Thomas J Parlette
“Passed Down”
Matt. 22: 34-46
10/25/26, Reformation Sunday
Today we get a glimpse of Jesus in the midst of a high stakes game of chess.
The Pharisees had heard about how Jesus got the best of the Sadducees, and now it’s their turn to try to take Jesus down. They come with a plan of attack with their pieces carefully laid out to try to push Jesus into an unwinnable situation. Everything is lined up just they want.
But just when they think that they’ve got Jesus pinned down – Jesus pulls off a brilliant check-mate – Game Over!
You can have the greatest plan, the most carefully laid out strategy in the world, but it can all be undone with the right check-mate.
This morning we return to Matthew’s Gospel. We are still in chapter 22. It is just a few days after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and it hasn’t taken Jesus long to become a real thorn in the side of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
He confronts the religious leaders head on by telling three parables that cast the religious leaders in a bad light. First, there was the parable of the Two Sons – both were asked to go work in the vineyard, one said “No”, but went anyway, and the other said “Yes”, but never showed up.
The second parable was about some Wicked Tenants who kill the landowners son and figure the vineyards now belongs to them – and the landowner wipes everyone out and destroys the vineyard.
The third parable was the one about the Wedding Banquet where no one shows up. So, the King sends servants out into the streets and invites those who seem less desirable.
All these parables that cast the Pharisees and Sadducees in a bad light are told on their home turf, the Temple – seemingly all on the same day. You can see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon and the religious leaders prepare to dig in and fight.
So, the Pharisees went off to a backroom somewhere and worked out a strategy whereby they would question Jesus about taxes – always a touchy subject. They thought they had the perfect trap set, but Jesus sidesteps their question and says- “Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, but give to God what belongs to God.”
So then the Sadducees come back for another run at Jesus. They ask a rather complicated question and a woman who marries some brothers, but they all die. And they ask – “At the resurrection, whose wife shall she be.” And Jesus cleverly dodges the question and notes that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Foiled again.
So now, here come the Pharisees again. They have heard how Jesus silenced the Sadducees, so they came up with another strategy – “Let’s ask him about the Law.” So they ask, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest.”
In Matthew’s version, Jesus answers directly, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Check, my friends. Your move.
Part 2 of this passage today tells us that the Pharisees were gathering together, no doubt discussing their next move – when Jesus goes on the offensive.
“You know, while I have you all here, let me ask you a question. What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
The Pharisees see this as a rather straightforward answer – everyone knew the Messiah was the Son of David. And they said so.
“Hmmm,” says Jesus. “Is that what you think? If that is so, how is it then that David, by the Spirit calls him Lord” and he quotes Psalm 110.
“If David calls him Lord, how can he be his son?
And… Check-Mate. The Pharisees looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Nobody had an answer for that on. They were beaten. Game Over. And no one dared to ask Jesus any more questions.
What Jesus does here isn’t really original. It’s how many Rabbi’s at the time would have handled the situation. There are a total of 613 commands in the Torah – 248 were about what devout Jews SHOULD do and 365 were prohibitions about what NOT to do. (1) That’s a lot of rules to follow. So it was not uncommon for Rabbi’s to debate over which rules were the most important – which ones were the highest priority. When considering this ranking, it wasn’t that some rules were worth following and others weren’t – the question really centered on which of these rules were most necessary to build our lives around. All the rules were important in their own way, but some carried more weight when it came to building a solid foundation for a godly life.
The famous Rabbi Hillel once gave an answer to a similar question posed here to Jesus. Tradition tells us that a man approached the Rabbi and asked him to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot. The Rabbi thought for a moment, raised one foot in the air and said, “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow – This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.” (2)
Jesus puts his own spin on a slightly different version of the question – “Which is the greatest commandment?”
For his answer, Jesus turns first to the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 6. He quotes a verse known as the Shema – a verse prayed by devout Jews every day. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment, says Jesus.
I imagine that the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the other devout Jews gathered in the crowd probably mouthed those words along with Jesus, as he spoke them. It directed godly people to love God with everything in them – love God with their whole being.
But Jesus isn’t done. Next, he draws on Leviticus 19: 8, part of our Old Testament reading for today. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” calling to mind the old story about Rabbi Hillel.
These two commandments are the priorities around which we build a godly life. If we build our spiritual lives on these two commandments, we will live a life pleasing to God.
This is Reformation Sunday – the Sunday we set aside each year to remember the role Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin played in re-shaping the practice of Christian faith. By focusing on being saved by grace and faith alone, the Reformers passed down their own version of these commandments – move in sync with God and neighbor – love everyone with your whole self - heart, soul and mind.
Or, here’s another way to look at it. This is why you have a QR code in your bulletin this morning. A blogger on substack.com who goes by The Biological Imagination once made an observation on how a “murmuration of starlings”, a flock of small birds, move together in harmony. I invite you to scan the QR code and watch a bit of the video…
Our human tendency is to focus on leaders, but nature gives us a unique image of the power of neighbors. A murmuration of starlings has no leader. Up to 750,000 birds, flying at 50 miles an hour, executing turns so tight and coordinated that they look choreographed. The flock splits, reforms, pulses like a single organism. Scientists once thought it required some sort of telepathy.
It doesn’t. It requires math.
Each starling follows three rules – fly in the same direction as your neighbors, stay close to them, and don’t crash into them. That’s it.
Alignment – Cohesion – Seperation.
Research shows that each bird tracks exactly 7 neighbors – not the whole flock, just 7 – and adjusts accordingly. When one bird moves, the change ripples out outward. The entire murmuration transforms in milliseconds.
No central command. No hierarchy. No one bird deciding where the flock goes. Just local awareness, propagated across hundreds of thousands of individuals, producing breathtaking complexity from almost nothing.
Humans look at coordination problems and immediately ask – who’s in charge? We build organizational charts. We appoint CEO’s. We elect Presidents. We assume that large-scale action requires a central authority issuing commands.
But the starlings demonstrate an alternative – distributed intelligence. Everyone follows simple rules. Everyone pays attention to their neighbors. And the system self-organizes.
We have spent centuries debating the optimal structure of governments. Monarchies, democracies, republics, dictatorships and federations. We have written libraries of political philosophy trying to solve the problem of collective action.
The starlings solved it with three rules and seven neighbors. (3)
They all fly in the same direction. They stay close, and they pay attention to seven neighbors around them, and they don’t crash into them.
As we move together as a murmuration of disciples, we organize ourselves around the ideas passed down to us by the Reformers – we are saved by grace alone, out faith puts us right with God. Nothing we do on our own can save us, only God, through Jesus Christ, can do that. We move in the same direction. We stay close, and we don’t crash into our neighbors.
And where did the Reformers get that idea? From Scripture alone, from the Word of God. They got it from Jesus himself, who gives us the answer to the question “Which commandment should we build our lives upon?”
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind” – move in the same direction as God, and stay close.
And “Love your neighbor as yourself” – in other words, don’t crash into each other.
Live your life like that, following the example passed down by the Reformers – and you will live a life pleasing to God.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Patrick Gray, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p 213.
2. Ibid… p 215.
3. Substack.com/@thebiologicalimagination/note/c-210774033. From Homiletics.com.
