Last week we saw Jesus describe some
scribes, and he did it this way: “Beware
of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with
respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and
places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of
appearance say long prayers.” Remember?
They sound like pretty unsavory characters, don’t they? Devouring the domiciles of widow, grabbing
the best seats in the house—maybe knocking over one of said widows in the
process—and saying those exhausting prayer, that have everybody reaching for
the caffeine, for one of those 5-hour Energy Drinks, just to keep awake for it. And when Jesus gets to the end of that list,
he passes judgment: “They will receive the greater condemnation.”
But his week we see a very different
view of scribes, one scribe anyway, and notice that in the text, it’s the
episode before the last weeks, and in
fact, in the lectionary it would have come last week, but I switched it around
so that we’d be reading the widow’s mite on consecration Sunday . . . and I
kind of like it here, though, It’s like
we’re going from a generalization to a specific, as if we’re saying: “Yes, scribes
can be slimy, but there are always exceptions
. . .” Or to put it
theologically, grace is for anyone,
there is nobody who cannot be saved, no matter how hypocritical, no matter what
kind of evil things they might have done, which is surely good news for all of
us . . .
But it’s important to place today’s
passage into a greater context: Jesus is
contending with some of the learned of Palestine, but not just any learned, he was contending with
Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducess (oh, my!), three dominant parties within
Judaism of the day. They’re like
Republicans and Democrats and, oh, maybe Libertarian, and they contend with one
another—and with Jesus—over theology, over their vision of how we relate to
God. It’s also important to realize that
what they were doing with Jesus wasn’t unusual, it was the way that Jews of the
day disputed with one another, the way they sharpened their beliefs.
Not that it wasn’t dangerous for
Jesus, you understand . . . if he gave the wrong answer, he could have been apprehended—the
most famous example of this lot was the question about paying taxes: if he said
it wasn’t right to pay taxes, he’d have been in trouble with the Roman
contingent. If he’d said that you must
pay taxes, it wouldn’t have set well with another contingent, who believed that
it was an act of sacrilege to pay taxes to the Roman overlords. And so when he gets out if it with a cunning
answer—asking them (a) to produce a denarius and (b) tell him whose face is on
it—the answer he gives in reply impresses the dickens out of the scribe . . .
And he sees that Jesus answered well,
and he asks him an important question – Which commandment is first, which
commandment is greatest of them all? And
by answer, Jesus recites the Shema, that we read a few minutes ago in
Deuteronomy 6 . . . “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 mind, and with all your
strength . . .” and with this answer, Jesus shows that he’s square in the
middle of Jewish tradition, because of course this is the command, the one that is nailed in the doorways of the home of
every observant Jew. They take literally
the command to write it on their doorposts.
By naming the Shema, Jesus shows that it’s not the God of the Assyrians
or the Sumerians or Egyptians you’re supposed to love, it’s not just any old
God, but a very specific God, the one God, the God of Abraham, whose name they
know, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and out of exile in the
land of Babylon . . . And they’re to
love this God, this one God, with all of their heart and soul and strength –
and Jesus adds mind to the command in Deuteronomy. With our whole kit and kaboodle, they – and
we – are supposed to love this God, this God who is one, this God who stands
alone.
And even though the scribe asks only
for one, Jesus adds a second instruction: “‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And here’s where we modern Christians need to
be a little careful . . . we like to think that the love command is unique to
Christians, that what somehow separates the Old Testament from the new is this
emphasis on love . . . but “love your neighbor as yourself” is straight from
the Old Testament – Leviticus, as a matter of fact. But what’s interesting is how Jesus links the two . . . love the Lord your God
. . . love your neighbor as yourself.
One and two, as if they are intertwined . . . as if one rolls from the
other, like an ever-flowing stream. Is
love of neighbor possible without the love of God? Is love of God probable, is it there without
the love of neighbor?
One day, it’s been a decade or so
now, a friend called and told me that she had found a new spiritual path . . .
she’d been through some major stuff, some major heartache and pain, over the
years before that. We used to go to the
same Presbyterian church in Mississippi, but after her life blew up, she hadn’t
gone back there much . . . it’s not that
the pastor wasn’t compassionate, she was, it’s not that the congregation’s
wasn’t caring, they were. But whatever
Rachael needed, she’s didn’t get it there.
She told me about her new spiritual
direction, guided by some of the thinking of Christian Science, afraid that I’d
disapprove, but I was thinking that this
poor woman had gone through so much that whatever kind of peace she could find
was all right by me, and she described it as based on love, radically loving
one another . . . that the path to spiritual maturity lay in loving everyone .
. . and I thought “that’s not so bad”
but as I listened I realized that she wasn’t saying much about the other
side of the equation that Jesus offered.
She wasn’t saying much about the “Love the Lord your God” part. She did mention coming into greater communion
with God, and that the end of the spiritual pathway is a mystical union with
God, the kind of ideas that have been present in Christian spirituality for
millennia, but she didn’t say much about loving God . . . and any spiritual director will tell you that
cultivating a love of God is one of the major goals, if not the goal, of a spiritual life . . .
prayer, even intercessory prayer, is not so much to get God to do something,
but to get us to a more mature, loving relationship with the Divine. And from that love, a love of self and
neighbor will naturally bloom . . .
So then are we to wait for some
future-level of love for God before we can start loving our neighbor? Should we say to our neighbors “Sorry, I just
don’t love God enough yet, come back later?”
As Paul would say, of course not!
Love is a verb, not just a feeling, it’s an action . . . we are
commanded to love, and love by doing . . . Jesus lists the commands in order,
he doesn’t predicate one on the other . . . we’re supposed to do ‘em both. To paraphrase James, love without works is
dead . . . warm and fuzzy feelings and fifty cents will get your neighbor a cup
of coffee . . . love is housing the homeless, love is healing the lame, love is
setting-free the captives, bringing good news to the poor.
And
I think that in our story, the scribe – that embodiment of status quo religion
– gets it! You’re right, he says – and
he calls Jesus Teacher, just like the rich young man, and just like James and
John, a title of respect – Teacher, he says, you’re right: you’ve said a
mouthful: ‘God is one, and beside him is no other’ and you should love this God
with all that you are, all your heart and understanding and strength . . . and
to love your neighbor as yourself”. . . and then he makes an intuitive leap, he
says more than Jesus did: “this is much more important than all burnt offerings
and sacrifices.” And for a scribe – an
authority on the Jewish religion – to say this is remarkable, and just as he
saw that Jesus answered well, Jesus can sees that he answers wisely . . . this
is much more important, the scribe says, than our entire religious program –
built as it was on sacrifice – and in response, Jesus says: “You are not far
from the kingdom of God.”
The
whole contraption of Hebrew religion, its whole apparatus built upon burnt
offerings and sacrifice . . . they were in the shadow of Temple mount, where
grates in the rock channeled the blood of slaughter off the mountain, where the
greasy smoke of sacrifice stained the air, and for this scribe, this Temple officer,
it must have been a bombshell, a revelation, and for him – and
Mark’s readers – it’s like he’s saying that loving God and your neighbor is
greater than religion itself . . . and Jesus just smiles, ‘cause he sees
that the man speaks wisely, that he understands it: “You are not far from the kingdom of
God.” And it was so outrageous – yet so
indisputably true – that all the other scribes and Pharisees around him
were dumbstruck, no one dared ask him anything else.
I read recently that “Religion is for
people trying to stay out of hell; spirituality is for those who’ve been
there.” And our friend Rachael has been
there and back, and she’s seeking a measure of depth and a meaning for her life
. . . and she’s not seeking it in the church . . . our version of sacrifices
and burnt offerings, our church-night suppers and Sunday-morning hymn sings and
preaching don’t seem to be cutting it for her . . . and the question is “why
not?” why aren’t damaged people coming
to us to be healed? I know, I
know . . . some are. But many more are
going in the direction of pop spirituality, of popular forms of Buddhism or
Taoism or stuff like that . . . why aren’t the mainline churches attracting the
damaged people, or just those hungry for spiritual direction? Could it be that we’re not – and here I’m
talking about the church as a whole – could it be that we’re not satisfying
Jesus’ love equation, that we’re not providing the tools to grow spiritually,
to love God with all our hearts and mind and strength? By the same token, could it be that we’re not
exhibiting the love for one another – much less our neighbors – that
Jesus would have us do? Rachael was a
member of the community, a Christian in the fold, and yet she’s no longer going
to any church.
You
hear it all the time, from people who used to go to church but do so no longer
. . . people who’ve been hurt by an unloving glance, by an unkind remark . . .
they call it hypocrisy, they say we talk a lot about love, that love is the
mark and measure of our faith . . . and yet we show precious little of it
inside the walls. Oh, we’ve got a lot of
rules – we don’t do this, or we do that but not this other, or you’ve gotta do this
before you’re really a Christian – and we’ve got a lot of ritual – stand up,
sit down and say these words. But as the
scribe knew, love is greater than all of it, greater than all the sacrifice and
Sunday School, all the bible study and pot luck offerings, greater than glorious
worship and even the worship committee is love.
You say “But
Pastor . . . it’s only natural that in here we’re just like we are out there,
and that our there, we’re like everybody else . . . we can’t help ourselves,
we’re only human, it’s too hard. We’re
on the road to God, but we’re not there quite yet,” and I say hallelujah! that’s it exactly . . . we’re on the
road . . . with Jesus, on the road with God . . . that’s the miracle of
grace, the Good News for modern man. We
can’t do it ourselves, but we don’t have to.
That’s the beauty of it, the grace of it: for God so
loved the world, that God gave us God’s only Son, who sent us the Holy Spirit,
who will be with us, and teach us how to pray, teach us how to draw
closer to God and love God – and our neighbors – as ourselves. Through prayer and study – both of which the
Spirit bestows on us, if we ask – through prayer and study, we grow
closer to God, and closer to what we were created to be – loving members of
Christ’s body on earth. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment