One of the scribes came near and heard the Saducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, \u201cWhich commandment is the first of all?\u201d Jesus answered, \u201cThe first is, \u2018Hear, 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.\u2019 The second is this, \u2018You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019 There is no other commandment greater than these.\u201d Then the scribe said to him, \u201cYou are right, Teacher; you have truly said that \u2018he is one, and besides him there is no other\u2019; and \u2018to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,\u2019 and \u2018to love one\u2019s neighbor as oneself,\u2019 \u2014this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.\u201d When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, \u201cYou are not far from the kingdom of God.\u201d After that no one dared to ask him any question.\u00a0 Mark 12:28-34 ESV<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Christians and non-Christians, alike, often read passages like the one we read from Mark\u2019s Gospel this morning and draw all the wrong conclusions.<\/p>\n
Christians are loving.<\/p>\n
But so are other people.<\/p>\n
So, it doesn\u2019t matter whether you are a Christian or not.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If that was all there was to what Jesus has to say, I couldn\u2019t agree more.\u00a0 I would even go one step further and suggest that we turn out the lights, lock the doors, and call it day.<\/p>\n
After all \u2013 it\u2019s true \u2013 there are lots of loving people out there who aren\u2019t Christians.\u00a0 And, even if that weren\u2019t the case, why wrap what we do here in worship week after week, year after year, around the simple affirmation, \u201cbe loving\u201d?\u00a0 It\u2019s a straightforward message and it\u2019s not hard to grasp.<\/p>\n
The problem, however, is that what Jesus is saying here isn\u2019t that simple.<\/p>\n
One, the command to love God and love our neighbors is predicated on a very particular conviction about the state of the human race.\u00a0 And it\u2019s simply this: Left to our own devices, we are not loving.<\/p>\n
That is evident from the newspaper on any given day.\u00a0 As much progress as we may think we\u2019ve made, every form of human cruelty that has ever existed, still exists: slavery, the sex trade, concentration camps, genocide, war, murder \u2013 you name it.\u00a0 We are surrounded by the evidence that we are not loving, just more efficient. \u00a0And only a very selective \u2013 na\u00efve -invincibly ignorant \u2013 approach to the world could possibly reinforce the notion that we are basically good.<\/p>\n
Second, Jesus\u2019 command to love God is predicated on the conviction that in a world without God, there is no reason to be loving \u2013 not at least one that is written into the nature of the universe.<\/p>\n
Yes, atheists and agnostics will offer cogent reasons for moral behavior.\u00a0 They may point to altruism, the value of cooperation or the building of just communities.\u00a0 But these are all contingent<\/em> reasons for being good \u2013 meaning that they are only the reasons one might offer, granted the belief that our existence is otherwise accidental and ultimately meaningless.<\/p>\nI have talked to a number of atheists over the years and I\u2019ve read some of their work as well. \u00a0And the one thing that stands out is that many \u2013 if not most of them \u2013 never quite come to grips with the fact that their position is ultimately either tragic, nihilistic or both.\u00a0 You can\u2019t argue that our existence is an accident in an endless vacuum and then argue that any good thing that we do ultimately has any meaning.\u00a0 Not one that is enduring, anyway.<\/p>\n
By contrast, Jesus argues that the command to love our neighbors is based upon the existence of a loving God, who creates us with the capacity for love and whose love shapes the deeper nature of life itself. \u00a0It is that fact which makes love the priority that it is in the Christian life and not any other contingent or utilitarian reasons.<\/p>\n
That said, the fact that our love for others is grounded in God\u2019s love for us also has a great deal to do with what we believe about love itself.\u00a0 And without lifting up that fact, we won\u2019t understand why the love that Jesus urges people to embrace is different in critical ways from the love that non-Christians express.<\/p>\n
I will focus here on just three critical differences:<\/p>\n
One, we believe at the heart of love is an unconditional commitment to the wellbeing of others on their journey into a healing and restored relationship with God.<\/em><\/p>\nIn popular terms, love can be a sentimental frame of mind and refer to little more than an affection for or attachment to other people.\u00a0 At its dysfunctional worst, love can be about giving someone else whatever that person wants.\u00a0 At its selfish worst, love can be about our own needs or desires. \u00a0At its best, it can be self-sacrificial.<\/p>\n
But \u2013 compared with even its self-sacrificial best \u2013 the Christian understanding of love is still about something else. \u00a0It is about the full restoration of the image of God in others.\u00a0 And Christian love attends to that goal \u2013 focuses on it \u2013 and weighs the choices it makes with an eye to drawing those we love more deeply into the life of God in Christ.<\/p>\n
That is why Jesus sets out the love of God and love of others together.\u00a0 That is why they are inextricably related to one another.\u00a0 That is also why one rightly gets the impression from the teaching of Jesus that you cannot claim to love God if you don\u2019t love your neighbor, and you can\u2019t love your neighbor adequately, if you don\u2019t love God.<\/p>\n
Two, we Christians measure the demands of love against the greatness of God\u2019s love for us.<\/em><\/p>\nIf you read the Gospels, what becomes clear is that Jesus is not content with cookbook spirituality.\u00a0 He won\u2019t narrow what it means to follow the law not to murder.\u00a0 He tells his disciples that an acquaintance with God\u2019s love is the thing that should guide their behavior toward others.\u00a0 He won\u2019t tell his followers how often they ought to forgive.\u00a0 He tells them they should forgive, over and over again, just as God does.<\/p>\n
And \u2013 more often than not \u2013 he tells stories or parables to guide people in living out their lives.\u00a0 It\u2019s one thing to be given a list of things to do.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very different challenge to imagine what it means to love like the prodigal son\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
This is why we Christians don\u2019t think that it\u2019s enough to sing, \u201cAll you need is love.\u201d \u00a0What we need is to do is become love<\/em> \u2013 and we aren\u2019t loving by nature.\u00a0 Only God is true love.\u00a0 And learning what that means is a lifelong journey \u2013 limitless, constantly deepening \u2013 a journey that pares away the selfishness, the pettiness, the fear, and resentments that keep us from being what God hopes for us.<\/p>\nAnd three, we depend upon the goodness and reliability of God\u2019s love to perfect the love that we show to others.<\/em><\/p>\nThis is why we worship every Sunday, why we receive the body and blood of Jesus, why we read Scripture, why we pray together, why we confess our sins and extend the peace to one another.\u00a0 Life in the body of Christ is a spiritual discipline in which we return, again and again, to Christ\u2019s self-giving example.\u00a0 The kind of love that we celebrate can only take its intended shape if we constantly expose ourselves to that example, and that example can only be received by someone whose life is marked by gratitude and humility.<\/p>\n
That is why the word Eucharist has as its root meaning, \u201cto give thanks.\u201d\u00a0 That is why our worship begins with the praise of God.\u00a0 And that is why, after confessing our sins, we offer one another the peace of Christ.\u00a0 The very shape of our worship reflects the logic of Christ\u2019s twofold command.<\/p>\n
Now, sadly, I think it is all too common to hear all of this and conclude that the logic of this twofold \u00a0command is just simple poetry \u2013 stained glass language.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\nBut where Christians have taken this message seriously over the last two thousand years, this kind of love has changed the world.\u00a0 Though the church has not always been faithful or consistent, the message of Jesus has continued to challenge, judge, and correct both the world and<\/em> the church \u2013 even when neither one has been listening as closely as it should.<\/p>\nAnd it is this two-fold command to love God and one another that has been at the heart of that challenge.\u00a0 It is this kind of love that destroyed the slave trade \u2013 that insisted women be treated as full partners in the life of God and not as the possession of men \u2013 that changed the conditions in which children live \u2013 that battled the forces of racism \u2013 that eroded dangerous forms of tribalism \u2013 that insisted on care for the handicapped \u2013 that made friends out of enemies after wars \u2013 that gave rise to the 12 step program \u2013 and that feeds the poor.<\/p>\n
But it is also the commandment that transforms individual lives.\u00a0 And as we have learned, over and over again, it is the individual transformation of lives that makes these larger transformations in the world possible.\u00a0 The only questions, then, are these: Do we believe the power of that command exists?\u00a0 And, if we do, will we choose to be found alongside God as advocates of the love that Christ has unleashed in the world?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo by Nathan Anderson<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the scribes came near and heard the Saducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, \u201cWhich commandment is the first of all?\u201d Jesus answered, \u201cThe first is, \u2018Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3559,3560,132,3556,2408,2405],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agnosticism","category-agnostics","category-atheism","category-gospel-of-mark","category-jesus","category-love"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n