1 Kings 19:15-16,19-27;
Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62
Today we are having two of my favorite celebrations…the welcoming of new members and the sacrament of Holy Communion. And because these are things that we do not have the opportunity to do every Sunday, I am going to be careful about the length of my sermon. In fact, this sermon is entitled “The Five Second” sermon. Now don’t go get your hopes up. This is not a five second sermon. It’s a sermon about a five second sermon. In the interest of time it will be a bit shorter than usual, but some of you might still be able to catch a quick nap.
I’ve heard some great preachers in my life… just recently for instance, when Nita and I were at Annual Conference and heard the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I looked at my watch when he stopped … it had been forty five minutes but I felt a little cheated, and I wished he would just keep going. And legend has it that Antony of Padua was that kind of spellbinder. They say he would climb up in a tree so the crowds could gather because no church could hold the multitude that came to hear him. He would preach and preach and preach and even the fish in the nearby stream would poke their heads out of the water to hear what he had to say. I can’t even get my own cats to listen to me while I practice my sermons.
But do you know who the real
master of the short sermon was?
Jesus! Read through the gospels
and you will find his messages in pithy parables and simple teachings,
sometimes distilled into a single sentence. Look at our gospel text today: "Let
the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the
And those sermons stand the test of
time, because they are still his message for us, aren’t they?
"Follow me … Don’t look back… Go, proclaim the
The five second sermon I ask you to hear today is one of Jesus’ own, but quoted by the apostle Paul in our epistle reading. It comes from the story in Matthew where the lawyer asked Jesus, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" (Matt 22:36). We know from several Jewish texts this question was popular among the rabbis in Jesus’ day, or at least among the followers of the rabbis. It appears they tried to get their preachers to keep it short, too. Some rabbi had counted all the commandments in the Torah and came up with 613. So, of course, their task was to interpret, expound, and apply all 613 commandments to the daily lives of their disciples. Naturally, it could get a little overwhelming for the disciples. So, naturally, they started asking for a summary, or at least for some list of priorities. "Just tell us what we really need to know!"
Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel were rivals in their day and roughly contemporaries of Jesus and Paul. The story is told that a heathen Gentile came to Rabbi Shammai and told him he would convert to Judaism if only the Rabbi could teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The good Rabbi Shammai answered by whacking him with a stick. (I get a kick out of that answer!) The same man went to Rabbi Hillel with the same demand. Hillel said, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow human. This is the entire Torah, all of it. The rest is commentary. Go and study it." Now that’s a good answer! And of course, it’s the “turn about” version of Jesus’ own "golden rule" in Matthew 7:12. Jesus said, "In everything… do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the torah and the prophets." Another short sermon classic!
The questioning lawyer behind this five second sermon we’re hearing today no doubt knew the rabbis had already answered this question. He was testing Jesus to see if he knew. The rabbis had already agreed two commandments of the Torah stood above all the rest, so that the rest were actually so many applications of those two. Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." Jesus said "This is the first and greatest commandment," but he went on to say, "The second is the same thing: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." That was Leviticus 19:18. Jesus was agreeing with the rabbis of his day when he said, "On these two commandments hang all the torah and the prophets" (Matt 22:37-40).
And that is the five second sermon Paul quotes in our epistle today, written as most of his letters were to a church where people kept fussing and fighting with each other. He quotes Jesus quoting the Torah: "For the whole torah is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Gal 5:14). Can you imagine? The whole Torah, the whole Bible, the whole Christian faith, the whole enterprise of human life distilled to just seven words? I timed it. It takes five seconds to say it. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Need I say more? Should I spend the next few minutes expounding what Jesus means by love … that it is more than a feeling … that it has to do with active engagement for the benefit of another person? Shall I tell stories from Jesus own life and self-sacrifice as a model for us to understand what Jesus means by the word "love?" Or do I need to take some more time and tell all the warm stories answering the question of what Jesus means by the word "neighbor" when his parable of the Good Samaritan already explains that our neighbor is anybody we encounter who has any need … of any race … of any nation … of any creed? Shall I jump on the bandwagon with the self-esteem gurus and explain how the verse assumes it is right and good to have a healthy love of your self, although I would always want to emphasize the sermon is about loving your neighbor at least as much? Do we need to take time with all that explaining today? I don’t think so because you already know all that.
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This sermon isn’t hard to understand … it’s just hard to do. But Jesus said it … and Paul repeated it … and everybody in the world knows about it, so by God, we ought to do it! By God … that’s the only way we can.
A sermon is a funny animal in a literary sense. The rhetorical scholars tend to classify it as "persuasive speech." But a sermon should do more than get us to change our minds. It should change our hearts. Change our wills. It should push us beyond the words … into the arms of a loving God. The measure of an effective sermon is not how it makes us feel or how it makes us think, though I think those are good effects. But the true measure of the sermon is how it makes us live, how it changes our behavior. Only, it’s not the sermon that ever does that of course. It’s the God who meets you in the sermon … the God you hear speaking to you over and beyond the words of the preacher.
Our worship isn’t complete
each Sunday until we respond to God’s word as we have heard it, and not
just in a sermon, but in the whole context of worship … in the reading of
scripture … in the music … in the prayers … in the silent
spaces … as well as in our lives the whole week long. God speaks, and we
listen. God speaks, and we obey … not with our thoughts and feelings
… but with our feet and with our hands … with our words and with
our deeds. And I think God calls us in a manner to which we can respond in
specific and measurable ways. Not "I ought to be a better person,"
but "This week I’m going to be kinder to my co-workers." Not
"Maybe I should be more spiritual," but "This week I’m
going to take time to pray every day." Not "I wonder if I should
volunteer for some kind of regular service," but "this week I’m
going to volunteer to help with
So I leave you today with this five second sermon. I wish I had come up with it. It’s a good one. What a difference we would see in our world if more people lived by it. What a difference it would make in our own lives if we were to practice it until it became hard wired into our character. What a witness it would be if the world saw us Christians actually shaped by our obedience to it.
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Can you remember that? Will it stick in your head and heart? What are you going to say to yourself this week when that Jeff Gordon wannabe cuts in front of you and makes you hit your brakes? ("Love your neighbor as yourself.") What are you going to say to yourself this week when your co-worker wants to share a problem with you and get your help? ("Love your neighbor as yourself.") What are you going to say to yourself this week when you hear an old friend is listed in the prayer requests and you haven’t even talked to her for months? ("Love your neighbor as yourself.") What are you going to say to yourself this week when you read stories in the papers about people who are hungry or hurting in this world ? ("Love your neighbor as yourself.") You see? You’re a preacher, too.
May we pray?
We hear you, Lord. Your five second sermon isn’t so hard to remember. Please help us to go and live it, in Jesus name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa