when suddenly there was a huge bang followed by more noise than it had ever made before.
We peeked around the kitchen door; Mum gave an exclamation of despair.
Bits of meat, carrot, potato everywhere and still issuing like lava from a volcano from the pressure cooker.
We never really knew what had happened. Maybe mum had got engrossed in something else and had forgotten to turn down the gas, but the pressure had built and built until something released it. In this case the safety valve had shot out of its socket.
We kept on finding bits of dinner for ages afterwards. In dark corners behind the stove; and in the folds of the blanket the dog had for his bed. Reminders for us, of an explosive day in our family history.
Everyone in our readings this morning finds themselves under pressure.
Paul is finding himself opposed, maltreated, and accused of impure motives and trickery, in his mission to share the gospel with everyone.
Jesus is locking horns with the Pharisees and scribes for the final time.
The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the scribes. They love the Lord their God. They keep all the laws of their religion. But they want to place God where they can keep an eye on him, bound up in the law and behind the temple veil. The very idea that God could be out on the road, healing and associating with those regarded as unclean or outside the Jewish community made them uncomfortable.
They just can’t accept the message that Jesus is bringing.
He worries them. Frightens them even, and frightened men are dangerous men.
They’ve been following him around for months. The situation is becoming tenser and more pressurised all the time.
They’re watching and waiting to catch him out.
Hovering on the edge of the crowds.
Peering around the pillars in the synagogue.
Popping up in cornfields on the Sabbath.
Asking questions at unexpected moments in the hope that this time, he’ll give them the evidence they are looking for to discredit him.
This time, they send a lawyer to question him.
What is the greatest commandment?
Jesus replies, Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind.
There’s nothing here that the lawyer can argue with, it’s part of the Shema, the Jewish daily prayers, and it calls upon us to love God without qualification.
Now Jesus could have stopped there, he more than adequately answered the question. He’s on safe ground. But Jesus is being confrontational so he gives them a second commandment. Love your neighbour as yourself. But this is not just the warm happy feeling we call love, it means action. Acting in relationship to your neighbour, looking out for our and their interests. Both these commandments together define Jesus’ ministry. They sum up the wisdom in the scriptures, show God’s will.
Still piling on the pressure. Jesus turns the tables and questions them.
What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?
To the Jews at that time the Messiah is to be the son of David. David; Israel’s greatest King. He will come as a freedom fighter, a mighty warrior with chariots and swords, and will free their people from oppression. They’re certainly not expecting a man dressed in a shabby robe, an itinerant preacher who wanders the countryside with a raggle taggle band of followers, proclaiming a gospel for everyone.
A man that preaches the love of God
But he also preaches the love of God for prostitutes
For tax collectors
For lepers and diseased people
Even Gentiles.
All those in fact who are barred from the temple.
So Jesus’ logic bothers them. Because if the messiah is not David’s son then who…..?
Surely not this man….?
So the Pharisees leave to plot and plan and Jesus will go on to publicly denounce them as hypocrites.
Then comes a trial, and eventually a death sentence is pronounced.
For the Pharisees and all the other accusers that should put the lid on it.
But God is not to be kept in a container with a lid on, or behind the veil in the temple. The pressure builds until…
The hammering in of three nails.
They knew not what they did.
And we hear the echoes of the explosion in the gospels. The earthquake, the rent veil in the temple, the rocks that split and the stone that moves aside.
God is out, everywhere. And where God is, love is.
And as blood and water flowed from Christ’s body, so love flowed through the world.
In the aftermath of this release of pressure, we don’t find bits of love hidden in dark corners, or in forgotten places.
God’s love is for the whole world, not just the Middle East, or Great Britain.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
With a love that heals.
A love that redeems.
It’s here, in this church this morning. In our thanksgivings, offerings and prayers
It flows in the wine and the water of the Eucharist
It lives here inside us. That eternal flame that can burn brightly or gently glow, and in others, waits patiently to be discovered.
And we need to take love out with us through those doors when we leave. Because, if we are people of Christ, then we must emulate Christ’s ministry of love for all, by our words and our actions.
For it seems to me that if we bind up God’s love and only allow those near who are deemed worthy, are of the right colour, culture, gender, sexuality or social class. Then, I wonder, just who are the Pharisees today?
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
So love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul
and Love your neighbour as yourself.
26th October, 2008