The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. It was Holy Week and the final days before Jesus would be crucified. Jews from all around the world had gathered to Jerusalem for the spring cycle of feasts, Passover through Pentecost. The triumphal entry of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey at the beginning of the feast had become the talk of the town, along with his cleansing of the temple where he fashioned a whip and drove out man and beast while turning over the money changers tables. My house shall be a house of prayer, he said, but you have turned it into a den of thieves. Two groups were continuously hostile to Jesus, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, two sects that had come into existence a mere 150 to 200 years before. The Pharisees consisted mostly of laity, non-priests. Pharisee literally means separated one. They emphasized genetic ties to Abraham, keeping the Mosaic covenant and adherence to even more laws and rules that they themselves had invented. They were contemptuous of those who did not live as strictly as they lived. They loved money and status and they were jealous of the influence of Jesus and they despised him because he broke barriers, he ate and drank with sinful and unworthy people. The second sect, the Sadducees, were much smaller in number but consisted of people generally of higher and wealthier status. The name Sadducee derives from the name Zadok, a priest of the Old Testament associated with David and Solomon from roughly a thousand years before. The Sadducees may have claimed to descend from him but even if they did, their belief system was very different. They only accepted the five books of Moses to be the scriptures. They did not believe that the rest were, nor did they believe in an afterlife. You die and that's it. And it seems that they also rejected angels or anything, as we would say in the creed, invisible. They did not like Jesus because he taught the very things that they rejected and likewise he threatened to destabilize their positions of power. In our gospel text from Matthew 22, we read that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment of the law? When the Bible uses the word lawyer, it doesn't mean what we mean today. The law meant either the five books of Moses or all of the Old Testament scriptures depending upon context. A lawyer then was an expert in the scriptures. In other words, an expert in the Bible is asking Jesus what the greatest commandment is. That should tell you right off the bat that this isn't an innocent question. He isn't looking for information. He's putting Jesus to the test, hoping that he will say something debatable or wrong. What is the greatest commandment in the law, in the Bible? Jesus answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Jesus
