1 Thessalonians 2.1–8, Matthew 22.34-46
The Last Sunday after Trinity 25th October 2026
Austwick, Clapham
The Pharisees and the Sadducees did not get on. They were always in conflict with each other.
It was a time of social turmoil when religious Jewish groups fought to gain the most supporters. The Pharisees were a popular peoples movement inspired by Moses and the Prophets and the Oral Torah – the teachings passed on by word of mouth which determined how ordinary Jewish people should live; whilst the Sadducees were an aristocratic, wealthy, and traditional elite within the hierarchy who ran the Temple, who collaborated with Rome and did quite well out of it: they recognised only the Written Torah, the Law of Moses in what we call the Old Testament. [2]
In their battle to gain most influence the Sadducees argued from the Law, and the Pharisees from the Prophets, and when they came across Jesus, they each tried to use him as a means to ‘get one over’ the other. That is what’s behind our passage from Matthew’s gospel today.
“When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and they asked him a question to test him.”
What’s happening here is an episode in an ongoing saga. Just before this the Pharisees had tested Jesus with a question about paying taxes, and Jesus had deflected them with his answer about giving to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Having sent these Pharisees away amazed, some Sadducees then came to Jesus testing him with a question about resurrection, which they did not believe in, and he sent them away humiliated, telling them “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God”.
Notice that while Jesus features at the centre of these arguments, it is the rivalry between the two religious camps which is driving their debate. The Pharisees and the Sadducees hate each other and love it when their rival gets frustrated. Their arguments with Jesus are a means to an end, the end being to strengthen their group at the expense of their rivals. An inadequate comparison, I know, but it’s perhaps a little like the leaders of the Conservatives and Reform trying to bolster support for themselves by each in turn picking arguments with the Greens.
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they must have seen it as their opportunity to bounce off the ropes and try again for a knockout which would establish them as the prize fighters in their contest of religious authority.
So a Pharisee asked Jesus a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus’ answer is straightforward and immediate. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind.” This is uncontroversial. It is so faithful to both the written and the oral law that no Pharisee – or Sadducee – could find fault with it.
The surprise comes when Jesus adds a second commandment that he says is equally important to the first. They hadn’t asked for two! And it is this second one that makes them uncomfortable. “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” The Pharisees had been strengthening themselves as a group around loving themselves more than their neighbour. What kept them strong was assuming superiority over their neighbour and particularly over those near-neighbours the Sadducees.
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” Jesus says. On these two commandments hang the law – so important to the Sadducees – and the prophets – so vital to the Pharisees. The laws which they hold so fast to as their own, are subservient to a higher law, Jesus says. The law of love for God and neighbour is the primary law from which all other laws hang.
Jesus condenses everything into two commandments, and the Pharisees asking the question, and the Sadducees looking on, all feel queasy about the second commandment because it dissolves the glue which holds their group together. The glue is their belief that they are better than their neighbour. The commandment tells them to love their neighbour as themselves.
The Pharisees – like the Sadducees before them – are awed by Jesus because what he says transcends their rivalrous arguments. Refusing to take sides Jesus introduces to them a whole new way of looking at things, a whole new way of being in life together, not apart. The question he asked them about David makes them realise that Jesus carries a different weight of authority with him. When he says “David by the Spirit called him Lord,” he seems to be describing himself.
“By the Spirit.” This phrase takes us out of the realm of time and space and puts us in the arena of transcendence. There is something going on here that is way bigger than King David, in fact, bigger than us all. It is like Jesus is in touch with something that is eternal and timeless. “By the Spirit” suggests a message coming in from the beyond. And I think that is how Jesus meant it to be taken.
I think Jesus is subtly pointing to a vast eternal way of life coming from outside the jurisdiction of the Pharisees, the Sadducees or any other human group. This way of life has something to do with the Messiah, David’s son, but also much more than that, it has to do with God’s Son, who has entered human history, who existed before David, and now stands before them with his question. Even David, by the Spirit, pointed to his son, the Messiah, as his Lord.
The Pharisees now find themselves as silent as the Sadducees had been before. Matthew says, “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” This is a pivotal moment for them – and for Jesus. Having heard these things the Pharisees and Sadducees now face the challenge Jesus poses: either to embrace him as the authority able to lead them into a new way which eclipses their laws, their prophets, their rivalries…. or to protect themselves from this, turn their backs on him, have him done away with.
We know the way they chose – but we also know that the crucifixion they organised would not succeed in quashing the Spirit of God which Jesus’ resurrection released into the world.
We can rejoice that one leading Pharisee, Paul, encountered Jesus and turned around to embrace Jesus’ new way. We can see the change which the Spirit made in his life in the way he describes to the Christians in Thessalonica the form and character of his ministry among them.
“We speak, not to please mortals, but to please God,” he writes. “We never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.”
See how Paul had turned away from the Pharisees’ rivalrous ways. How fully he had realised that when we live in the Spirit of God in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, we can follow his law of love alone. Rejoice that like Paul, the Spirit can help us to care deeply for others, for all our neighbours, and to live gently among them.
Note
[1] Based substantially on a sermon by The Rev. Dr. Thomas Truby and the Rev. Laura C. Truby, Intersected from Outside Time and Space [doc], 23 October 2011, sourced from Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary Notes, Proper 25A.
[2] Wikipedia: Pharisees, Sadducees, Paul the Apostle.
