I read somewhere that a new Guinness World Record has been set for the world’s shortest sermon. An Episcopal priest stood up one Sunday morning, walked to his pulpit, stood there for a moment, and said one word: “LOVE.” Then he sat down. I know, some of you would like me to attempt a sermon like that one day. But it is not that easy. The word “love” is capable of many different meanings. Love is what a mother gives to her children. Love is what a thrice-divorced Hollywood actress is supposed to have for a five-times divorced actor. Love is what two high school students, parked in a automobile on a lonely road on a dark night are supposed to have. Love is what a heroic soldier who gives his life for another’s in wartime is supposed to have. Love is what God is supposed to have for us: “For God so loved the world...”John 3:16. Obviously, in each of these cases, “Love” has a different meaning. In the context of today’s Scripture text it means total commitment.
I. “AND ONE OF THE SCRIBES CAME UP AND ...ASKED HIM, ‘WHICH COMMANDMENT IS FIRST OF ALL?’” (Mark 12:28)
Later rabbis insisted that there were “no greater or lesser commandments.” (THE INTERPRETER’S BIBLE, New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951, p. 846) But Rabbi Hillel, who lived about twenty years before Christ, is reported to have summed up the Law for a Gentile inquirer by saying, “What you would not have done to yourself, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary.” (Mishnah, B. Sabbath 31A) That is the negative form of what Jesus expressed more positively, but it forms the basis for all of the commandments. The “scribes” were the professional exponents and teachers of the Law in postexilic Judaism. Originally, the term meant about the same thing as “secretary.” The prophet Jeremiah had a scribe named Baruch who wrote down his words for him. Originally, there was nothing particularly religious about the position. Then, during the Exile, when the Temple and the Land were gone, and the people had nothing to lean upon except their Scriptures, the scribes became a professional class, “doctors of the law,” interpreters of Scripture. Originally, they belonged to the “Hasidim, the pious ones,” but later on they broadened out in other directions. One branch of them became a political party, known as the Pharisees. The main business of the scribes was the teaching and interpretation of the Law of Moses, the Torah.
Therefore, it is no wonder that this particular scribe was most interested in what this new Rabbi in town had to say, what Jesus believed to be the “sine qua non” of religion, the fundamental essence of the faith. “Sine qua non” means: “without which, nothing.” In other words, if you haven’t got this, you haven’t got anything. This scribe was singled out for Jesus’ commendation. This surprises us, because the scribes and the Pharisees are usually the “bad guys” in the Gospels. They were the wiseguys who were always trying to trip Jesus up. Matthew’s Gospel, written a few years later, indicates the growing hardness of attitude toward the scribes, and conveniently omits Jesus’ commendation of the man. He also says that the scribe’s question was not an honest one, but was rather designed to “trip him up” (Matthew 22:35). But we have none of that here in Mark. Here we have an honest scribe who asks an honest question, and gets an honest and straightforward answer. The man asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?”
And Jesus replied:
II. “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.” (Mark 12:29-30)
Jesus began by quoting the call to worship used in the Temple in His day, (Deut. 6:4-5) and the confession of faith used by every Jew in every synagogue down to our own day. “Shema y’isroel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai ehod.” “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one...” But Jesus went further to expound on the implications of that confession of faith. If God is one, then God’s people ought also to be one. It was probably Jesus who first brought together the two great commandments of Deut. 6:4 and Lev. 19:18b into one. There is no trace of any earlier teacher having done so. “You shall love God with all your heart.” The Greek word is kardia, from which we get “cardiology.” While, literally speaking, the heart is the chief organ of physical life, in ancient times it came to stand for a person’s entire moral and spiritual and mental activity. In the Bible it is used to refer to the hidden springs of the personal life. Thus Jesus refers to human depravity as springing “from the heart”(Matthew 15:19,20) The heart is the inner being of every human being. It is the wellspring of all human actions. “You shall love God with all your soul.” The Greek word is “psyche,” from which we get “psychology.” In the first part of the Bible, it refers to the “breath of life” which God breathed into humankind. “Soul” is the animating principle of life, that which gives life to the body. To understand what the Bible means by soul, we might compare it with what Black culture means by “soul.” It is something you either have or you haven’t. “You shall love God with all your mind.” Loving God with our minds? A lot of Christians don’t think it can be done.
One preacher was asked what he’d preach the following Sunday, and replied, “I never prepare ahead of time. When I stand up and preach, God Himself doesn’t know what I’m going to say!” But refusing to use one’s mind is not a reason for bragging. According to the Bible, it is nothing less than a sin. When a devout Muslim enters the mosque to pray, he takes off his shoes, and leaves them outside. There are a lot of Christians who think that they have to leave their minds outside when they come to worship. Some people seem to believe that a good Christian must put the mind in neutral. Of course, we are not supposed to examine critically everything that is said or done in Church. Worship is made up of many facets, and if we examine every one of them with a critical eye, we will soon suffer from the “paralysis of analysis.” Of many things we do in church it is often best to just drop anchor and go with the tide. But we are not to close our minds. There is a place for loving God with our minds. To both ancient and modern Jews, to study is to pray. Perhaps some of us are afraid to think about our faith, for fear that it might not withstand scrutiny. Let me tell you: it can!
One day a student came to see the great Episcopal bishop/preacher Phillips Brooks, and said to him, “Dr. Brooks I would like to share my doubts with you, but I am afraid it might destroy your faith.” Brooks could only lean back in his chair and roar with laughter. Any minister who has done any thinking at all, has faced doubts greater than that or any other student ever imagined! “You shall love God with all your strength.” The Greek word here Is “dunamis” from which we get our word “dynamite.” It means concentrated and consecrated ability. It means having our whole being focussed. The Orthodox Jews who bob and weave as they pray at the Western Wall of Jerusalem look odd to us, but psychology teaches us that by putting their bodily strength into the action, they are forced to concentrate on their prayers. In these words Jesus is emphasizing that one’s ultimate loyalty cannot be divided. Theologian Paul Tillich defined religion as “ultimate concern” and told us that our basic problem is not atheism (no god) but idolatry (false gods).
Now, you may say that polytheism is not a temptation for moderns. We may not be very careful in the worship of one God, but we are certainly not polytheists: worshippers of many gods. But don’t be too sure. Aldous Huxley said that one of the unexpected results of the decay of a genuine monotheism has been the spread of polytheism. Some of the gods of Greek and Roman mythology have come back. Venus, the goddess of sex: she’s very popular in advertising these days. Mars, the god of war: he’s very popular in many parts of the world today. Minerva, the goddess of the intellect: she’s a big hit on campus; and Vulcan, the ironmonger, symbol of industrial and technological civilization: he’s big among the technocrats of our society. So we are not really atheists or unbelievers. Most of us are polytheists. We may say in Church on Sunday morning that we believe in but one God, but most of us are practicing polytheists, whose gods change to suit our whims. Toward the end of the Roman Empire, the emperors in Rome changed so often, the people out in the provinces had a simple method of keeping their statues of the emperor up-to-date. Rather than starting from scratch to create a new one for every changing administration, they merely hacked the head of the old emperor off the statue and replaced it with a new one. For awhile. Just who or what is our God? Jesus said that only ONE has the right to that position. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” That is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is this: III. “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”
Now, “Love your neighbor” here does not mean personal liking or sentimental affection. Christian love is a position, not an emotion. It means active goodwill. We believe that if you like some enough you may, eventually, come to love them. Jesus taught that if you loved them enough, you might eventually come to like them. But whether you like them or not, you are called to have active active goodwill toward them. When Columbus was sailing on his perilous journey to the new world, he saw floating on the sea leaves and branches. That told him that he was getting closer to another world. Whenever we see people reaching out in love to other people, we know that person is not far from the kingdom of God. “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, (all love), and the one who loves is born of God and knows God.” (I John 4:7) That one may not know that he or she knows God, but God is there, nevertheless, because God is love. In Luke, immediately following Jesus’ words is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That is the best example of what Jesus is talking about. Intelligent love of one’s neighbor in a highly complex society is a high moral, intellectual, and spiritual achievement. It takes “smarts” to love our neighbor, as well as our God. We are to love with our minds here, as well. Christians ought not to be “sitting ducks” for every con artist who comes down the pike. In every situation, we must use our minds to ask: “What is the most loving thing I can do for this person?” When a person asks for money for a meal, perhaps the most loving thing I can do is help him find a job. There used to be a con artist by the name of “Ralph” who was a regular. He visited me in at least the last four parishes I served. I haven’t seen him in years, and imagine that he has gone to that Great Soup Kitchen in the sky. But he made a rather good living going from church to church. One of the last times I saw him here was about ten years ago. When I refused to give him what he asked for, he whipped out a denim-covered New Testament and said, “But Jesus says here:’Give to him to asks of you....’” To which I replied that after every commandment in the Bible there ought to be appended the word “ordinarily.” Obey this commandment unless to do so does more harm than good. Knowing Ralph, giving to him would do more harm than good.
“LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR...AS YOURSELF.” This is part of Jesus’ great commandment which many of us miss. But the truth of the matter is, if we don’t love ourselves, then our neighbors are in big trouble. And a lot of us don’t. At least we don’t love ourselves properly. There are right and wrong kinds of self-love. Most of us have had it up to here with the self-centered person who always seems to suffer from “I” trouble. The whole universe revolves around that person and his needs. That is not what Jesus is talking about. He is talking about a healthy respect for one’s self, a love for one’s self, a belief that we are worth something simply because God has loved us. G. K. Chesterton once said that the really great lesson of the story of “Beauty and the Beast” is that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. A person must be loved before that person can be loveable. Some of the most unlovely people I have known got that way because they thought that nobody loved them. The fact of the matter is that unless and until we feel ourselves loved, we cannot love. That’s not only a principle of theology but of psychology and sociology as well. Just as abused children grow up to abuse their children, loved children grow up to love their children. Loved persons are able to love. Unloved persons are not. Christianity says something startling. It says that God loves and accepts us “just as we are.” Therefore we can love and accept ourselves and in so doing, love and accept others.
Harry Emerson Fosdick once wrote in his famous “On Being a Real Person,” “We cannot stop caring for ourselves. We ought not to stop caring for ourselves. Our initial business in life is to care so much for ourselves that I tackles Me, determined to make out of him something worthwhile.” And the only adequate basis for such an effort to lift one’s self to a higher level is the faith that that is where God intends us to be. Our forebears in the faith used to sing an old Gospel hymn: “Oh, to be nothing, nothing at all.” Some of them made it! But that’s not the Gospel. The Gospel is that “God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Because God loves us, you and I are somebody. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Jesus said to this man: “YOU ARE NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” (Mark 12:34) He was not far, but he wasn’t there, yet. He knew it with his mind, but he had not yet experienced it in his heart or reflected it in his actions. But Christ accepted him and commended him anyway. What would it take to push him over, I wonder? What kind of a nudge would it take to push him over into the Kingdom of God? What kind of a nudge would it take for us? In the 1985 Madrid marathon, 4000 runners began the great race. At the end, two 36-year old runners who were very close friends were leading the pack. Near the finish line, one of them was seized with terrible cramps and could not finish the race on his own. Whereupon the other stopped and picked up his buddy and carried him across the finish line. It’s a parable for us, isn’t it? None of us can make it on our own. But we have a Friend who wants to carry us into the kingdom in His arms. For heaven’s sake, let’s not wait until we die to be “carried away” by Jesus. Let’s let it happen now! Here. Today.