Hey my friends,

Today I wanted to reflect with you on a section of Matthew's gospel that I have rarely heard preached. It comes directly after Jesus speaking to the Pharisees about the greatest commandment in Matthew 22. I think it has deep significance for the world we are living in today but is a deeply challenging concept to follow.

Recommended Resources

​-The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture by Karen R. Keen. How did we get the Bible? And why does it matter? History reveals that Scripture can be used for both life-giving and destructive purposes. Discovering the Bible's origins makes all the difference for fostering redemptive interpretation of Scripture. Bringing together both historical criticism and theology, this book examines ancient scribal culture through the lens of faith. What we find is a divine-human collaboration that points to the character of God and the value of human agency.

​-Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg. This book was transformative to me and helped me with practical methods of communication, especially in very contentious situations. In my work online, I really needed this book and perhaps you'll find it helpful as well.

​-See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur. In my opinion, this is a must read book. It is incredibly profound and deeply relevant for our world today.

-The Cure for Self-Importance by Hidden Brain podcast. When we meet new people, we’re often drawn to those with a commanding presence or a dazzling personality. But it turns out that a very different trait, humility, is important in the long term. In this episode, there is an insightful conversation with psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren about different kinds of humility, and how this overlooked quality can play a powerful role in workplace dynamics and romantic relationships. It also has deep significance for navigating life in general.

The season of Advent begins on November 29th this year. If you are looking for a daily devotional, I wrote one recently. You can read more about it below.

$20.00 Solace: The Birth of Hope in a Time of Longing This devotional is an ebook, crafted as a daily scripture readings and reflections that begin on the First Sunday of... Read more Get it now!

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Without Humility, There Is No Love.

Matthew 22:34-46

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’

45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

The Enemy Of My Enemy.

This is really a fascinating exchange here between the Pharisees and Jesus. I find it interesting that Matthew says the Pharisees got together to test Jesus because Jesus “silenced” the Sadducees. Historical records show us that the Sadducees and Pharisees did not get along very well. They had a lot of differences even though they were part of the same nation and religion. The Sadducees accepted only the Torah as authoritative, while the Pharisees accepted the Torah, the prophets, and the psalms as authoritative. The Sadducees were among the wealthy, priestly class and held political power, while the Pharisees were not, but had endeared themselves to the common people and had great influence among them. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, while the Pharisees did.

In Jesus’ interaction with the Sadducees in Matthew 22:23-33, we see these differences on full display. The Sadducees test Jesus specifically on the resurrection, using the levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:5: if a man dies without children, his brother must marry the widow to raise up offspring for him.

The Sadducees used this as a riddle to not only make the resurrection of the dead seem absurd, but as Jerusalem's wealthy, aristocratic, priestly ruling class, they had a massive vested interest in how this law regulated property, wealth consolidation, and inheritance. In ancient Israel, land was the ultimate source of wealth and status. According to the Torah (the only scripture the Sadducees deemed authoritative), land could not be permanently sold outside of its ancestral tribe or family. If an upper-class man died childless, his estate was at risk of being fractured, legally tied up, or transferred to an outside family if his widow remarried a stranger. Levirate marriage ensured that the deceased man's estate remained entirely within the exact same household and family line.

For the aristocratic Sadducees, executing levirate marriage was a strict legal necessity to prevent their massive wealth and sprawling family estates from being drained or compromised by outsiders. So we see them not only challenging resurrection theology but also how that theology challenged their political and economic interests.

Jesus stated that they were wrong because they "do not know the Scriptures or the power of God”. He explained that in the resurrection, people do not marry or give themselves in marriage; instead, they will be like the angels in heaven, directly challenging their concepts of wealth and property rights. Rather than quoting later prophetic books the Sadducees rejected, Jesus used the Torah, which they accepted. He cited Exodus 3:6, where God says to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”

By doing this, Jesus pointed out that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still alive to God centuries after their physical deaths, the afterlife and the resurrection are real. The crowds were left completely astonished, and the Sadducees were silenced.

Given this, I wonder if the Pharisees gathered after hearing that Jesus silenced the Sadducees because they were impressed by Jesus, or if it was more a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of situation. It does seem that Jesus was less harsh with the Pharisees than with the Sadducees. He straight up tells the Sadducees they don't know the Scriptures or the power of God, while only asking the Pharisees theological questions after they tried to test him.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, whether you’ve wondered the same thing about this interaction.

The Prerequisite To Love.

We can’t know the Pharisees’ precise intentions, but we do know one of their legal experts also tried to test Jesus by asking what the greatest commandment was. Here again, I’m not sure what the “test” was here. Because Jesus gave the answer everyone standing there would already know. He wasn’t giving anyone new information. So was it just a test to see if he knew the basics? Or were they building up to something more?

Whatever their overall goal might have been, Jesus had other plans and took the opportunity to ask more questions while they were still standing there. He asks them an interesting question: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They respond, “The Son of David.” Then he says something even more intriguing: “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” Those standing there couldn’t answer, and they never dared to ask him another question.

I was really confused by this question from Jesus the first time I read it. It felt so out of left field and disconnected from anything he'd said before. Like, what does this have to do with the Greatest Commandment? But the more I have studied this passage in its original context and read commentaries on it from scholars, the more I have found that Jesus was directly connecting it to what the greatest commandment of love requires: humility.

Jesus points out that David was praying to the Messiah in Spirit and called him “Lord.” David was king, slayed the giant, and had a strong line to carry his name. He could have seen his descendant as someone to lord power over rather than someone to call "lord." As the great public theologian Zina Jacque wrote in her commentary on this passage, “David demonstrated the humility that makes love possible. And the Pharisees, who know the commandment perfectly, cannot answer because the question asks them to do the same thing David did: subordinate themselves to someone they did not expect to be above them. They cannot do it. Not because they don’t know the commandment. Because they haven’t done the prior work of humility.”

So Jesus not only communicated the greatest commandment, to love God and love neighbor, but also gave the example of what it takes to love that way: humility.

I think in our day and age, it is easy to point out the “modern-day Pharisees.” Those who use their religion as a tool of control and self-serving power, all while not caring in the slightest about their pride, ego, and inability to put others first. But what about within ourselves? Where do we find it immensely hard to follow that great commandment to love? Who do we find it difficult to want the best for? Who have we allowed ourselves to see as mattering a little less because of the beliefs or behaviors they have shown that we believe bring great harm into our world?

This is immensely challenging for me because I believe that if I truly want love to shape and influence our world, it has to begin with my humility, not by my trying to humble others into loving others well. So there is some inner work to be done. To see where a lack of humility may be standing in the way of letting love fully lead me. For love will only flourish when we begin with humility ourselves.

Prayer

Jesus,

In Philippians 2, Paul says that you had equality with God,

But you did not see that equality as something to be exploited for your own selfish gain.

You instead lowered yourself and took on the form of a servant out of love for all.

You had all cosmic power and privilege, yet you chose humility and service instead, even when it led you to a cross.

It was that posture of humility that God saw fit to lift your name above all other names.

In fact, that is the nature of God's upside down kingdom. That the greatest in God's eyes is the humble one.

So Jesus, help us be like you.

Help us to lift others up in humility rather than tear others down in arrogance.

Help us to be humble as you are so that we can love as you do.

In your name we pray,

Amen.
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Now I'd like to hear from you! Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them. A 30 Day Day Devotional: I wrote a daily devotional in hopes to provide a companion for people seeking to follow Jesus through the season of we are currently navigating together. You can find out more below: $20.00 Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires: 30 Days of reclaiming the hope, compassion, and justice of Jesus. Today, our world can often feel overwhelmed by darkness, division, and despair. I created this 30-day devotional to... Read more Get it now! ​ Ways to support: If you'd like to support this project, you can do so through one-time-gift of any amount you feel is right. You can also subscribe through a $5/mo, $15/mo, or $25/mo. Several others have also asked for a recurring gift option that is different from the ones offered here, like this one. If you'd like me to set up a different option for you, please just send me an email with the word "support" in the subject line. As always, I really want to thank all of you for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every single week. I'm thankful for the ways we are building this together and hope it creates a lasting, positive change in our world along the way! I sincerely appreciate you all, Ben Remember, you can now view this and all previous newsletters as well as invite friends to join through this link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.

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