Jesus is now in Jerusalem, where the death he has predicted is little more than a breath away. His enemies are closing in, firing salvos of accusations impugning his religious orthodoxy and his loyalty to Caesar. They hope to find blasphemy and treason in his responses.

What pastor has not found himself in somewhat the same situation? The telephone rings in the parsonage, manse, or rectory. A caller, who prefers to remain anonymous, launches a mini-probe of the pastor’s beliefs about heaven and hell, and how he advises his flock to reach the former and escape the latter. If the pastor fails to answer to his satisfaction, the caller warns him that he is on the path to perdition, and proceeds to outline the plan of salvation.

Or a visitor appears in church one Sunday morning. He flips through his Bible as the pastor preaches, to check the scriptural accuracy of the sermon. After the service he comes to the pastor’s study, to chastise him for straying from his narrowly-defined version of the truth.

Fortunately, these modern-day Pharisees do not place a pastor at risk from a Sanhedrin or a Pilate. Indeed, their questions and accusations, however misguided or malicious, can serve a useful purpose. They help to sharpen and clarify convictions the pastor already holds and equip him to answer, wisely and concisely, the parishioner who comes, innocently and earnestly, in search of spiritual truth.

Jesus must have extended an especially cordial greeting to the scribe who approached him with the question, "Which commandment is the first of all?" In contrast to most of the Pharisees and scribes who surrounded him, Jesus saw sincerity written on this man’s face, just as he had detected goodness on the features of the rich young man who had approached him seeking eternal life. He replied by reciting that ancient capsulated expression of the Hebrew faith, the Shema, "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 mind, and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:4).

No one can study the Shema carefully, or recite it prayerfully, and think of love for God in simplistic and sentimental ways. Loving God requires nothing less than the complete commitment of the whole self: heart, soul, mind, and strength.

It is understood, of course, that the self cannot be divided into such neat categories and tidy compartments. In Hebrew psychology there is much overlapping in the meanings of heart, soul, mind, and strength. But to simplify the matter for preaching purposes, permit me to proceed as if it were possible to break down the self into four components. And let me treat the components in reverse order, beginning with strength. The process will not violate the Shema by twisting its meaning or making it say what it does not intend to say.

I.

A. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength." The beauty about that command is that you don’t have to be able to bench-press your own weight to comply. Ben Turner (not his real name) stands about five feet, ten inches. His slender frame would hardly guarantee him a position on the line with the Green Bay Packers. But the work he does for his church is Herculean. He holds an important office with a nationally-known corporation. He rises early each day to catch the bus to the depot, where he boards the train for the trip to his office. His wife’s theme song is pop-rock singer Sheena Easton’s, "My baby takes the morning train. He works from nine to five; and then, he takes another home again." But Ben works far past the usual five o’clock quitting time. His work takes him from coast to coast; sometimes he is away for days at a stretch. But, somehow, he manages to return home in time for important church business meetings, and rarely misses a service of worship. Ben is his church’s lay leader, chairperson of the administrative board and finance committee, and a faithful member of the choir. Members of the church are accustomed to seeing him rush breathlessly into the building at the last minute to chair a meeting or join the choir for rehearsal. He may not have taken time to eat, but he still wears a smile on his face.

Recently Ben was confined to his house with a lingering case of the flu. A chronic asthma condition slowed his recovery. But, typically, Ben conducted business - church and corporate - from his kitchen table. He was "dragging," but one does not have to be at peak form to love God with all one’s strength. God is pleased with even our weakest accomplishments when we are honestly doing our very best. In fact, he blesses them and gives us all the more grace to carry on. And, in some mysterious way, he uses our weakness to fulfill his mighty purposes, and makes us strong even while we are weak.

Paul struggled with a "thorn in the flesh," a persistent, possibly life-long affliction. He asked the Lord three times to take it away. But the Lord responded, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." After that, Paul said, "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses ... for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10).

B. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind." How do we fulfill that requirement? A segment of CBS television’s "60 Minutes" provides a lead to the answer. It featured a young victim of multiple sclerosis. The man was virtually helpless, confined most of the time to his bed. His mother had to care for his simplest necessities. His head seemed abnormally large atop his wasted body. As the story unfolded, it developed that he was a person of exceptional acumen. Because of the prominence of his head, it was easy for the viewer to imagine that he was a man who was mostly mind. Indeed, it seemed that mind was about all he had left. And what a mind it was.

The man had been actively involved in politics before his confinement. His activity continued unabated in bed. He backed a prominent conservative politician and ardently supported the conservative cause. He was considered indispensable by his powerful political friend and the rank and file of his party. He was the best-informed person in the politician’s inner circle. His great mental powers made him a keen analyst of political trends. He kept abreast of them from his bed by watching television, listening to radio, perusing the nation’s leading newspapers and periodicals, and reading best-selling books written by major political figures of the two major parties. Because of his severe physical limitations, he could do little more than store information in his head, and clip articles from newspapers and magazines. His chest and his chin served as office desk and clipboard. After sifting, analyzing, and evaluating facts, he would send results to party headquarters. Regularly, his peers sought his advice and counsel at his bedside. They spoke of him with admiration, awe, and respect. Regardless of political persuasion, so may we.

Isn’t that informative as to loving God with all the mind? Study the world. Try to understand what’s going on. Sift. Sort. Analyze. Evaluate. What "parties" oppose God’s party? How are they trying to weaken and wrest control from his Kingdom? What plan of action should the Christian and the church follow to win followers of the wrong ways to the Way, God’s way. What is God’s way? How can we find it? And when we do, how can we use what we have discovered to serve him better and make his way known to all peoples. Devote your mind, night and day, in every circumstance, to the pursuit of the answers, and you will be loving God with all your mind.

C. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul." Conservative and liberal scholars disagree on the meaning of soul, but let’s assume that the correct interpretation is that the soul represents the whole person. Man does not have a soul; he is a soul.

On December 25, 1747, John Wesley strongly urged the Methodists to renew their covenant with God. His first covenant service was held on August 11, 1755. The form was used without change for nearly a century. Various alterations were then made, but it remains essentially the same. One of the prayers of the people offers, as few others do, the whole soul - the whole person - to the complete disposal of God:

I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen

One day a man came to a pastor’s office and uttered that prayer, in substance if not in style. The pastor had just performed the wedding ceremony for his son and his bride. The father was accompanied by two youthful witnesses, who signed the marriage documents. When the pastor asked for the maiden name of the bridegroom’s mother, the father broke down and wept. His wife had but recently died, after a losing battle with cancer.

The man spoke brokenly of his loss and loneliness. The pastor reassured him that he would not really be alone, alluding to the fact that his son would be living nearby. The widower’s thoughts leaped toward God. "God is with me," he sobbed. Then he continued with intense emotion, "I’d do anything for him. I’d die for him if he wanted me to. I love him. I’d suffer pain for him if that’s what he wanted."

There could be no doubting the man’s sincerity. He had not spoken for dramatic effect. He meant what he said. He did indeed love God, and he would have suffered and died for him. The pastor was greatly moved by this simple, uneducated man’s outburst. Later he said, "I saw, in that man the true meaning of loving God with all the soul."

D. You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength, and with all your mind, and with all your soul. And when you have loved him in all these ways you will have loved him with all your heart, because in both the Old and New Testaments, the heart is:

• a part of the physical body

• the seat of the emotions

• the seat of the intellect

• the seat of the volition and the moral life

• the point of contact with God

• the equivalent of the personality1

You will have fulfilled the Shema.

II.

But one important requirement remains. The Shema is the "first of all" commandments; but a second is linked forever with it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."2 In ways that you yourself want to be loved. In ways that you ought to want to be loved.

An unusual story of neighborly love appeared in an Associated Press article a year or two ago. Feature writer, Barbara Yuill, told how Manuel Garcia was afraid that he would be conspicuous when he shaved his head to get rid of patches of hair left by chemotherapy. He did not want to be the only "baldy" on his block.

He need not have worried, Ms. Yuill wrote. She found his neighborhood teeming with bald heads, all because of love and concern for Garcia, in his fight against stomach cancer.

His brother, Julio, first had the idea of going bald. Soon, about fifty friends and relatives shaved their heads to cheer up Garcia.

His five-year-old son was bald, and his two older boys had gotten shaves or partial shaves. His wife and daughter had gotten their hair cut short.

Some of the fifty friends and relatives had gotten partial shaves, leaving a Mohawk-like strip of hair down the center of the head, or a ducktail.

"I cut my hair because I’ve known him for about fifteen years," said one 26-year-old. "I love him like a father. It made him feel better."

An excellent example of loving your neighbor as yourself, wouldn’t you say? Yes, but not good enough. Another newspaper story may provide a better one. It told of Donna, who was given only a few months to live after doctors discovered that she had a degenerative heart muscle. Her fifteen-year-old boyfriend had a premonition about his own death. He told his mother that, when he died, he wanted Donna to have his heart. Three weeks later he died from a burst blood vessel in his brain. His heart was implanted in Donna, just as he had wished.

Both stories help us understand the meaning of "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," but neither is completely adequate. To love your neighbor as yourself means that if you lived on Manuel Garcia’s block and had reason to despise the man, you would "put yourself in his shoes" and shave your head like the others. To love your neighbor as yourself means that if you were to choose to give your heart away when you die, you would do so with no strings attached. The recipient could be a sinner on skid row or death row, for all you care. They might survive on your old heart long enough to allow God to redeem them.

The comic-cartoon, "Graffiti," may have said it best. Painted in ragged letters on an old fence were the words, "Love thy neighbor. Mow thy lawn." The meaning was clear. My unkempt lawn detracts from the tidy one next door. It makes the lovely Cape Cod, which sits solidly in the center of its neat green carpet, a little less attractive. Much of the work that my neighbor puts in to beautify his property is wasted, because I fail to tend to mine. If his house goes up for sale, it may be slow to attract a buyer because of my negligence.

We two may be virtual strangers, and speak only when he trots by to catch the bus while I am walking my dog. But love - agape love - compels me to mow my lawn for his sake. In Halford Luccock’s words, agape love is "good will, boundless and aggressive, extended to those who may have no personal charm for us, and may be beyond the boundaries of family or tribe or nation."3

"Which commandment is the first of all?"

"The first is, ‘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 mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ "

That’s an order; not an option.

The bottom line is this: "God, who alone is God, gives himself totally in love to his people; therefore he expects his people to give themselves totally ... in love to him."4 Equally, he expects his people to give themselves totally in love to each other.

Are you living at the bottom line? Are you living with "all-out love"?

1. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), E-J, p. 549.

2. Leviticus 19:18b. "It was probably Jesus who first combined the two great commandments of Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18b into a summary of the law." (The Interpreter’s Bible [New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1951] , Vol. 7, p. 847.) "In its original context [Leviticus 19:18] has to do with a man’s fellow Jew. It would not have included the Gentile, whom it was quite permissible to hate." (William Barclay, "The Gospel of Mark," The Daily Study Bible Series, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975], p. 295.)

3. The Interpreter’s Bible, (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1951), Vol. VIII, p. 848a.

4. Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gabalein, General Editor, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Corp., 1984), Vol. 8, p. 737.