Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost; 29 October 2023; Proper 25A (RCL); Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46.
Remembering that 1 Thessalonians is the first literary evidence we have of the Christian movement, I am struck how carefully Paul distinguishes his teaching from that of other philosophical schools (or at least their parodies). Cynics in particular poked fun at teachers in the other schools as seeking glory, or teaching for tuition, for flattering their students (to get more tuition), and the list of things Paul lays out in these verses.
“Our teaching was not like that,” Paul claims. Instead, our word, our Gospel came among you with power, and we were gentle, and didn’t even take advantage of our rights as apostles of Christ (support while teaching). Paul’s movement understood itself as a philosophical school (and philosophies in Paul’s day always also included an asceticism, a distinguishing and disciplined way of life). What I find interesting in these few verses is that Paul hardly mentions Jesus or the Christ. It is God’s gospel that he is proclaiming. I assume that his Christology must have developed over time as he wrote his letters.
From the exordium we heard last week, we know that one of the benefits accruing to disciples of this new school was kinship with other disciples in other places (Macedonia and Achaia). We also learned that Paul addresses them as the legislative council of free citizens in their city (ecclesia – which interestingly also has resonances with synagogue — called out and gathered together being the meanings of those two words). The teaching of this new school was not grounded in the teacher (whose way of life often served as a draw for new students), but in the power of God to effect change in this new empire. This new teaching is the proclamation of a good news from God, just as Caesar might announce a good news (gospel).
Jesus’ summary of the law comes at the end of a string of disputation stories after Jesus has overturned tables in the Temple, and refused to answer the question of on what authority he performs such acts. We can all recited his summary from memory, it is so familiar. And it wasn’t anything particularly new — he quotes two passages from Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5, You shall love the Lord your God, etc., and Leviticus 19:18, Love your neighbor as yourself). Even Paul has said that loving neighbor as self is the fulfillment of the whole law.
Jesus then silences his disputants with his interpretation of Psalm 110:1 (Psalm 110 is the Old Testament passage cited most often in the New Testament – it includes the line about being a priest forever after the order of Melkizedek). Christians used this Psalm as an apology against the argument that Jesus was not from the lineage of David (or Aaron for that matter — see the Letter to the Hebrews). The argument runs like this: If David wrote all the psalms (a matter of consensus in the time of Jesus), then says that God says to David’s Lord, sit at my right hand etc. That person (David’s Lord) cannot be David, or his son for that matter. The Messiah (David’s Lord) is not his son (or descendant). Matthew and Luke will each invent genealogies that will trace Jesus’ descent back to David, but their genealogies differ in significant ways.
So, the Great Commandment (or the summary of the Law) is deployed in a dispute between Jesus’ followers and their (Jewish) critics. How? Deuteronomy is aimed at pointing out the distinction between Israel and all the other peoples of the world, because God is with them, while the quote from Leviticus comes from the Holiness Code (18 – 20), which also includes the stricture that you shall treat the alien among you as a citizen (Lev 19:33), so the love of neighbor must then extend to foreigners. Matthew is writing his Gospel to discover a way for Gentiles to live the Torah, now that they have entered God’s people through baptism. So linking these two ideas (in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) would be an argument that the way of life of Matthew’s community was God’s intention from the beginning.
Deuteronomy, of course, ends with the episode we hear from the Old Testament on this Sunday, with Moses view of the Promised Land. I can never read this without thinking of MLK’s last sermon. We have not yet arrived at the promised land, and we may not get there ourselves, but as a people, this is our hope.