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The Gospel according to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, and is the first of four accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Matthew is concerned with placing Jesus in the story of God’s saving work, which began in Genesis and continued through the Hebrew Scriptures. The book begins with an “account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1), and ends with an account of the resurrected Jesus commissioning his disciples on a mountain and telling them to teach people to “obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:20). Matthew seems to be presenting Jesus as a second Moses, giving new laws and teachings to Israel and to the world.
So what was the heart of this new message? In chapter 22, a group of Jewish leaders called the Pharisees were challenging Jesus. One of them — a lawyer — asked Jesus a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matt 22:34-36). Jesus could have said that all ten of the Ten Commandments were equally important. Or that the Book of Leviticus was the greatest expression of God’s law. Or that the entire Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, contained the fullness of the commandments of God. It was a difficult question, because if Jesus named one, he would be accused of ignoring others. If he said they were all great, he would look weak for not answering the question.
But instead, Jesus gave a tweet-sized response: “’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’” (Matt 22: 37-39). Jesus may have been the first and most effective practitioner of the tweet, a post on the social media application Twitter. The challenge of a tweet is to say something funny or provocative or profound … in usually about 33 characters. Funny, such as, “Everyone says to follow your dreams, so I went back to bed.” Provocative: “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future!” Profound: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
In just a decade, the tweet has “eclipsed the essay, fiction, and poetry to become the dominant literary form of our era,” says The Best American Tweets of 2019. “The tweet turns out to be a perfect vehicle for such elemental forms of human communication: lamentations, angry shouts, and acerbic wisecracks.” But long before Twitter was invented, Jesus knew the power of short, pithy statements when he answered a tough question in just 74 characters: “You shall love the Lord your God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” His response was not just the Greatest Commandment but the Greatest Tweet. On this powerful formulation, he said, “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt 22:40).
A preaching professor named David Lose says that “our Lord names his center” with this greatest of commandments. Jesus is tweeting “the center of his ministry, the center of his mission, the center of the kingdom he has been sent to proclaim and build.” The center is love, which is an even shorter tweet: Just four characters. “By naming his center, Jesus reveals something not only about himself, but also about God.” Jesus is telling us that “God’s law, finally and forever, is the law of love. It is that simple … and that difficult, because loving others means putting them first. It means sacrificing. It means being vulnerable to the needs of those around us.” For Jesus, along with God, the center is love.
The problem with tweeting is that it is very easy to do. You can put a message on Twitter without having to back it up. But if people are going to follow Jesus in lives of love, they are going to have to put their words into action. Through the last days of his earthly life, Jesus succeeded in putting his Greatest Tweet into action. Soon after offering the love commandment, he gathered his disciples, broke bread, and shared a cup. “Take, eat; this is my body,” he said. “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:26-28). He shared that meal, and himself, out of love. Then he was arrested, flogged and nailed to a cross. He cried “with a loud voice and breathed his last” (Matt 27:50). Jesus gave his life, his body and his blood, out of love.
When Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he is not just tweeting. No, he is giving us the center of who he is, and is backing it up with his own life. Jesus went to the cross filled with love — he loved the Lord his God and he loved his neighbors as himself. He loved each of us enough to die for us. This passage is one of the Bible’s greatest hits because it tells us that when it comes to love, Jesus is not a tweeter. He’s a doer. And he invites us to do the very same.
Questions:
1. What is the power of a short, pithy statement over a long, detailed answer?
2. How do you understand love to be the center of both Jesus and God?
3. Where do you see people backing up love with action? Where do you?
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