Commandment or Commitment?
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 10/23/2011
Based on Matthew 22: 34-46
This past week I took a Holiday in what people universally call “the windy city”, Chicago! In my opinion, those who call Chicago the “windy city” have never spent any time in SW Wyoming. While I was there, I went to the city of Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, and toured the early home of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Mr. Wright, at the age of twenty-two built his first home, where he and his family lived for about twenty years. This house which later included his working studio is nestled in a beautiful neighborhood of Victorian homes. Mr. Wright built this home around 1890. It was a dramatic break from the stately looking Victorians.
For those of you who are not familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright, he is one of the pioneers of what we would call “the green movement”. He helped reshape the concept that a building should blend in with its environment, not shape its surroundings. He is the father of the style of architecture called “prairie style” homes. After lengthy interviews with you, learning about you as an individual, he would design a home that reflected who you were. Yet his homes of the 1890’s through the 1920’s became what we now call the “norm” in building.
As I was taking a walking tour around the neighborhood, it was very obvious which homes had been either designed or redesigned by Mr. Wright. Next to very handsome Victorian homes, which might have been only five years old, you could see these modernistic, linear style homes designed by Mr. Wright. During my walk, I began to wonder what the established neighbors were saying about this young upstart, building these radically different looking houses in their well groomed traditional looking neighborhood.
Down the street I found two very fine looking traditional looking churches; one was the Methodist Church and the other was a Congregational Church. Then next door to the Congregational Church was the Unity Church, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It didn’t have the majestically upward spiraling look that the other two churches had, rather, the Unity church was low, almost hidden in the landscape with horizontal lines.
On my walking tour, I had a little cassette player that was giving me information about the specific homes that Mr. Wright designed or did additions to. The tour guide also called attention to some of the Victorian and Queen Anne houses that had significant architectural styles of their period which influenced Mr. Wright in his designs, bridging the older concepts with his newer visions.
In many respects, the way that Frank Lloyd Wright looked at architecture and how it was to blend with one’s life and that of nature, is very much how Jesus was with his understanding of how the “laws”, those ten commandments were to be lived out. When confronted by an expert in the law, of which was the most important, Jesus gives them an answer that not only stops his questioning but also reshapes how to look at it. “Instead of reducing the importance of the laws, he paints a picture of them as a coherent whole that “hangs together.” Jesus sees the law very differently than the experts did and his response “undermines the whole notion of the law as rules and regulations. What Jesus claims is that the whole law is about love, not rules, about really loving God and one’s neighbor, not about figuring out how to avoid stepping on cracks in the legal sidewalk.” UCC sermon seeds, Thomas Long.
As we read the story’s of Jesus and how he seems to come up with these outstanding teachings and responses, we tend to think that what he is saying is all original to him, yet much of what Jesus says comes from what is written in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus’ response to “which of the commandments is most important” comes from Deuteronomy 6:“4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.[a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
We are coming up to that uncomfortable season of “stewardship”. That time when we talk about money and what to give to the church. Scripture tells us that we are to give 10% of back to God. When we think about what we are pledging to the church, we too often look at it as a “bill”, and the concept of “tithing” (which means 10%) like one of the commandments. “God says, you are to give a tenth of what you earn back to God!” “Now how do I tweak this law, so that I give 10% but don’t have to give actual dollars in that amount? Oh I know, I’ll give my time and do things around the church and for charity and things like that, then I will count that as part of my 10% as “in kind.” This is how the Pharisees would take this commandment and massage it to meet their legal obligations along their desire to spend their money on themselves.
Jesus shared stories to get his listeners to think about what was written in scripture. In this same way, the Rev Kathy Huey, staff person with the national offices of the UCC, shares her story about this question of “greatest commandment”: several years ago, inspired by the witness of two older women, longtime and faithful members of the church who told me their stories of tithing, I decided to take the step of increasing my own giving to the church I loved. Increasing to a tithe (10%) was a challenge but it surprised me that my feelings followed after the action, or after the commitment, if you will. I found that I loved my church more when I gave more to it, much as we love our children more after giving of ourselves to them over many years. So it seems that when we decide to set our hearts in a direction, toward something or someone, and when we do the things that fulfill that commitment, our feelings often follow afterward. The laws of giving and Sabbath and loving, I believe, are God's way of getting us to do what we need to do, what's good for us; these laws give us the direction for setting our hearts. Again, it's a thing of mystery. Ucc sermon seeds, Kate Huey Oct 23,2011 What Kathryn found out is that when she stopped looking at the idea of “tithing” as a commandment, and realized the wholeness of scripture as one of “love”, she then was able to live out her financial giving as a commitment rather than a commandment.
The definition of a commandment is: To direct with authority; give orders to. 2. To have control or authority over. When we read in Deuteronomy 6, “love God with all our heart and soul and strength, and have it on our heart”, the question arises, “How can we be commanded to “love” something or somebody?” A part of our problem with the understanding of the word “love” comes from how abused this word is in our culture. From a biblical sense, the understanding of love, “is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Deut. 6:5 demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment". And commitment can be seen as a setting of the heart, something we choose to do, a way we freely choose to live our lives. Commitment is that mysterious mingling of feeling and action, a beautiful dance between the two. UCC Sermon Seeds, Douglas Hare, Oct 23, 2011 You see, Jesus turns the question of “which is more important” into a commitment instead of a commandment; of a lifestyle not something to wiggle around.
What does it mean to you to “love God with all of your heart, mind, and soul? And then your neighbor as yourself?” Is it a commandment or is it a commitment? Each will determine how we look at what we do with not only our money, but with how we look at social justice, of stewardship of our world, and of how we treat the Sabbath! Amen
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