The Main Thing

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

November 5, 2006

Mark 12: 28-34

A TRUE SEEKER

Not all people who asked questions of Jesus were trying to trick him. At least in Mark’s account of the encounter, the lawyer who asks Jesus the question about the most important commandment was an admirer of Jesus. We talk much about seekers nowadays, those who earnestly desire answers to deep questions. Here we apparently have one who has been drawn to Jesus because he noted how well he answered those who were tricksters.
 
BASIS

Which commandment, the lawyer wants to know, is the basis for all of the rest of the commandments? Which one, if you pulled it out, all the rest would come tumbling down?

Jesus’ answer comes straight out of his heritage. Whatever else Jesus is, he is a rabbi, accustomed to such discussions. Since their love for the Torah, was the heart of the Hebrew tradition, such questions were not just academic. Understanding and applying the commandments for daily life was crucial for remaining faithful to their Creator.

AUTO LAWS

Consider this, for example. If, out of all the laws related to driving an automobile, you had to choose one which was the basis for all the others, what would it be? I believe I saw one commandment on a billboard one day which might qualify. It read, “Drive to conditions.” So simple, yet it could be the basis for all the rest related to speed, yielding right of way, weather adjustments, etc.

SHEMA

So in response to this question from an admirer Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, chapter 6 and from Leviticus, chapter 19. He begins with the shema:  “Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one.” “Hear!” God says: “Listen Up” might be a good translation. Pay attention.

And in the liturgies of the people of Israel, they would respond: “The Lord our God is the  only Lord.”

NOT JUST ANY GOD WILL DO

Jesus has not yet gotten to the answer to the question. Or has he? The first commandment is to believe that there is only one God. And this only God is the God revealed in their history. It is the God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Zipporah, Rebecca and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob; the God of the Exodus and the Ten Words, the God of Amos and Isaiah, David and Bathsheba, Ruth and Esther, Mary and Joseph. Jesus is not counseling a devotion targeted to a god named: “To Whom it may be concerned.”

Why does Jesus (in Mark’s account only) begin with this preface to the “You shall….?” Perhaps it is because Jesus knew that there are many so-called gods which people may choose to worship. Our ultimate devotion cannot be to the latest deity to get our attention. Would it be the Roman emperor?  One of the ancient Greek gods Zeus or Aphrodite? Mammon? Ba’al? Or something pedestrian, like Security? Success? Amusement? Isolation? Escape? Fortuna, the god of chance? Tribe? Flag? MY Race? My Church? They are all around us, these gods. How is it possible to believe in only one? Maybe Jesus knew, and now knows, our temptation to hedge our bets. “Maybe we should have a few of the lesser gods in our saddlebag, just in case we need help with something our God can’t handle.”

One of my favorite authors has written of the “twilight of the gods,” that time in our lives when all of the other things and causes we have given our lives to begin to fade into the sunset. And we are left asking,

 “Is there one out there who is eternal?”  

So Jesus lays out the fundamental belief: There is one God, not many. This one God is revealed to us, in our history, in our experience, as steadfastly loving, strong and utterly trustworthy and on the side of lasting peace and justice for the oppressed. These words claiming that there is truly one God, not many, is the focal point of morning and evening prayers in the Hebrew traditions, then and now. As the shema is recited, one covers the eyes to concentrate on their meaning. Martyrs have shouted these words with their last breath. It is a tradition for Jewish people to say these words as they are dying. (Source: myjewishlearning.com) This belief in one God is fundamental to our religion as wel,l as Jesus clearly expresses. Jesus may have lived in a land of competing religions, but he was clear that there was only one living God.

CAREFUL WITH ‘ONE GOD’ 

We must be careful here what Jesus is affirming. Radical monotheism can be dangerous. Believing in only one God can lead us to be vicious toward those who believe in another god, or in many gods, or in no god at all. Missionaries early to these shores practiced an arrogant evangelism and rode roughshod over Native Americans’ religious and mystical traditions.

 Belief in one God can lead us to think that our knowledge of God’s activity is infallible. Every time I find myself thinking along these lines, I return again to Isaiah 55: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.”  God is free. We do not own God.

 Though tolerance seems like a weak virtue, it is a virtue which Jesus and the apostles practiced.

 Jesus chose a Samaritan, from a people much despised because of their incorrect beliefs and practices, to be the hero of his story on neighbor-love.

 Jesus saw faith in Roman soldiers, when other monotheists would have slammed the door on them.

The Apostle Paul, distressed about the number of idols in Athens, speaks respectfully of how “religious” they were “in every way.” (Acts 17:22)

 In fact, Jesus and the apostles were hardest on those who believed in the same God they did! Do you recall how Jesus scorched the hypocrites and called the Pharisees to task? They would have been those saying the Shema every day.

JESUS’ CONVICTIONS ABOUT GOD

It was not that Jesus did not have convictions about God, the one true God. He was closer to God in ways which we have-- none of us-- attained. But he was able to combine deep faith in God with a love for those who did not believe in God.

I believe Jesus was able to do this because of HIS practice of the first commandment, which he lays out for the scribe who comes to him: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
I had never noticed before this week the emphasis that it placed on the word “all.” Did he leave us any loopholes? Not!

I have spent most of my life focusing on the second commandment, the love of neighbor. But we need to tarry a bit here before we rush on. For what does it mean for us to “love” God? How would we show such love? Love of neighbor gives me someone tangible to target my love on. When I practice love for another person, it is because they need my help, or at least my presence. Does God need my help, or my attention? Though God is personal, God is not a person in the same way mortals are.

HOW DO WE ‘LOVE’ GOD?

Jesus as a faithful son of Israel would have known that the love of God requires the discipline of giving attention, drawing into God’s presence---in fact, showing love for God by being present with and for God---as we would with a friend.

 The Hebrew word translated “love” comes from the language of keeping one’s treaties, as between nations. It means to honor the relationship. In particular, our love of God is shown to God by our praise and thanksgiving, our study, our obedience to God’s vision even when we suffer for it, our faithfulness, our cleaving to God. It means to show reverence in the presence of God’s otherness.
WESLEY’S EXAMPLE

When John Wesley laid out the General Rules for the use of his small groups, he was wise enough to include the practice of the love of God. We are to do no harm, do good, and attend upon all of the ordinances of God. An ordinance was a rule or law, an expectation. He lists specifics under each of these three. The ones under the third are:
    The public worship of God.
    The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.
    The Supper of the Lord.
    Family and private prayer.
    Searching the Scriptures.
    Fasting or abstinence.  (From the Book of Discipline, 2004, paragraph 103)

When Wesley visited the bedside of a dying Methodist woman, he asked her if she had a word for him. She said, “keep the disciplines.” She was not talking about the Book of Discipline; she was talking about the practice of loving God.

Such practice of the love of God can devolve into a dull and deadly checklist. But we can be saved from this fate by a deeper understanding of God as Jesus reveals. For Jesus, God is “Abba,” a term that is an affectionate form of the word “Father.” (For those who trouble with father-language for God, there are many other names for God which are helpful, too. Remember, however, that we learn what true fatherhood is meant to be from God, not the other way around.)

GOD’S NATURE

William Barclay wrote that the revelation of God’s nature in Jesus’ life in its most concrete form happened when people saw and heard Jesus and would say to themselves and others, “God is like that!” Jesus told Zaccheus to come down out of the sycamore tree and take him home to dinner. And some people said, “God is like this.” Jesus touches a leper with healing and some people said, “This is the way God is!” Not all people: some saw in such actions the work of the Devil. But those who longed for hope and healing and a new creation (who knew their poverty) recognized the God of steadfast faithfulness and love in the words and acts of Jesus. The God of the Law and the Prophets had been effectively hidden from the people.

GOD REMAINS LORD AND IS WITH US

 In Jesus, this same God, whom the Hebrews were commanded to love, AND HAS DRAWN NEAR..

LOVE OF GOD FITS US

If this is so, then the practice of loving God is not an onerous duty (though duty is necessary, given our wandering ways). This practice can be a deeply satisfying and joyful experience. Not always happiness producing, because of God’s holiness and our sin. Not always comfortable, because of God’s calls on us for sacrificial discipleship. But deeply fitting because we are, in our souls, made for communion with God which the disciplines can foster.

This love of God which we are commanded to practice can move from a “shall” to a “will,” when are hearts are open to receive the renovating love of God. (From George Ricker, in his latest work on the Ten Commandments.)

LOVE OF NEIGHBOR/GOD INTERTWINED

So the love of God and the love of neighbor may not be as much different as we may have presumed.  The love of God and neighbor are “dynamic and complex, as energetic as the world of the atom.” (Niebuhr) H. Richard Niebuhr’s lyrical description of love has inspired me every time I have read it:

“Love is rejoicing in the presence of the beloved….it is the desire that they be rather than not be….Love is gratitude: thankfulness….wonder over the other’s gift of herself in companionship…Love is reverence: it does not seek to absorb the other in the self….it rejoices in the otherness of the other….it desires the beloved to be what he is and does not seek to refashion him into a replica of the self….Love is loyalty; it is the willingness to let the self be destroyed rather than that the other cease to be; it is the commitment of the self to make the other great….It is loyalty to the other’s cause, to her loyalty.” (The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, 1956)

GROUNDED: UNIVERSALIZING GOD’S LOVE

This love of God is the spiritual grounding for the love of the neighbor as the self. I think this is why Jesus, when asked what is the greatest commandment ends up giving two.  (The best paraphrase of the second command to love the neighbor is this: “You shall love your neighbor’s life as you love your own life.” (Anchor Dictionary, “Love.”) Without this theological grounding, the love of neighbor can dissipate quickly. Why? Because the neighbor is not always so loveable. We can only get to neighbor love if we universalize the love God has for us so that it is applied to everyone else. “Love imitates God who, everywhere, constantly creates new possibilities for life.” Our goal is to “meet everyone in a life-promoting or enhancing way, just as God the creator does.” (Anchor, J. Becker, “Love”.) “We love because God first loved us.” (I John)

JESUS IS SPECIFIC

I had never thought about it much, but Jesus does not use the word “neighbor” very much. Instead, Jesus names neighbors: tax collectors, prostitutes, victims of robbery, debtors, demon-possessed, sick people, children. The deeds of love he describes are specific, too: table fellowship, emergency aid, release from debt, healing, giving bread. It falls to each of us, and to the current earthly church, to finds ways to practice the love of neighbor in ways that are effective, life-giving and suffering-ending. I do not doubt that we have the intelligence to do this: I hope and pray that we have the zeal and tenacity that Jesus exhibited to work for the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven----for the love of God, for the love of neighbor.

 Having this resolve depends on the attention we pay to the practices of the love of God.

SUM: LOVING IS ONLY LIFE WORTH LIVING

As he often did, Jesus reached back into his tradition and brought together these two ancient teachings. He cut to the heart of the matter. He lived out of the communion he had with God. He blazed a trail through the thicket for us to follow. Jesus knows that a life lived in the practice of the love of God and the love of neighbor is the only life worth living. It is more important, as the scribe says, “than all of the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

To know this---and to practice this--- means that we are “not far from the kingdom of God.”