The Lord said to my Lord

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: ‘What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?’ They said to him, ‘The son of David.’ He said to them, ‘How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

“The Lord said to my Lord,

‘Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet’ ”?

If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?’ No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

- Matthew 22:34-46

The Pharisees were lay experts on the Scripture and the Law. They had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures and a great focus of their debate and argument among themselves was on which commandment was central. So, asking Jesus about the "greatest commandment" is crucial to their own way of approaching Scripture and religious practice. We're told that the one asking the question is a lawyer. While the question is reasonable, Jesus understands that it is, once again, a test.

The lawyer, a Pharisee, asks, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus replies, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Jesus' setting forth of the first and the second command is the sum total of the Law and the Prophets. Specifically for the Pharisees, Jesus directs his answer to give them a grand summary in two simple commands - not only of the greatest, the first and second commandments - but of all of the law. Their endless debating, he seems to imply, is not necessary. We understand from the gospels that we have received a vivid, direct and simple teaching from our Lord and the history we have of his life and his teaching, and in this example Jesus does not fail to set out by example once again his style of teaching and preaching. It is so simple and so direct, and yet it inspires infinite creativity in those of us who follow, and who will follow in the future. There is great theological importance, if you ask me, in the order of these commandments. We place the love of God first and center, in our hearts; and we practice this love as we remember the second in our outward behavior. In this way, and this order, things fall into place. I personally do not believe in substituting a set of standards or ethics, no matter how wonderful, for worship as the central place of consciousness - because that consciousness informs us of the mercy that must be used with the application of any "rule" no matter how well-intentioned, and it shapes our capacity for love and insight in this respect. Otherwise we run the danger of living an "abstract" life.

But after his first response to the question of the Pharisees, Jesus then goes on the offensive with them, and turns the tables as he has done in this series of questions and tests that have come this week in Jerusalem in the temple. (See readings for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and yesterday, Monday.) Jesus decides he will challenge the Pharisees on their understanding of scripture. Jesus asks them: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." So Jesus then asks them: "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

'The Lord said to my Lord,

"Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet" '?

If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" The Pharisees are stumped, and they don't know how to answer, because their assumptions about Messiah and the nature of God don't make any sense in light of this scripture. The scripture quoted by Jesus is from the psalm of David, Psalm 110:1. Of course, the irony here, lost on no one in this scene, is that Jesus has been greeted as Messiah as He entered into Jerusalem. But my study bible points out something even more important here in this passage. Jesus is introducing the notion of the Holy Trinity in this teaching. The "Son of David" as the Pharisees' concept of Messiah is a mere human being. But Jesus quotes scripture to illustrate their lack of insight into the scripture. David, as king of Israel, would not address anyone as "my Lord" except God. Therefore, my study bible points out, "the psalm verse describes God talking to God - the Father to the Son." This also contradicts the Pharisees' point of view of God as one Person. Jesus says David speaks or writes the psalm "by the Spirit" -- and so we have the introduction by Jesus to the Pharisees of the concept of the Three Holy Persons.

What is remarkable about Jesus, as a man of peace, is his unfailing capacity to fulfill the task of confrontation when it is appropriate to him. Confrontation is not violent, and he is not a man of violence, he is the opposite. His method is dialogue, and challenge. Neither does he shrink from a challenge unless he deems it "not the right time." Jesus is a bold actor, but he always does things in his own way, and at the chosen time. He will give up his life in the chosen time, at the time he deems it right, of his own choosing and through the will of his Father. His confrontations come in Jerusalem at the time he has chosen to go to Jerusalem, and he engages them and is an actor in that challenge. At other times, his work has been deliberately done in secret, and he has asked others to keep them secret - as when he told his disciples not to reveal he was the Messiah after Peter's confession of faith, or his healing of two blind men earlier in Matthew's gospel. In our reading today, Jesus introduces a tremendous concept into the understanding of God that the Pharisees have. Not only does he stand notions of the expected Messiah on their heads (as he so often does with prevailing understanding and concepts of worship within this sequence of confrontations in Jerusalem), but he also challenges and shakes up the very notion of God by introducing the idea of the Holy Trinity, as interpreted through Scripture here. His ideas shake the foundation of expectation and understanding, and yet he is boldly proposing them here in the temple, to those who are challenging him in the first place. But after this, we are told, "No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions."

Again, as in all of the readings over the past week or so, we must start to ask the question - how does this pertain to us? And, because it is the time of Advent, we ask ourselves how the lessons here apply to this period of waiting and watching for this light, this manifestation of the Divine, to come into our world. Clearly we must understand from the reading that this light will shake up our foundations and assumptions, that our eyes and ears and hearts must be open to it in order to properly embrace and know our place in this understanding. If the "great commandment" is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" then we must be prepared to understand "the Lord" to whom "my Lord" is speaking in the psalm. This "Lord" is the Son, the light, and if we accept these scriptures, he is incarnate and manifest to us as Jesus. God reveals himself through time, in a temporal setting, as one of us, and the person that we have, who has been revealed to us as manifestation of Second Person of God, is Jesus. So, we must consider today what it means to have a manifestation, a revelation of the Divine in a form based in our worldly reality, an incarnate human being. He will always present to us concepts that may shake our foundations and understanding. As we grow in relation to this Person in our hearts - each one of us today - we may at times find this relationship boldly challenging to what we think we know, to our limited understanding. Just as he challenged the Pharisees, and even his own apostles, he will also have times to challenge us and ask us to expand our awareness to include new things and to grow within that relationship that the first great commandment teaches us. How will you cultivate this central place of worship - in the spirit of the first great commandment - today? And how do you think it may well affect the way in which you practice the second great commandment in today's reading? To be free enough to accept that challenge requires an open heart.