Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12:28-34
22 Jan 06
It's a test. The test has one answer, but two parts. Credit will be given only for full answers. But if you don't get it right today, you can keep trying. In fact, you should plan to retake it every day. Here's the answer:
The first part is, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Keep these words in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:6-9)
Why is getting this right so important? Because love is the defining characteristic of God's people in all times, all places, and all circumstances. Love is not by any means the exclusive characteristic of the Church, but it is the primary value, the primary story in which we live and find meaning, and the primary discipline that defines who and what we are. We can tell others who we are, we can put signs in front of the building, we can devise a million mission statements and put it all in neon lights, but when it's all said and done, the only way they'll really know we are Christians, the only way we'll really know we are Christians, is -- like Joe Goodwin always says, and like the song says -- by our love.
It's really important to get this right in times of testing or crisis. People who study change tell us that in moments of crisis, testing, or transition, most of us tend to revert to the ways of behaving we learned when we were just children. We go back to the old tapes, the familiar patterns and scripts we learned early in life, for good or ill. (And this is as true for communities as it is for individuals.) And for many of us, those ways of behaving are the very ones that got us into trouble to begin with. While we may think we are resolving our problems, we are likely to be doing more of whatever it is that caused the problem. Real change means breaking our habits, interrupting the old tapes, not doing what at first glance seems to us to be common sense. In Christian terms, I think that real change means not attending first of all to our own interests, not relying solely on our own resources, and not doing everything we can to ensure our own survival. Or to put it positively, when crises come -- and they always will -- disciples look to God and to each other, and we find ways to demonstrate our love.
Now if you are like me, you may be asking what love really means in the circumstances we now find ourselves in. And happily, I think, I don't have any easy answers, for these are the kinds of things we have to work out together.
Our understanding of what this commandment means for us is complicated by the fact that the word love is used rather indiscriminantly in our language, and so it tends to mean everything and nothing at the same time. The Greek language in which the New Testament was written has at least 6 or 7 different verbs and countless other terms and expressions to convey the many nuances and distinctions that we try to cover with the one word "love." We say, "I love my wife," and "I love my kids," and "I love that dress," and "I'd love it if you cleaned up your room without my asking," and "I loved that movie," and "I love pizza," and "I'd love just a little more of that cake," and so on and so forth. What can it possibly mean, then, to say this word yet again when we get around to using it to describe our relationship to God?
The New Testament can offer us some help, at least. The word that Jesus uses here for "love" carries a sense of demonstrating or showing one's love for another, that is, the love that Jesus has in mind here is not just an emotion or a feeling of devotion, but rather the actions by which such feelings are truly, surely, and publicly expressed. I can also say, from, other parts of the New Testament, that loving God and neighbor will involve creativity, surprising ourselves and others, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, bearing one another's burdens, and things like that. It will require sacrificing our time and energy, remembering one another, and listening. Kindness, gentleness, honesty and graciousness under duress. And as the Gospel story reminds us, for the disciples of Christ the love of God will inevitably take the form of the cross.
Crises supply the opportunities for us to practice loving one another. We can trust God to supply the resources we need to learn how to demonstrate our love for God and one another. We just need to seize the opportunities.
It will help if we have a firm grasp of the basic story we are living in -- the story of God's love for the world. That's what Jesus' encounter with the scribe is really about. The discussion between Jesus and the scribe about the greatest commandment is set in a time of ultimate crisis, both for Jesus and for the people of Israel. Jesus has just entered into Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple. He has challenged the leaders and central institutions of Israel, setting in motion the events that will both lead him to the cross and bring God's reign into full flower. The authorities engage him in a series of debates -- contests for honor, really -- in which only one party can emerge as winner. The Jewish leaders hope to get the better of Jesus in a verbal contest. Even one victory would bring his challenge to their authority to an end.
The crisis around which all of these exchanges turn is not just about Jesus and his authority, however, but more centrally about who God is and how God relates to this world -- it's a struggle about "the way things really are." The Jewish authorities, on the one hand, stand for religion and life focused on the Torah and the temple. In their world, the main crises involve the presence of Roman occupiers, the delicate balance they must strike between the tributes they pay to appease Caesar and the sacrifices they make to appease a judging God. The salvation they seek involves well-being, stability, freedom and independence from foreign domination. Like a lot of people today, security and prosperity are their primary values. The solutions they pursue include obedience to the Law and devotion to tradition and land. They support the Temple and the sacrificial system that ensures their right standing before God. The various groups that come to Jesus to test him represent not only those who are threatened by his authority, but the alternative ways by which the leaders of Israel sought to navigate her crises.
The scribe represents those who look to the Law as the primary means to establish order, security, and salvation. But how are they to sort through all 613 commandments attributed to Moses and all of the related interpretations and contradictions? How does Jesus, who has both affirmed the Law and in his practices stretched and even broken it, stand on the power of the Law to redeem and preserve Israel?
As usual, Jesus' answer is both traditional and provocative. He isn't content with a simple answer, but instead places two well-known commandments side by side as a single, integral response. He first recites the Shema, from Deut. 6 (6:4-5), which was spoken every day in the Temple and in the homes of Israelite people as their basic affirmation of faith in the God. These verses actually include both a confession of faith -- The Lord our God, the Lord is One -- and a commandment: you shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The confession sets forth in the heart of biblical faith: the God of Israel is the Lord of this world -- not Caesar, not kings, not rulers, not governors, not CEOs, not presidents, not pastors, not professors -- and the Lord God is one. This means not only that there is but one God and no other, but that God's essential being and will, God's way in the world, is expressed in unity. It thus follows that our relationship with God demands of us our whole being -- not just the religious part, not just the intellectual part, not just the physical part, not just the spiritual part -- but the whole person. The whole person all of the time. One implication is that God's people really can't serve the boss on Monday, the government on Thursday, the family on Saturday, and God on Sunday. Unity and integrity are secured not by our laws, not by our government or our leaders, not by identifying common enemies, but by loving God with our whole being. This is the reality Jesus calls us to confess and to embody.
The second part of Jesus' answer draws on a portion of the commandments that was beloved by Israel's prophets and people, if not her leaders. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," is drawn from Leviticus 19:18, which is the culmination of series of commands prohibiting the oppression and exploitation of the weak and poor among the people of Israel: leave your field for the sojourner to glean (Lev. 19:9f.), do not steal, deal falsely, or profane God (11f.), do not oppress the neighbor, exploit employees, or discriminate against the disabled (13f.), and do no injustice or show partiality in judgment, or slander or testify falsely against your neighbor (15f.). "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" summarizes this list of commandments. The Jewish authorities did pretty well with affirming the Shema, but they persistently broke every one of these commandments of Leviticus 19. We don't have to look very far today to find people in our own context, including our leaders, including those who proclaim themselves to be good Christians, who persistently, even blatantly fail to follow these commandments -- it's just business and politics as usual.
Both portions of Jesus' answer were revered in Jewish culture, but they were not put together very often. When Jesus does so, he is in essence calling for a way of loving God that sees God's face in our neighbor, especially in the weak and vulnerable.
It was this correlation of great commandments as one great commandment that led the early Christians to practice forms of love that made them stand out in their world. It was this kind of love for God that led the earliest Christians to gather together in meals with strangers and enemies. It was this love that led some of the early Christians to sell themselves into slavery in order to redeem their brothers and sisters. This same love was at work when Christians stayed and offered basic health care, food, water, and shelter to the sick when epidemics ravaged the cities of the Empire, while everyone else typically fled. Soon people began to notice not only that Christians risked their lives for others, but also that they lived longer.
The crises the early Christians faced drew upon and nurtured their faith in One God who is One, and brought forth creative responses that sometimes shocked others around them. That's what happens when whole communities of Christians really do love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and their neighbors as themselves.
Now, once again, like the people of First Christian Atlanta before us, and like people all around us in churches today, we find ourselves in times of crisis. Anger, disappointment, betrayal, all hang in the air, along with hope for renewal. The vision and character of God's people is being tested, again. This is not the first time in our history that we have faced such crises, and it certainly won't be the last. The presenting issues of these crises may vary, but the fundamental questions are always the same: Who is the God we serve? and what does God require of us?
As we face these crises, adherence to the laws and the rule books may help us find our way, but they will not save us. In the tests we face, our piety, our religious habits and institutions, even our own good, common sense may offer resources, but they will not save us.
You can be certain that we won't always agree with one another, and we won't get it all right. Sometimes we will have to admit that there aren't any good solutions. But at the end of the day, most of this won't matter if we have been clear about the real challenge before us: How will they know we are Christians? This is our real test. It has two parts. The first part of the test involves the words we have talked about today. But the most important part of the test is lived, here in this body.
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