Chasing the Rabbit
Matthew 22:34-46

I have never attended a horse race in person but I have watched the Kentucky Derby on television, if that counts.  I know enough to know that the performance of the horse depends not only on the innate qualities of the horse, but also on the guidance of the jockey.

Greyhound dog racing isn’t like that.  There is no jockey.  Something else motivates the greyhounds — a mechanical rabbit that speeds around the track keeping just ahead of the dogs.

There was an interesting story a few years ago about a greyhound race at a track in Florida.  The dogs all left the starting gate in fine form.  Then something went terribly wrong.  There was an electrical short and the mechanical rabbit burst into flames.  All that was left was a bit of scorched fur and some dangling wires.  Of course the fake rabbit stopped dead in its tracks.  The dogs reacted in a variety of ways.  Some just laid down on the track.  Some kept running but smashed into the side walls.  Some whined and moaned at the crowd.  None of them finished the race.

Now we aren’t horses or greyhounds or even rabbits.  Yet, if you are like me, sometimes you feel like you are racing around the track crashing into walls, moaning and groaning, or just giving up on things.  Sometimes when our rabbit crashes and burns, we welcome rules and laws so everything will be spelled out for us.  Sometimes we think that if we can just obey every rule perfectly, life will settle down and we can race around that track and win the prize.

In today’s gospel and throughout the gospels, Jesus is not criticizing the Pharisees for their desire to keep the Torah even in the minutest details.  He knows their legal minds are trying to trap him but even that isn’t his greatest concern.  He knows that the laws and rules of the Torah are meant to focus on loving God, loving our neighbor.  They also contribute to the public good and public health.

It seems to me that his greatest concern is that the Pharisees cannot see the forest for the trees.  When they focus so intently on minute details of the law, they are missing the central value behind the Torah.  That value upon which all the law and prophets hang is:

“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.”

When Jesus says these things to the lawyer in today’s gospel, he is not pulling them out of thin air.  He is actually taking them from the books of Deuteronomy (6:5) and Leviticus (19:18).  Sometimes in contemporary portrayals of Jesus, we see an emphasis on Jesus as one who “breaks the rules”, when actually Jesus himself says he has come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

A few weeks ago when The Rev. Bob Allen preached here at St. James’, he presented an image of the cross that has stuck in my mind.  He pictured the upright post of the cross as representing our relationship with God — us at the bottom, God at the top in a two-way relationship; he depicted the cross bar as another two-way relationship representing our relationship with each other.  It strikes me that the upright post always needs to be grounded first.  Then the cross bar has something solid to support it.

The greatest and first commandment is that we love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind. We don’t achieve this by running around the track a few times.  It is a life-long effort.  It takes God’s grace to give us any perspective on how to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind.  We are invited to follow an eternal guide — not chase a fake rabbit.  The second commandment — to love our neighbor as ourselves can be even more difficult.   It certainly takes a life-long effort.   If you are like me, you fail at it at least as often as you succeed.

Laws and rules devised by man often come and go.  We read some of the laws in the Book of Leviticus with amazement.  Rules that dictate what may and may not be eaten, for example include, “All winged insects that walk upon all fours are detestable to you.  But among the winged insects that walk on all fours you may eat those that have jointed legs above their feet, with which to leap on the ground.” (11:20)  This means locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers made the list of good  and acceptable food for the Jewish people.   Lots of other bugs didn’t make the cut.

But lest we laugh too soon, listen to the content of some of the laws that have been on the books in Little Rock, Arkansas:  It is unlawful to walk one’s cow down Main Street after 1:00 p.m. on Sunday.  Dogs may not bark after 6 p.m.  Alligators may not be kept in bathtubs.  School teachers who bob their hair will not get a raise. 

Yet, whether in the laws of Leviticus or the laws of Little Rock, there is usually a value or a principle behind each law.  The dietary laws of the Torah were meant to protect public health.  Maybe the cows on Main Street and barking dog laws were meant to protect and restore domestic tranquility.  The bathtub alligator law perhaps stemmed from folks traveling to Florida, buying cute little alligators on their vacations and raising them in bathtubs where they grew to dangerous adulthood — a public menace.  I must admit I can’t conceive of the value evidenced in the bobbed hair law but I won’t go there.

Times change.  Cultures change.  Laws change.  For the most part, we obey our civil laws or we may pay a price for disobeying them.  We chase the rabbit within the boundaries of society but sometimes we feel uneasy.  Perhaps we are chasing an illusion.  Perhaps it isn’t enough to be a law-abiding citizen.  Maybe that is what Jesus was talking about when he told the Pharisees and us that there was a first and greatest commandment. And there was a second like it.  We are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

It is not difficult to understand these two commands — love God and love one another.  It is not difficult to understand that we are to live our lives and run the race guided not by fake rabbits but by these two unchangeable commandments.  But, it is so easy to get sidetracked — to mistake the rabbit for the guide we should be following. It is so easy to be tricked into thinking that adherence to human laws will always keep us on the right track.  Instead, we must look at all we think and do through the lens of the two greatest commandments.

For the most part it is not the big major life decisions that form the pattern of our lives.  Instead it is the small decisions we make each day. If we choose to think the best of others, if we choose to share generously of our time and talent and treasure in the little things, those choices will form our habits and our lives.  When we make a phone call to someone who is sick or lonely, smile at a stranger, take time to talk to a child, share the bounty of our gardens, sit down with a visitor at breakfast, figure out how to say “Yes” instead of immediately jumping to “No”, we are living out the greatest of the commandments.

When we decide how much of God’s abundance to us we will share, we are invited to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind.  When we decide how much of God’s blessings to us we will share, we are invited to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The rabbit may crash and burn but the love and grace of God are eternal and unchanging. He was our help in ages past and our hope for years to come…

Amen.

The Rev. Betsy Porter
St. James’ Episcopal Church
October 26, 2008

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