Geneva Presbyterian Church

Weekly Sermon

November 5, 2000 - "Choosing Love"

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Geneva Presbyterian Church; November 5, 2000

Ruth 1:16-18 Mark 12:28-34

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he 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. Prayer: Lord God, we hear Jesus' commandment to love you with all our hearts, and souls, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Speak to us about what your words mean. May we each experience an insight that empowers us with new ways to show our love for you and our love for our neighbors. Amen. Choosing Love: Our culture talks a lot about love. Everywhere you look-magazines, television, movies, even newspapers-you will see "how to" articles about love. But as I studied today's scripture, I thought we don't know as much about love today as they knew in ancient Israel. What they knew that we seem to have forgotten is that for the most part love is a choice. We walk around hoping that love will suddenly appear in our lives, just arrive with a flourish of trumpets, but Jesus says that love is something we must work at with all our strength. Love doesn't just happen. Love must be cultivated, nurtured, and developed. Jesus tells where to begin the work of love. He explains that the first love we must work on is the love of God and the second love is the love of our neighbors. Let me take a minute to put today's scripture in context. Jesus is teaching in the temple when a scribe comes up to him, and unlike all the other scribes we have heard about in Mark's gospel, this scribe comes with a sincere question. His question was much debated in Jesus' day. The scribe wants to know what is the first, i.e., the most important, commandment. We have gotten so used to Jesus' answer that we don't realize there could even be a debate about the varying levels of importance attached to the different commandments. Moses was supposed to have "received 613 precepts on Mount Sinai, 365 according to the days of the sun year, and 248 according to the generations of men" [William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, the Gospel of Mark, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), p. 293]. If you have tried to read through the Bible from beginning to end, then you know that when you reach Leviticus, you get to read all 613 precepts given to Moses. It is slow going, and lots of well-intentioned people give up their plan to read the Bible because they get stuck in Leviticus. For centuries before and after Jesus' time, faithful leaders tried to fill in more and more details on how the law was to be followed. Their tinkering was making the law harder and harder to follow. At the same time, some leaders tried to simplify the law. The debates in Jesus' time centered on whether a law was weighty, that is important, or light, that is less important. The laws were compared on whether the underlying issue was morality or behavior. But when Jesus answered the scribe's question about which was the first commandment, he didn't start assessing the options according measurements of heavy or light, moral or behavioral. He went deeper. He says that the first commandment is to love God, completely, with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. And he doesn't stop where the scribe's question stopped. He goes on to say that the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. It is hard for us to imagine how powerful Jesus' answer was to the people gathered around him. When Jesus said, the first commandment was "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one," he was using the words that were said (and are still said today in synagogues) at the beginning of every Jewish worship service. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one" were the words that set the Jewish people apart from all the other peoples of the world. By using that phrase, which is called the Shema, Jesus was saying, "You must begin every part of your life as you begin every worship service: knowing that God is one and you are called to love God with all your heart, your soul, and your strength." Then Jesus adds, "and second, commandment is love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus is calling us to choose love, but it is not the silly, sentimental love that is light and superficial. It is a love you must choose. It is a love that encompasses all of our lives. It is a love that takes over our hearts, souls, and minds. The Hebrew understanding of the role of the heart is much more comprehensive than our understanding. They associated the heart not just with feelings. They saw the heart as the center for motivation. So when Jesus repeats the ancient admonishment to love God with all our hearts, he is saying that everything we do should be motivated by our love for God. What would happen if every morning our first thought was, "How can I show my love for God today?" I wish that I could say to you that I begin each day motivated to show my love for God in everything I do. As I wrote this sermon, I realized that I would like to try. I want to try beginning and ending each day focused on loving God with my whole heart. It may sound corny and look dumb, but I have placed some little yellow posted on the mirrors in our bathroom to help me remember to love God with all my heart. On Tuesday mornings we have a book club. We are reading Soul Feast: An invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life by Marjorie J. Thompson. In the first chapter she tells about a friend, "a woman of deep prayer. [The woman] was describing what she had heard in response to the question she puts before Jesus each morning. Her question is, 'What do you want me to tell the people?' For many years the response she received was, 'Tell the people that I love them.' Then one day the reply came: 'Tell the people that I miss them.'" [Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p. 11] When we forget to love God with all our hearts, God misses us and we miss God. We may not know exactly what is missing, but we have a deep sense that something is wrong. There is a yearning that is unsatisfied. Jesus goes on in reciting the Shema when he says we are to love God with all our souls, too. Again, the Hebrew understanding of soul is a little different from our present day understanding. When Jesus and Moses commanded the Israelites to love God with all their souls, they meant to love God with all their lives. Actually, they meant to love God more than their own lives. That is a profound idea. We do not live in a country where our lives are at risk for being Christians. I'm humbled by the thought of risking my life for my faith. I pray that I would be strong should I ever face death for believing in Christ. The closest I have ever come to facing the issue was as a minister in New York City when I visited AIDS patients before we knew for sure that it was safe. I wish I could say that I walked into the wards without a concern for myself, but I didn't. In the late eighties a dear friend of mine innocently contracted AIDS. Every year, my daughter Deborah and I would visit Martha and her sons for Thanksgiving. I will never forget how when I hugged her she just held on. She said that one of the hardest things about having AIDS was how everyone stepped back from her. No one wanted to touch her. I wish that I had touched her with no reservations, but I did not. Today, I know that when I showed my love for her, God was blessing me. In loving her, I was loving God with all my soul. I wasn't fearless, but I tried to be faithful. The third thing that Jesus says about how we must love God is that we must love God with all our minds. It isn't enough to love God with our hearts and our souls, we must love God with our minds, too. I think that means we must bring our intelligence into our love of God. It seems to me that bringing our minds into the equation means committing to God for the long term. I'm reminded of a story Matthew Linn tells on himself. He is a Jesuit priest, so he always lives in bad neighborhoods. That is what you do when you are a Jesuit priest. Despite the obstacles, he tries to have a vegetable garden wherever he lives. More than once he has had gardens that were destroyed by rough kids-kids Matt is more than a little afraid of because Matt is only 5'3" tall. The last time Matt's vegetable garden was destroyed, he was furious. And he stayed furious for a long time. But he knew that learning how to love God and his neighbors took time and so he didn't cut off his feelings. He sat with them and over time he let his mind in on the process. Here is what he did: To love his neighbors, and through them God, he had to understand them. So after he had experienced all his anger, he sat back and thought, "I wonder how they feel." To this question he answered, "I see them as threatening, but they probably see me as threatening, too. They are black in a culture that is cruel to black people. They are poor in a culture that blames poor people for their plight. They are young in a culture where young people aren't given many ways to earn respect." Suddenly, Matt realized that using his mind, he could work with them on a solution to the vegetable garden problems. The next time he saw the boys he thought might have destroyed his garden , he asked them to come talk to him. He explained that his vegetable garden had been destroyed. He said he didn't know exactly who had done it. He said that he had something else in his mind. He was wondering if these boys could take on the project of protecting his garden. In exchange they could take all the tomatoes from the biggest bush that they wanted. [Matthew, Dennis, and Sheila Fabricant Linn, Don't Forgive Too Soon, (I have lent the book out and so I can't properly footnote)] Matt used his mind to find a solution built on loving and respecting those boys and through loving them, he demonstrated his love for God. When Jesus answered the scribe that the most important commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, he was giving a new answer to an old question. He did something else that day. He combined loving God with loving our neighbors. The two were seldom brought together in his day. Since then, we know that the two cannot be separated. As we prepare to come to the table, let us remember that in Jesus Christ we feast with those who have loved God and neighbor in all times and places. Amen.