Mark 12.28-34 Now, one of the biblical scholars came near and heard them [the other biblical scholars, the chief priests, and the elders] discussing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scholar asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is: Hear, O Israel: the Holy One our God, the Holy is one; you shall love the Holy One 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 biblical scholar said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘God is one, and besides God there is no other; and to love God 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 the scholar answered wisely, he said “You are not far from the reign of God. After that no one dared to ask Jesus any question.
Reflection Driving the Turquoise Trail, a fifty four mile National Scenic Byway that winds through miles of grazing land and polka dot hills pierced with abandoned turquoise, gold and coal mines, a mine shaft remade into a Tavern, crumbling shacks revived by artistic squatters and General Robert’s property with its one hundred foot long specimens of petrified bamboo laced with tiny beadlike fossils from the Cretaceous period, I gained a bit of perspective. Between 70 and 135 million years ago the Turquoise trail that connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico as well as half of the North American continent were under water. And this is but a splinter of history in our 13.8 billion year journey to be here, now.
Here, today, we receive an invitation. An invitation to love bigly. Not blind or naive love. Not Hallmark card sentimental love and certainly not self serving love. But love that begins with an emerging Mystery as big and unfathomable as our 13.8 billion year journey to be here, now. Today we receive an invitation given to our Israelite ancestors six hundred years before Jesus was born, an invitation to love bigly by participating in the Oceanic Mystery we call God.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut 6.4-5) This great commandment to love God bigly is part of a series of sermons telling the people of Israel that Yahweh, God, is bringing the people to the promise land not because they deserve or have earned it but because God loves bigly. What is required of God’s people in response to this love is just one thing. Love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one may come before God. Just love God bigly.
This was the Great Love Commandment that Jesus learned sitting on the lap of his mother Mary, sitting at the feet of rabbis, sitting in the synagogue, unrolling the Torah and reading, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But when the Biblical scholars question Jesus asking, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesusgoes off script.
“The first is: Hear, O Israel: the Holy One our God, the Holy is one; you shall love the Holy One 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.” Did you hear it? Jesus adds our minds to the first commandment and with a second commandment he advances the scope of love to include our neighbors and our selves. Truly, we are meant to love bigly.
Much like Jesus, we learn about love sitting on the laps of our parents or caregivers, we learn in Sunday School, listening to teachers and preachers and reading books. We also learn about love from the media and mass marketing. Does this sound familiar? “You must first learn to love yourself because if you do not love yourself you cannot love anyone else.“ So get into therapy or buy a fistful of the one billion nine hundred million self help books you can find with Google in eight tenths of a second. The resounding message is unquestionable. Love number one and number one is me. Next in line for love are my neighbors because as a good person it is my duty to love my neighbors. And when the eleventh hour inevitably quakes and my life becomes wild and unruly, then I get on my knees and remember God. It seems, most of us most of the time turn the Great Commandment to love bigly upside down.
Consider the order in which Jesus gives the scribes and us the First commandment. Love God with everything you have; your heart, soul, strength and your mind. Mind is the thing that Jesus adds to the equation. By bringing our minds to love One God everything else falls into its right place. We realize we are not number one. Our little lives and piddling opinions do not determine the plot. We are not the protagonists of the story that spans from star dust to space station. We are a drop in the ocean of all that is and majestic in our ability to bring our minds to the Mystery of the Eternally Becoming Ocean that we call God.
All that to say, most of the time our stories are far too small. Swept away in our personal melodramas, seized by what we love and hate in local, national and global politics, the stories we tell are too small because we fail to love bigly.
What if we turned our upside down love right side up? What if we decided to follow Jesus’ commandment to love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one loved before God? What if we made God the main character in our story? Would that not be an epic tale, beginning in an infinitesimally small singularity and stretching across 13.8 billion years of heat and energy, sub-particles and black holes, stars, planets, bamboo forests, polka dot hills, turquoise mines and a mere human being driving an improbable machine across what used to be an ocean after it was a bamboo forest as the universe expands faster than the speed of light?
I believe If this was how we told our story we would fall to our knees in wonder, love and awe. We would be compelled to admit our infinitesimal smallness and, at the same time grab the handles of our magnificent minds and bring them to the edge of what we know in the ocean of Mystery in which as a single drop of water we float.
If only we accepted the invitation to love bigly, to tune our minds and hang our hearts on the First and Great Commandment; Love God and God alone. No idols. No other gods. No thing and no one loved before God,; if we truly loved bigly I believe Jesus’ Second Commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves would wholly and habitually be fulfilled.
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