This week's blog is an essay Dr. Hood wrote for Lectionary Homiletics, a professional journal for preachers. The essay was prepared to assist subscribers on this journal in thinking creatively about their own sermon development of the lectionary text for November 1, 2015.
November 1, 2015
Preaching Mark 12: 28-34
To listen
to some Christians, it is easy to get the impression that what matters most are
the decisions that we make. Faith is reduced to getting everything right; how
we dress for church, what we do on Sunday after church, the company we keep
during the week or the decisions parents make in how to raise their children.
This passage begins with that assumption. A legal expert stands in the shadows
eavesdropping on a Q & A between Jesus and the Sadducees. Impressed with
how Jesus answers their questions he approaches Jesus for clarity; “Which
commandment is the most important of all?” (Verse 28) It is the same question
asked by many in our churches, asked by people who have condensed the faith to
“following the rules.”
The wise
preacher will acknowledge that each of us are prone to such an approach to the
faith, particularly with local churches and denominations splintering over
doctrinal issues and disagreements with how particular scriptures are to be
interpreted. Jesus refuses to answer with only one law. Love of God and love of
neighbor are held together. With love at the center of this text, we may speak
of God’s call to a visionary reunion of heart, soul, mind, and strength. And
that a love of neighbor must complete the great commandment. A sermon may have
as a title, The Church Divided which asks,
“Is the substance of our faith located in following a rulebook?” The result of
such a faith is division from others who may hear something different in their
own reading of the Bible.
In a
passionate spiritual autobiography, Girl
Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life,
Lauren F. Winner shares that she was raised the child of a Jewish father and a
lapsed Southern Baptist mother. The moment came, as it does for all of us, that
Winner had to make a faith decision for her own life. She chooses to become an
Orthodox Jew with the multitude of rules for living faithfully. Yet, following
her faith decision, Winner experiences what she describes as an inescapable
courtship by a “very determined carpenter from Nazareth.”[i]
She eventually converts to the Christian faith.
One may
well question if this was a similar experience by the legal expert who
questions Jesus in our text. He not only stands apart physically from the Sadducees
who initially questions Jesus, he stands apart from them in spirit, not hostile
toward Jesus but inescapably attracted to Jesus. Not only does this story
explicitly mention the legal experts’ gracious response to Jesus’ answer, Jesus
is equally gracious in saying to him, “You aren’t far from God’s kingdom.”
(Verse 34) This story cautions interpreters of the New Testament from
identifying all Jewish religious leaders as hostile to Jesus.
Here in the
sermon I would shift to providing examples of how our churches are fractured
and hearts are wounded by vitriolic discourse as we demand from others
conformity to our insight and understanding of the rules. We have become like
many of the religious leaders of scripture – we also want to know if there are
some laws that are weightier than others. What Jesus does here is change the
conversation. Rather than a life that “gets it right” by perfect obedience to
the rule book, Jesus invites people into a relationship; a relationship with
God and neighbor that is defined by love. Jesus pries open and expands our
thinking about what faithfulness looks like.
I would
close the sermon by mentioning a magazine cover of The New Yorker from December 18th, 1948. This cover
depicts a snow covered, white church with a front door and a side door, both
open wide to the blistery, winter weather. Through the front door enter tired
people, bent over with age, all dressed in drab grey, one walking with the
assistance of a cane. Exiting the side door are young children, dressed in
bright, primary colors, each laughing and carrying a gift. It is, for me, a
visual parable. The discouraged, disillusioned and broken seek the shelter of
the church. They enter from a penetratingly cold world that has worn them down.
In the shelter of God’s grace each are transformed. They reenter the world with
laughter, the energy of a child, dressed in vivid colors and carrying a gift.
In this lectionary text from Mark, Jesus
receives those who have become burdened – even broken – by the various demands
of the law and gifts them with an invitation to experience a whole life
transformation that results, not from a focus on the law, but on living into a
relationship with God and with one another. God is not satisfied with less than
the all of us, “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Verse 30) And God
demands, “You will love your neighbor as yourself.” (Verse 31) The church God
seeks is less one that is caught-up with which laws matter more but with a
community of people who strive to understand – and live into – what it means to
love God and one another.
[i] Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God: On The Path To A Spiritual
Life (New York: Water Brook Press,
2002), 12.
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