This sermon was originally preached at St. John’s Congaree on Sunday, October 25, 2026. The lectionary texts were from Proper 25A (Track 1) and included Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Matthew 22:34-46.
Only It Wasn’t
Rebecca’s parents are both Episcopal priests. With three priests already and at least one of our boys aspiring to be a priest, you could call it a family business. They serve as rectors of growing, thriving parishes in Florida. My father-in-law ‘s daily commute to work is 62.5 miles…and that’s just one way.
Since he started in July 2020, he’s driven 194,000 miles.
Yes, you heard/read that correctly: 194,000 miles.
That’s almost 31,000 miles per year on average.
Enough to circle the globe almost eight times.
Needless to say, he has a lot of windshield time. He usually spends it making phone calls or listening to a book on Audible. Occasionally, he has witnessed feral hogs grazing along the highway or roseate spoonbills soaring overhead, not to mention all the “Florida people.”
This week he witnessed something which made him stop. Waiting to pull onto I-95 South, he watched a teenager cross an intersection on a bicycle in front of two lanes of traffic. Something must have spooked the cyclist, because he fell off his bike in the intersection. With cars revving to finish their commute, the scene looked like a powder keg of impatience and angst.
Only it wasn’t.
A man driving a pickup truck hopped out of his vehicle. He ran over and helped the cyclist up. Patting him on the back, the good samaritan helped the boy onto his bike. Mission accomplished.
Only it wasn’t.
As he began pedaling away, the cyclist spotted his sandal in the middle of the intersection. The man quickly scooped up the sandal, put it on the teen’s foot, patted him on the back, and finally made his exit, intersection left.
My father-in-law witnessed something magical. The other drivers on their way to work, the hospital, or out for a donut run, full of their own thoughts, dreams, hurts, and longings, saw this, too. Part of the miracle was that nary a horn was honking.
In a world where you are told to keep your head down with your nose to the grind and a stiff upper lip, it could have been easy to explain this away or ignore it altogether as a one-off.
Only it wasn’t.
It was holy ground.
It was the kingdom breaking in.
It was a living and breathing enfleshment of what it looks like to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Now I want to be clear: random acts of kindness are NOT the same as the gospel. I don’t know if our good Samaritan from the intersection was a disciple of Jesus. What I do know, however, is that God’s great and gracious love is unrelenting. Our life in Christ should express that love to others, even if it means helping a cyclist in traffic.
Our scene from Matthew 22 comes one scene after Jesus entrapped the Pharisaical posse with the denarius. When they realized what Jesus had done, they walked away amazed. Then came the Sadducees – you remember them, they were sad-you-see because they didn’t believe in the resurrection. They challenged Jesus with a bogus scenario and he silenced them.
And then the Pharisees come forward with a question: Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?
At first blush, it may seem innocent.
Only it wasn’t.
The Pharisees were the authorized peddlers and self-proclaimed protectors of the law. They were not actually seeking Jesus’ interpretation. They are baiting him so they can silence him, by hook or by crook or by cross.
For teachers of the law to ask a question like this would be like your doctor asking you what the Hippocratic Oath is, it’s nonsensical. It’s nefarious.
And they know that.
And Jesus knows that.
Yet still he answers.
Jesus responds with two commandments: love God and love neighbor. The command to love God comes from the Shema, the daily prayer which Israel prayed morning and night as a reminder of who God is, who they are, and whose they are. Hear O Israel, the LORD is our God, the Lord is one.
Love of God is first and foremost, but it is easy to hate, ignore, neglect, or degrade others in the name of God, isn’t it? Jew versus Greek, Male versus female, slave versus free, Hatfields versus McCoys, Gamecocks versus Volunteers. Jesus therefore gives the second command to remind his hearers that you cannot hate your neighbor, your family, your enemy, or yourself and still claim to love God.
Luke’s version of this story is slightly different: the lawyer asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life and Jesus responds by asking him which of the commands are greatest. It is the lawyer who responds with the Big 2 and Jesus then teaches him what love and mercy in action look like by sharing the parable of the Good Samaritan. The better neighbor being the one who showed mercy and love.
Jesus’ reply to the lawyer in Matthew is both answer and rebuke. The lawyer is trying to weaponize scripture against Jesus, focusing solely on “the letter of the law,” but Jesus’s rebuke is the reminder that the spirit and shape of the law matters as well.
The law is not given for legalism but for love.
The shape of the law is love;
The purpose of the law is love;
The essence of God is perfect love;
The goal of creation is…wait for it…love.
And not cheap love or toxic love or teenage love or any other kind of synthetic, dupe, knockoff, imitation love on the market. Love at its purest, most real.
These commandments are two sides of the same coin, mutually interpreting one another, constantly spurring the other side on to fidelity and steadfastness.
Jesus asks the Pharisees a question whilst they are still reeling from his previous answer. He asks, “Whose son is the Messiah?” Jesus is showing the Torah expert that he neither understands the law nor Jesus.
The phrase “Son of David” is a favorite of Matthew’s. He uses it 10 times in his gospel while it is only used 6 times in the other three gospels combined. This phrase depicts the Messiah as being the inheritor and fulfillment of God’s promise to David that a king would come after him and sit on his throne forever.
That promise made all those years ago felt forgotten.
Only it wasn’t.
Jesus is the Son of David.
Matthew tells us this in his genealogy which traces Jesus’ bloodline through David going all the way back to Abraham. The crowd called Jesus the Son of David as he entered the city in triumph the day before. What then is the point of this? Jesus is showing us that he will embody his Davidic Messiahship in ways different from what was expected.
How will Jesus enact his role as the Davidic Messiah?
Through the love of God and love of neighbor.
What form will that take?
Washing feet, turning cheeks, forgiveness, hanging on the cross.
The true Messiah, the true King of Israel, the Great High Priest who has sacrificed himself as the atonement for our sins, perfectly keeps the law of love because God is love.
We, too, are called to follow the law of love.
Our story from Deuteronomy appears to be about the peaceful passing of power from Moses to Joshua.
Only it wasn’t.
This passage depicts what true God-love really looks like.
We have spent the last 10 weeks with Moses.
We read about his miraculous birth story;
We explored his call to serve as Israel’s deliverer;
We witnessed God’s power being displayed through him;
We met the grumblers whom the LORD entrusted to his care;
We watched him stand between God and the people;
We heard his heart for both his Shepherd and his flock.
But the story has come to an end.
We are at the end of a life well-lived, well-led, and well-loved.
He was 40 when he fled Egypt and found life in the wilderness.
He was 80 when he found the burning bush and was called by the Great I Am to tell Pharaoh “let my people go.”
Now, he is getting ready to enter into the inheritance…
Only he wasn’t.
At 120, he surveys the Promised Land laid out before him. 120 years is a long time.
The oldest verified person to live was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment. Born in 1875, she lived to the ripe old age of 122. As a young girl, Calment sold paint canvases to Vincent van Gogh, describing him as “ugly as sin” who “smelled of booze” and had a “vile temper.” She died in 1997 after the first successful cloning of an animal.
120 years will take you from van Gogh to animal cloning.
Back to the land.
This is the land that God pledged to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;
This is the land toward which Israel has wandered for 40 years;
This is the land flowing with milk and honey;
This is the land intended as Israel’s rest.
And Moses gets to see it from afar but he does not get to enjoy it. He is denied entry because he dishonored God by disobediently distrusting his word. The point of the 40-year desert sojourn was that the Israelites were a rebellious people, constantly grumbling against God. Moses was supposed to be above this, but he demonstrates his own rebellion of the heart by refusing to do what God had instructed and instead doing it his own way. In fact, Joshua and Caleb were the only two from the Exodus generation who were allowed to leave Egypt and enter the land flowing with milk and honey.
Do y’all remember Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way”? Living life with “My Way” as your guiding principle takes you away from God’s will and way and results in wilderness wandering, idolatrous worship, and a stiff neck.
Verses 9-12 contain three significant elements which form the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God.
1. Trust. It may have taken 40 years to develop, but the people trusted Joshua because they trusted Moses and therefore they trusted YHWH. The good news is that God can take a grumbling, complaining, and distrusting people and turn them into a trusting and trustworthy flock who will inherit ancient promises. They have learned to respond to those promises with “Yes and amen.” The bad news is that it takes both time and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. It happens daily, not in a day.
2. Love. We discover in verse 10 that the Lord knew Moses “face to face.” This is an intimate relationship, a relationship in which Moses is both known and loved by YHWH. Yes, YHWH knows all of Moses’ shortcomings: how he snores, leaves the toilet seat up, and has a bit of a temper. Despite all of that, perhaps even because of it, YHWH loves Moses with a holy and perfect love and Moses loves YHWH in return, in response. Moses saw God’s shekinah glory, his essence and essential goodness, his fierce love and then he radiated it among the people.
3. Obedience. I want to be careful with how I say this, lest we fall into a truncated debate on faith and works. Moses performed great and powerful works before Israel and Egypt because God had called him to! Moses’ works are actually just the faithful, faith-filled, obedient response to God’s ongoing work. We are called to works, yes, but not works for ourselves or works for earning salvation and grace. Rather, our works are our obedient response to what God has done, is doing, and will do in our lives.
Trust, love, and obedience are the bedrock of Israel’s relationship with God. This was true under Moses’ leadership and, as we will see next week, it will also be true of Joshua’s leadership. Using the words of the collect, we can describe this trinity another way: faith, hope, and love.
We trust that God is who he says he is;
That he will do what he has promised to do;
And that he loves us with a love that will not let us go.
How, then, are we called to love God, neighbor, and ourselves?
Our love of God must propel us toward our neighbor and neighborhood with love. And our love of neighbor and neighborhood must point them back to God.
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul paints the picture of love expressed through Gospel ministry and service. He says that he and his companions gave not only the Gospel but their very lives to those whom they served. Christian love is all-encompassing. They were gentle, like a nurse tenderly caring for her children, as they lived among those in their neighborhood.
We are called to gentleness and tenderness.
There is enough noise and violence and hatred and vitriol in the world right now with people feeling judged and condemned. Our call is to be gentle and tender as we love people with the love of God, loving them into the kingdom.
It’s not about brow-beating and Bible-thumping, but people-loving and Jesus-sharing.
Having spent several weeks with you, I believe I can see your strengths and perhaps your main mission challenge. Your strengths are obvious: you are a loving, welcoming people. You pray together, you worship together, and you eat together. Emphasis on eating. You are a very active parish with an all-hands-on-deck mentality for mission and ministry. This is good.
Your biggest challenge, I think, is your location. Not the building or grounds – both are gorgeous. The challenge is that it's off the beaten path. You are not a stone’s throw away from much of anything.
My parish in Florida was in a similar position. We were tucked back in a residential neighborhood – the only church in Cocoa Beach not on a major thoroughfare. You only knew it was there if you walked or drove by it on your way to work.
You might think it was impossible to overcome.
Only it wasn’t.
St. John’s, use your strengths to overcome your challenge. Let your love be known in the whole community. Your Prayers of the People are a great example: you are praying for everyone you know and their mother; you have outreach to schools; you are cognizant of your surroundings. Now go and love your neighbor and neighborhood that way! Let them know who you are, whose you are, and why you are by the way you love them.
The love of God has not, cannot, and will not let you go. You have been created in, saved through, and transformed by that very same self-sacrificing, hanging-on-the-cross, the-tomb-is-empty, he-is-risen-and-reigning kind of love. And when we express and enflesh that love as Jesus did, when we become walking sacraments and transform ordinary places into holy ground, we take what was seen as ordinary and say: Only it wasn’t. Amen.