24 Pentecost 26B November 04, 2018
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Psalm 119:1-8
Hebrews 9:11-14 Mark 12:28-34
After a legal discussion with a scribe, Jesus told him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
What was the legal discussion about? They discussed the fact that not all laws are equal, and we know that too. All all laws might have circumstantial relevance for social order. The laws forbidding killing, stealing and lying, are more important than the laws about cleaning up after your dog, but if you don't clean up after your dog, your neighbor may want some intervention enforcement.
Why did the scribe ask a question to Jesus about the greatest laws? There are 613 laws in the Hebrew Scriptures and lots of those laws are about religious practice and ritual practice.
Of all of the laws, which did Jesus cite as most important? Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.
The scribe agreed with Jesus and added that these laws are more important than burnt offering and sacrifices. Loving behaviors toward God and toward each other are more important than religious practice. Now if I say that too often, I will put myself out of business and maybe I have since many don't see a connection between what happens in church and what happens outside of church. If you can love God and your neighbors without religious practice, then the church and the clergy and all the rules are not needed.
What are some of the insights for us from the great laws of loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves?
The first insight is the assumption that we as human beings can love God and can love our neighbors as ourselves. That is quite an optimistic belief about humanity. It actually means that our basic identity in life is to be "lovers," lovers of God and each other.
Another insight might be that if God is all sufficient, why does God need our love? We, as people, need love, but why does God want our love?
God wants our love because to activate the best love within us means we can only direct our love toward what is perfect. This is why loving God and loving our neighbor go together. We are not perfect enough to be worthy of love; we prove this often with our behaviors. Our love has to be activated toward Someone greater than us so that we can love our neighbors and love ourselves. How else could we tolerate ourselves unless we can see a perfectible future?
If God is love and we are made in the image of God then God has planted this great big love engine within each of us. It sometimes goes by other names; desire, preservation instinct, will to power, or hope. This engine of love within us can be wrongly interpreted and it can be thwarted when we love wrongly. That is the tenth commandment: Thou shalt not covet. Thou shall not love in ways harmful to your well-being and the well-being of your community. The wrongful use of our love engine occurs when we create idols. We focus our desires on things, people and activities when we demand them to satisfy us, we end up addicted, disillusioned, disappointed or bad habits which we tolerate they don't "hurt" anyone except ourselves. Why do we love wrongly? Because NO THING and NO ONE can be omni-competent to our needs. So we need to direct our love toward God the great One who then gives us regulatory power to channel our desires toward enjoyment and good stewardship for the things in our lives and blessed fellowship with the people of our lives. We need to love God beyond humanity to help us gain regulatory control over our behaviors toward others and toward ourselves.
If we can discover God as love and ourselves as lovers of God and others, then we realize that laws are strategies in society for the practice of loving behaviors. We don't perform lawful behaviors in order to gain favor with God and get into the kingdom of God; we perform lawful behaviors because we are already in the kingdom of God and we are learning to tame our big engines of love by directing it first to God, whom only is worthy. And in so doing we learn regulatory control of our selves which enables us to perform the good behaviors of law and love toward each other.
Friends remember that God has made us lovers. Love is so powerful that it needs regulatory control as expressed in behaviors of empathy for our neighbors based upon knowing the love of self-esteem.
Being near or far from the kingdom of God is a switch that we have within ourselves. All we have to do is to say, yes I have been made for love. And with God's help we make the vocation of our lives to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment