Sunday Worship
Welcome to Sunday Worship in Leesfield Parish on the 21st Sunday after Trinity. Our Church Services this morning are at the usual times of 9.15 am at St Agnes' and 11 am at St Thomas'.
If you're unable to be with us in person, you can find resources below to worship at home.
Our first hymn this morning is "Beauty For Brokenness (God of the Poor)"
Today's Gospel
Matthew 22:34-46 The Question about the Messiah
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’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 neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Reflection
I’m not going to try and fool anyone. The reality is that there are many questions in life that are hard. Not just when it’s about things that are very complex and theoretical like quantum physics, but also some things that are just beyond our ability to comprehend.
In today’s passage, Jesus is referring to Psalm 110 written by David 1000 years BC. It is one of the most quoted psalms in the bible and would have been widely used in the temples in Jesus’ time.
I mentioned in my last reflection how the Pharisees were considered by many to be hypocrites because they had a habit of interpreting the religious laws for the benefits of themselves and the government leaders of the day. That said, they were also extremely learned scholars who studied all the Jewish religious texts intensely. They were the experts regarding interpretation of the scriptures.
This event takes place when Jesus has been undergoing an examination and a series of challenging and questions from the Pharisees in an attempt to try and catch Him out and expose Him for blasphemy. Remember last weeks question about paying taxes to Caesar?
But now, the tables are turned and Jesus has the opportunity to reverse things and ask them a question. It should be noted that Jesus wasn’t just challenging one or two pharisees, they were all gathered together, so he was giving them all the opportunity to draw on their collective and extensive knowledge of the scriptures. He was taking them all on at once! It looked like He was giving them the ‘upper hand’.
When Jesus asks them, : “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”, they reply with, “The son of David.” This is based, as we might expect, on the Scriptures, where King David was told, ‘When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.’ [2 Samuel 7:12-13].
It shows their understanding that the Messiah will be a flesh and blood, human descendant of King David. The Pharisees get a tick, but unfortunately not the gold star because they haven’t answered the question fully.
Jesus’ follow up question is far harder than a simple interpretation of Samuel. As we have seen, He quotes the actual words of David which were accepted by religious scholars to have been given to Him by God about the Messiah: ‘The LORD said to my Lord’.
The learned scholars are now in a dilemma; they can maintain that the Messiah is just flesh and blood, but if they do so, how do they explain what David has said about the Messiah? - because David refers to Him as LORD, and these words were given to David by God. How do they understand that a human being can also be God? So they just sit in silence – there doesn’t even appear to be any philosophical debate on the question.
The truth is that they are totally incapable and unprepared to accept that Jesus can be both human flesh and also divine. It’s a massive thing to conceptualise even for us. It’s a question that goes to the heart of our belief and requires faith in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus did not just ask this question of the pharisees, He also asked the same question from His disciples, [Matthew 16:15-17], and it was Peter who replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" Jesus commended Peter and called him blessed because He knew, as with David, that knowledge had come directly from God.
As I said at the beginning of this reflection, there some questions that are really hard, not least theological ones. There are some things that we must accept are beyond our ability as humans to answer on our own, based on our experience, knowledge or basis of proof. We have to understand and accept our limitations because we are not divine.
Nevertheless, the question that Jesus asked His disciples and the pharisees is one that we should all take time to reflect on.
Jesus does not ask us to think about who other people think He is. He is asking each of us in person, ‘Who do you say that I am’.
It is something we need to pray on and ask God.
The following quote from John 1:14 may help: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’. Paul
Our Prayers
