Gospel Test for Sunday 21 August 2022

 

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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Hebrew & Gospel Texts for Sunday 31 October 2021

Deuteronomy 6:1-9       Moses said: Now this is the commandment--the statutes and the ordinances--that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children's children, may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

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. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:28-34        One of the scribes came near and heard the Saducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus 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.

Reflection     Both Moses and Jesus preach about the dance of grace in the covenant relationship between God and humankind. First Moses summarizes the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments that the people of God received “On the mountain out of fire” just one chapter earlier in the Hebrew text. (Deut 5.6-18) Between thirteen and sixteen hundred years later Jesus quotes Moses, “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,” again summarizing the first five commandments then recaps the last five adding,”You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The commandments and their summary constitute a bilateral covenant describing how humanity is meant to order life in relationship with God and one another.  Rather than legalistic imperatives, the commandments are actually descriptions of how we are to respond with grace to grace.  Our relationships with God and one another are meant to be articulated in the intimate mutuality of receiving and extending the movement of grace.

So what is grace?  In the Christian tradition grace has meaning beyond the secular understanding of good manners, elegant movements and poise. It means more than a deferment of time as in ‘grace period’ or the address of nobility, “Your Grace.”  In religious parlance grace refers to Divine favor in relationship with humankind. We understand grace as God giving God’s self to us so that we will embody that grace and extend it to others.  Which means, grace is not a thing, not a particular gift, “I thank God for the grace of giving me brown hair and making me short and providing a good medical plan.” No.

Grace is the movement, emergence, becoming of Divinity in and of, with and through each one of us. We are meant to participate in this dance of humanity with divinity and, as with every dance, graceful partners co-operate. The Divine spark at the core of each of us moves as grace inviting us to dance.  It is up to us to choose whether or not we accept the invitation. When we do say “yes,” grace flows to us and through us. We dance.

Although we can do nothing to earn or deserve grace it is our obligation to respond to grace. The eternally generative outpouring of Divine grace summons our unrestrained continuing of its flow through us to others.  Think of it as a dance between the effusion of God’s grace and our grace-filled response, grace upon grace upon grace flowing for the good of all. The  Decalogue as well as the summary of the law are meant to order our lives, essentially give us the dance steps to advance a mutuality of affection and exchange of grace for grace. 

How do we deliberately participate in the flow of grace to us and through us? We begin by recognizing the presence of grace. Acknowledging the kindness, comfort, help, assistance, advantage, aid, profit or goodness of grace flowing to us opens the way for grace to continue to flow through us. Consider it this way. You are a beautifully formed vessel filled with living water but  being preoccupied with the shape of your vessel you fail to notice the water and never open the spout that allows the water to flow. Not only will your neighbors’ thirst not be quenched, soon the living water will be stagnant and evaporate. Grace, like water, intends to flow to us and through us and it does so by our deliberate choice to allow the flow.

Describing the covenant relationship between God and humankind both Moses and Jesus are preaching good news because being in covenant with God and our neighbors elevates our relationships from sparring grounds for grumbling, if not outright war about entitlement, rights and responsibility to jointly generative collaboration where fulfilling our obligations to one another is not a burden but rather the outward and visible expression of the unearned grace poured to us and through us. Shall we dance?

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