Sermon: "A Tale of Two Christianities"- August 24, 2025

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 13:10-17

The Rev'd C. Patrick Perkins, Rector 

Transcript

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

In 1859, Charles Dickens opened A Tale of Two Cities with these immortal words. Today, as then, we live amid polarities so pronounced that it often seems half the world inhabits a reality completely different from the other half. This is troubling, but—as Dickens shows—it isn’t new.

The Church faces similar tensions. One of fallen humanity’s most dangerous capacities is our ability to take a neutral truth and spin it to serve our own purposes. By this I mean, we have the tendency to use truth when convenient, and to reinterpret it away when it conflicts with our desires. In our Gospel story, this dynamic is on full display in how the Fourth Commandment is applied—and how Jesus shows the folly of using it for selfish ends.

The truth in question is the Fourth Commandment:

“Remember to consecrate the Sabbath day. Six days you will work and do all your business, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…The LORD made the skies, the land, the sea, and all that is in them in six days, and he rested on the seventh day from everything, and, thus, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”

Neither Jesus nor the synagogue leader questioned the commandment—they both took it as given. What differed was their approach. On this side of the Resurrection, it would be easy to plop a black hat on the ruler and write him off as rigid, legalistic, or mean. But to read this story as Jesus discarding an Old Testament commandment misses the point entirely. He isn’t discarding anything. Instead, he’s telling us something about divine law that is every bit as relevant today as it was then: how human hearts can twist God’s commands to serve themselves.

We could easily entitle our Gospel lesson “A Tale of Two Judaisms,” because it exposes a tension alive in Jesus’ day. Sadly, though not surprisingly, we might just as well call it “A Tale of Two Christianities,” because the Church today wrestles with the same issue. In the moments ahead, we’ll unpack this passage to uncover the controversy behind it—a controversy that may not be what it first appears to be.

When our story opens, we find Jesus teaching in a Galilean synagogue for their weekly Sabbath service. This was no “one off” guest speaking engagement for Jesus. The Greek reads literally, “he was teaching in one of their synagogues on the Sabbaths”—plural. This is an important detail. He was no stranger to this congregation. They’d not only received him once as a rabbi but also invited him to teach there regularly. What is more, this invitation must have come from the “ruler of the synagogue” that we encounter in the story. This is significant, because it makes clear that this local Jewish leader was no anti-Jesus provocateur planted by the powers-that-be to trip Jesus up. This was an honest controversy based upon a real theological dilemma.

So what was the dilemma? Well, sadly, it’s one the Church still faces today. “Is divine law something that we keep primarily as a means of staying in God’s good graces, or is it intended to be God’s way of making the world a more godly place?” The way one answers this question makes all the difference.

In our story, the ruler of the synagogue takes the first position, Jesus the second. Many Christians stop there—“Jew bad, Jesus good.” But if we disengage our minds at that point, we miss the text’s contemporary relevance because the same controversy thrives in the Church today.

Before 1979, every Episcopal Eucharist began with the “Summary of the Law”:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

This statement presents one of Jesus’ most profound observations and one of Christianity’s most perennial problems. In Matthew 22, a Jewish legal scholar asked Jesus, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” and Jesus answered him with these words. Discerning readers will immediately notice a problem. The lawyer asked Jesus for one commandment, and Jesus gave him two. Love God and love neighbor. From that time to this, we’ve faced the question of how the two relate.

The same question ran rampant in Jesus’s day. The rabbinic schools of Hillel and Shammai were at odds over the matter. The Babylonian Talmud tells of a Gentile asking each rabbi to summarize the Torah while standing on one foot—he was asking them for their “elevator speech.” Shammai was insulted and drove him away with a measuring stick. Ironic. Hillel said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That’s the whole law. The rest is commentary.”[3] Shammai’s “answer” emphasized loving God by keeping the Law to the last detail; Hillel emphasized loving neighbor. Two very different takes: one God-focused, one human-focused.

Why do I tell you this? Well, Jesus’ response to the lawyer came amid these intramural controversies. The lawyer sought to know whether Jesus sided with Shammai or Hillel. Jesus shifted the focus: after affirming “love God,” he connects it to “love neighbor,” saying “the second is like it.” This may sound like a hierarchy, but it isn't. The Greek ὅμοιος means “equivalent to.” R. T. France observes:

“the two stand together, on a level of their own, as the guide to all the other commandments of the law. Neither is to be raised above the other; each depends on the other for its true force.”

Luther puts the point eloquently in his Treatise on Good Works:

“The first commandment tells us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength. But since God cannot be enriched or helped by our love, the only way to fulfill this commandment is in works toward our neighbor…because through them we serve Him by serving those He has made.”

Luther has captured precisely what Jesus was saying—something that at the time was incredibly controversial. Jesus meant, “Love God with your whole self by loving your neighbor as yourself.” This brings us back to the specific controversy in our Gospel lesson and in the Church today.

At first glance, it seems the conflict is simply whether “love God” or “love neighbor” takes priority. The reality is subtler. Jesus refuses to accept this dichotomy and shifts the discussion from theological abstractions to the heart matters beneath them. Privileging “love God” often veils self-serving intentions beneath a thin veneer of sanctimony. The ruler’s objection to the healing stemmed from his wanting to be “right with God”—his religious self-interest. Jesus calls him a hypocrite because he was more concerned with Brownie points in the hereafter than with the plight of an oppressed woman. His “love” for God was really baptized self-love.

Jesus upbraids the man mercilessly. Here it is in the New Mississippi Translation—my own version:

“How two-faced can you get? You who refuse to ‘work on the Sabbath’ don’t even think twice about watering your animals on a hot Saturday afternoon. You’ll gladly loosen the ropes of an ox tied to its trough for the few hours you were at synagogue, but you get upset when I free a woman bound by Satan for 18 years.”

Jesus swings hard here. He’s saying:

“Remember the Good Samaritan story. When you refuse to cross the road to help a neighbor, don’t pretend it’s out of love for God. Your real concern is the temperature of your retirement condo in the sweet by and by. If you truly loved the God who rested after creation, you’d know He wouldn’t rest until this afflicted daughter of Abraham experienced a taste of new creation.”

This leads us from the “there and then” to the “here and now.” In the world today—and especially in our country right now—two Christianities vie for dominance. One says, “When in doubt, love God and screw your neighbor.” Ano-ther says, “When in doubt, love your neighbor and don’t worry too much about your relationship with God.” Both of these positions are wrongheaded. What Jesus is telling his Church today hasn’t changed from the time of Luke and Matthew. He is saying to us, 

“Do you want to know what it means to love God with your whole self? It doesn’t mean manufacturing ooey-gooey, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend feelings in the privacy of your own devotional life. It doesn’t mean keeping the Law so perfectly that God owes you eternal life. The first is self-indulgent, and the second is impossible. If you want to show God how much you love him, love what God loves. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly as I did, sacrificing myself for the good of my neighbors.”

Friends, if you hear nothing else I say, hear this: Loving God and loving neighbor are never at odds. If they seem to be, you aren’t thinking about matters rightly. To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is simply to desire what God desires—that which is best for God’s creation. To love your neighbor as yourself is to sacrifice what’s best for you for what’s best for your neighbor. The one who loves God most emulates God most, and—never forget—God took on human flesh, suffered, and died for love of us.

There are two Christianities competing for our attention today. One says, “save yourself, and to hell with the world.” The other says, “save yourself by saving the world.” Neither is the true Christian faith, because both are ultimately self-serving. For the spiritually mature, the Gospel imperative isn’t really about “saving yourself” at all. It’s about loving what God loves. After all, that’s all heaven really is, a place where everyone loves what God loves. For the selfish, a heaven like this would be hell!

And that is what the world most needs from the Church today—not sanctimony, not self-help, but a community that loves what God loves. AMEN.