Sermon for Oct. 3, 2021
Audio is here.
Video will be avaiable at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR (after the Sunday service) on the “Traditional Services” playlist
Mark 12:28— 34
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first 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.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
When, according to the traditional story, Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the Torah, the law that God had given, what had just happened?
The people gathered there were recently liberated slaves. They had been born into slavery that spanned many generations. They knew nothing but oppressive labor, like the people where were snatched from Africa and enslaved in our country. Their destiny was slavery from the moment they were old enough to work until death finally set them free.
But that was all different now. Now they were a free people.
The way this story is told invites us to imagine what that experience must have meant for them. We can imagine the immense gratitude they must have felt. No more Pharaoh, no more taskmasters, no more making bricks for the empire’s monuments. No more hiding your newborn sons from Pharaoh’s horrible death decree. All that was over.
They were free. How could they not love the God who had raised up Moses? How could they not love the God who held back the waters of the sea so that they could cross over on dry ground? How could they not love the God of liberation?
The Command to Love God
So it would not have felt like an inappropriate obligation when Moses commanded them to love the Lord, Yahweh, their God with all of their hearts, souls, and might. Any smaller response would have been unimaginable. The God who heard their cries of suffering had liberated them; of course, they would love that God.
So great was their sense of gratitude that the command to love God eventually became their daily creed. Every day, in fact, twice a day a faithful Israelite would recite,
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Hear, in Hebrew is “Shema,” so this daily creed is called the Great Shema. Hear also means heed, like when the old English crier, standing in the village center with a message from the king said, “hear ye, hear ye….”
Challenging Jesus
That creed, that call to love the God of liberation was so central to Jewish identity that it seems odd to me that one of the Torah scholars, called Scribes would think he was giving Jesus hard question.
They had been giving Jesus a series of test questions according to Mark’s telling of it. Jesus had gone to Jerusalem, not to worship at the temple, not to offer sacrifice, but to teach his radical new alternative version of faith.
After his bold public action of shutting the temple down, at least symbolically, at least for several hours, the authorities were looking for a reason to arrest him. A supportive crowd that Jesus had attracted was limiting their options, so they tried repeatedly to trip him up.
“By what authority are you turning over tables in the temple? Should a person pay taxes or not? Do you believe in resurrection or not?”
And finally, this one:
“Which commandment is the greatest?”
Since every Israelite knew the creed by heart, how could that possibly have been a trick question?
Perhaps because of how radically different their situation was from that of freed slaves standing at the foot of Mt. Sinai, listening to Moses, with the dust of Egypt still clinging to their sandals. Those people were overwhelmed with gratitude, but how did the people Jesus could look in the eyes feel now?
They were in Jerusalem, but it was not their country. They were not any longer slaves in Egypt nor exiles in Babylon, but they were not free. Judea was a minor province of the Roman Empire.
Caesar was the ultimate king, as the Roman occupation troops constantly reminded them. Rome could appoint and depose high priests at will. Local kings could govern only as stooges of Roman authority.
Crucifixions, like lynchings in America, were horrific and commonplace. Intimidation was the goal. Humiliation was the effect. Debt slavery was growing. The peasantry was becoming destitute, and their numbers were exploding.
How do you love God under those circumstances? How do you feel gratitude? And if you do not, then maybe the answer to the question about the greatest commandment had to change.
Jesus’ Love for God
Obviously, the current situation of oppression and poverty did not change Jesus’ mind about loving God. It is right and good to be thankful for sunshine and rain, for the good things we receive as gifts of God, for freedom and for food on the table. It is right to give thanks for life and for love, for health and for family. But faith that is contingent on Hallmark, picture-perfect days cannot withstand the onslaughts of real life.
Jesus was able to maintain his love for God because of the kind of God Jesus trusted. There are different ways of imagining God. None of them is adequate; God is essentially ineffable. We have to use metaphors and analogies because that is as much as we finite humans can do.
Jesus’ favorite metaphor for God was “Heavenly Father.” Given his patriarchal culture, he used the male parent, but could have just as authentically called God Heavenly Mother.
The Hebrew Bible imagines God as both a father, teaching his toddler to walk, and as a mother of a nursing child. God, as a heavenly parent, loves us children unconditionally. Dr. King was right to call us God’s beloved community.
Like the perfect parent, even when we rebel, even when we ignore God or get ourselves lost, like wayward sheep, God continually seeks us out, finds us, and brings us back into the fold.
That is the kind of God Jesus could love with his whole heart, mind and strength, even in poverty, even under occupation.
But that kind of love for God always gave rise to a second love: the love of neighbor. The two went together like cake and icing. To love the God of Love is to love what God loves. So naturally, we love the people God made; all of them, without distinction.
In fact, loving our neighbors is a way of loving God. Jesus, in Matthew 25 teaches that when we make our love practical, when we give water to the thirsty, we are giving water to him. When we give food to the hungry we are feeding him. When we visit, that is, provide for prisoners — most likely meaning prisoners of conscience, we are providing for him. Love of neighbor is not sentimentality, but practical, perhaps even costly.
Being the Church
So, being the church, as the banner says, is all about loving God. We are invited to love God with our worship in which we directly express our gratitude, and in our love for what God loves: people.
On this World Communion Sunday, we take time to reflect on the fact that there are no national or racial delimiters on God’s love. All the children of the world are precious in God’s sight. So we set our sights on cross-border, cross-cultural, cross-racial love.
The culmination of our service is Communion. This is what all Christian communities do, around the world. We come to this meal, all on one level, as equals, each equally loved by God.
We come not to a reward for our goodness, but as broken people, we come in loving memory of one who was willing to be broken on behalf of others.
We come, renewing our love for God by remembering Jesus whose love for God led him to trust God unto death.
We come affirming God as a forgiving God, with loving gratitude for our liberation from slavery to self-destructive sin.
We come with grateful love for a God who gives us a vision of a world at peace, a world of reconciliation, a world of justice and of compassion.
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