Scripture: Mark 12:28-34 ("The Great Commandment")
For the religious powers-that-be confronted by Jesus in Jerusalem during Passover, it all came down to the scribes.
For already,
in this holiest of cities on this holiest of weeks amidst the heaviest of
crowds, Jesus had whomped the Pharisees and Herodians in Debate #1: Caesar and taxes.
And then came his victory in Debate #2: his square-off versus the Sadducees, those
who couldn’t and wouldn’t believe in resurrected living.
And so, down
two debates to zero to this common adversary – a nonviolent man, a popular man,
a dangerous man –the religious powers-that-be sent in the debating experts
themselves: “One of the scribes came near … and asked (Jesus), ‘Which commandment is
the first of all?’” That is: the most important of all?
The answer
wasn’t difficult. Any observant Jew such as Jesus would know it. The most
important was the Shema – the two
verses from the Book of Deuteronomy worn on the heads and adorned on the
doorposts of many an observant Jew then, and to this day. And so Jesus
responded accordingly: “The first one is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God,
the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
And
so the scribe heard Jesus say. Must have been music
to his God-defining ears: “A-ha! Now we’ve got him! Now we’ve
staked out the high ground again! Now we can say to that rabble gathered around
him, ‘So your leader believes this – just like we do? Well, here we are, your
friendly local scribes. Since so few of you can read or write, here we are to
guard this belief for you. Here we are to interpret this for you. In other
words: Here we are to tell you how – how to believe in this God that we profess!
You can do this, but you can’t do that. You can relate to these, and not to
these.’
“For
we – the literates, the logical, the powers-that-be – we are the ones still in charge! Here to shape our Temple fence anew.
For here’s the deal: This crucial, central, core belief about God will be managed
by us, and followed by you. As so we will it; as so we use it. Guarding you and
protecting you – all to carefully limit your world. Lest, of course, you should
take matters in your own hands.”
So
must the scribe have been thinking, when Jesus ritually ticked off the Shema. “Love God … Love God … Love God.”
A nice and limited statement of belief. Easily manipulated … easily controlled.
The scribe had Jesus just where he wanted him! Now he and his fellows could
reclaim their authority! Again they could shepherd their Passover lambs!
If
only Jesus had just stopped there. But
then, in perhaps his most powerful display of spiritual jujitsu this side of
his crucifixion, Jesus flips the debate on that scribe – and upon us all.
“The
second (commandment) is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There
is no other commandment greater than these.”
For Jesus understood, he really understood, that creeds about
God are always limited and controlled – and limiting and controlling, by those
in religious power. It is so, with creeds. But not so with compassion, extended
to all.
The compassion that
comes when we make a very important move in our faith. A very important move,
beyond our limitations of the beliefs we are taught about God into the
abundance of love that is of God.
From the limitations of our beliefs
to the abundance of love.
From a God carefully measured to a God endlessly generous.
Which God will it be for you – for us? That’s important to decide and
to know. For which God we ultimately put our trust in is the God we ultimately choose
to share with the world.
This Great Commandment story before
us teaches us much about the generosity of living – on all levels. For it is all too easy for us to circumscribe our beliefs
or our bank books for our own private use – guarding our version of what’s God
to us in our world. But when we lead
our lives less as guardians of a measured Lord and more in gratitude to our
abundant God, our beliefs and our generosity naturally expand.
For
our consumer culture of careful measures and God’s kingdom culture of
generosity abundant stand at cross purposes. Implicit to the worldview of the
careful measures of scribes is a zero-sum game: “There’s not enough for all in
the world. So let us get as much as we can for us.” But that’s not the kingdom worldview
of Jesus. His is just the opposite: “Thanks be to God there is more than enough
in the world. So let us now distribute it widely.”
“There’s Not Enough”: That’s the voice of the
scribe in today’s narrative. It stops all relationships dead; beyond our
relationship with God, everything loving is open to negotiation. With “There’s
Not Enough”, someone must carefully define that god – to keep some in, to keep
many out.
But
“There’s More Than Enough” of kingdom culture opens the door – reveling in our
abundant opportunities to love. Celebrating our God of glory, who created
everything and deemed it all good. Celebrating our God of generosity, who sows
the kingdom seed on soil, rocky ground, the path, and thistles – the Lord cares
not where the abundance is cast! Celebrating our God of grace, who re-creates
us from broken Friday bread to a Sunday abundance known as resurrection living.
Our
beliefs, our creeds … our bottom lines? They are all good things – but far from
the best. For we are always limited whenever we use these; and we always limit
ourselves when we do. For beliefs and creeds and bottom line faith all make for
good signposts. And yet – by nature – they self-constrict.
Quite
plainly, Jesus does not intend for us to hang our discipleship on the post of a
sign – much less upon the ledger of a church budget. Jesus intends us to follow
along with him instead – along what the earliest Christians simply called The
Way. Not to look at him, through limited, loving-God-only eyes. But to look
with him, through a love-God-and-neighbor-and-self panorama.
To look with Jesus to the abundance
of loving relationships God has in store for us. Loving relationships we can
establish with the More Than Enough around us … that we might give widely to
those needing our love.
The Great Commandment story teaches
us quite well: Let us move our faith to a different place. Let us move our
faith away from our self-limiting beliefs about loving God, and God only. Beliefs
that might tell us, “There is just not enough of our God to go around. Our God
needs to be strictly guarded and dispensed.” Let us move our faith away from
this, Jesus is saying, to a living trust in God’s abundance of love.
A
living trust: One that pays the greatest of relational dividends in our lives –
serving people through our money, and not vice versa. Banking our discipleship upon
the riches of all our loving relationships,
rather than foundering it upon the shores of our beliefs’ limitations.
A great
jurist of a century past, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once wrote, “The life of
the law has not been logic. It has been experience.”
In a similar
vein: The life of our faith has never been our “logic” of beliefs. The life of
our faith has always been our experience of love.
The life of
our faith: Not beliefs that constrict our loving relationships from the start.
But our loving relationships that extend far beyond any and all of our beliefs.
The
abundance of loving opportunities in our world – opening up our minds and our
hearts. Nourishing a living trust, in the One who gives so much to us … and
expects only the spirit of that generosity in return.
Not because
God needs it. But because our world does.
And perhaps most of all: Because we do.
