Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
SCRIPTURE | MATTHEW 22:36-40 (NIV)
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.”
After such a short scripture passage for today, I’m sure you’re hoping for a shorter sermon, huh? This short passage carries a lot of meaning, so hunker down, because today we continue our exploration of what it means to be a godly neighbor as we turn to Mr. Rogers and planting seeds of faith. Last week, we talked about planting seeds and being the yeast for the world. We talked about how planting seeds can be small actions like starting a relationship with someone. This week, we’re talking about some other ways of planting seeds and – the all important question – what do we do when they’re planted?
We need to begin with a pretty important question for you all: why are plants important? We’re spending all this time talking about planting seeds and taking care of the seeds, but why are these little, soon-to-be-big things important at all? I came up with a few things: Plants provide us with food, nutrition like vitamins and minerals we don’t get from other sources, they give us fresh air, provide us with beauty and sweet smells, and they can help heal us when we’re sick. Plants are an essential part of our lives and the world we call home.
Faith acts the same way for our souls. It provides us with the nourishment our souls need with elements that can’t be found elsewhere, it gives us peace when we’re nervous or scared, it helps us see the good in all things, and lets us see God’s movements in the world, and it helps make us whole when we are empty. As Christians, we believe that this faith in Jesus Christ does all this and more.
Just as it is important for us to plant trees and fields of grain to provide for our bodies, it’s important to plant seeds of faith for our souls. Last week, the challenge was to plant new seeds by introducing yourself to someone new. Were you able to do that? If you didn’t, don’t feel bad, because I had an opportunity right in front of me yesterday and completely blew it! I forgot all about what I had talked about and missed the opportunity to plant seeds there. But the good news is, that there will always be more opportunities and the even better news is that planting seeds can take more forms that just introducing yourself.
What are some ways you can think of? Maybe you can read the Bible with your family in the mornings. Or you can invite a friend to family night. You can bring a neighbor to Worship. Or bring a hotdish to someone that could really use a hotdish. You can be ready to share about your faith and open about it when people ask you. Really, planting seeds just looks like being a faithful Christian.
But now we come to the question of the day: how do we take care of the seeds once they’re planted? I would argue that planting seeds is the easy bit – for both gardens and for people. It’s easy to till up the soil and get the seeds tucked away, but the hard work lies in helping those seeds to grow. It takes weeding and fertilizing and making sure the bugs stay away and watering. In short, it takes a lot.
In the same way, helping a seed of faith to grow takes a lot of work too because it takes a lot of love. In your Bible, I invite you to turn to the scripture passage for today: Matthew 22:36-40. Here Jesus has been teaching and a devote leader of the Jewish faith has come to Him with a question. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
You’ve likely heard this passage before – but just in case it’s new to you, Jesus is saying that everything which the Bible teaches can be summed up by loving God with your everything, and loving your neighbor as yourself. For some of us, this might be a little defeating. Is the best way to grow seeds of faith really by loving people? I don’t think that anyone thinks of loving people as a bad thing in principle, but I know many people who are tired of the lovey-dovey language which we hear a lot of: Love conquers all. Follow your heart and it will lead you to your true love. All you need is love. Love can get over anything and accept everything.
Man it makes me sick. And I have news for you, this is not the kind of love Jesus is talking about here. The problem with this kind of love is that it actually isn’t love at all. The thought that blind acceptance of everything is an act of love, is nonsense. Let’s take a great example from the Bible.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7, God says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
This comes right after the Ten Commandments. Here, God is telling parents that they need to teach their kids these things – to impress these beliefs on them. But that sounds a little sour to our modern ears. Should we be impressing beliefs on our children? Shouldn’t they get to discover and choose for themselves what they believe? The love that is all accepting would say, of course we shouldn’t impress – or oppress – our children. But the love of the Bible says we HAVE to impress these things on our children because they are too important to ignore.
Love in the Bible is a commitment to the hard work of making each other better. True love is the willingness to have hard conversations, to work for the better of someone you hate, to listen to those you despise or disagree with, to take the hard steps in helping those you are close to live the best life they can live, and to be ready to receive that help yourself. The love of the Bible is that which take you as you are and helps you be the person God is calling you to be.
Parents know this love and know that it is not easy. I pick on toddlers a lot, but it’s because they are so relatable. Have any of you ever had to take something away from a toddler that would hurt them, but then they get enraged because of it? Like taking a battery away from them, and dealing with a hour long temper tantrum because they wanted to eat it. This is the kind of hard work it takes to grow seeds of faith in others.
I watched an episode of Mr. Rogers this week where he brought in a bunch of different packets of seeds. He went on to explain how each seed needed its own type of soil, different amounts of water, sunlight, etc. and that each seed would grow into a unique plant from the others. In the same way, humans never grow the same. If humans were a crop, they would be the most finicky hard crop to grow because we each grow so differently.
What that means for us as we seek to help seeds of faith grow by loving our neighbors is that it will take something different for each seed. Some seeds will sprout and grow quickly. Others will take years or may never grow. But good gardeners know that it’s important not to give up – to keep adjusting what you’re doing to help it grow until you find what works.
So what’s our challenge this week? To plant seeds of faith and to help them grow by loving the people they’re growing in. This means being willing to show your faith by living as Christ calls you to live. This means loving people in the way the Bible calls us to – by loving people for who they are and helping them be who God is calling them to be. And this means being ready for the hard work that’s ahead. So, church. Are you ready?