From Belief's Limitations to Love's Abundance

 

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.