Proper 26 Year B 11/3/2024
Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Psalm 119:1-8; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Laws are not exciting.
They are necessary for keeping things orderly and safe.
But usually, we don’t think too much about laws unless we break them or if we want others to follow them.
Nevertheless, they are part of our society…
And they have been for a very long time.
In the Old Testament there are a lot of laws.
613 to be exact.
In our Gospel reading, a scribe thought it would be a good idea to ask Jesus which commandment is the first of all?
Jesus responded with this:
“The most important is,
‘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.’
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
This is known in Judaism as the Shema.
It is found in the Torah…
(In our Bibles the Torah is the first five books… the books of Moses).
It is constructed as a prayer and said in the morning and evening of every day…
It is the center piece of prayer.
It is to Judaism what the Lord’s Prayer is to Christianity.
And Jesus says this about the Shema:
There is no other commandment greater than these.
So obviously… it’s pretty important in the Christian faith too…
We say it every Sunday in our Rite I liturgy.
And what the commandment boils down to is this – Relationship.
Our relationship with God.
And our relationship with others.
I’m convinced if we could just get these two commands straight in our life the world would be just about fixed.
Think about it.
Just about… if not every… problem in this world comes down to a few people not getting along.
People not loving their neighbor.
Racism, poverty, human trafficking, wars… you name it.
Even natural disasters have a lot to do with loving our neighbor.
Most of the problems (if not all of them) are present because we can’t get our relationships right.
And it’s not just the big old problems in the world that we can’t get right.
It’s right here in our lives.
How many families are all messed up because we don’t love others as we should.
Husband and wife.
Siblings.
What about in church?
How many people do you know that profess to be Christians,
but won’t step foot in a church because they were hurt…
or didn’t feel welcome…
or didn’t fit in.
Actually… church is a great place to practice loving your neighbor.
In Dr. James K. A. Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom he writes this concerning the church:
…the church is called to be as the new humanity:
a community that gathers, irrespective of preferences, tastes, class, or ethnicity, in order to pursue a common good.
I often tell my children that one of the reasons we go to church is to learn to love people we don’t really like that much –
people we find irritating, odd, and who grate on our nerves
(the feeling’s certainly mutual, I’m sure!).
And sometimes we will even have to work through our frustrations and hurts when we fail one another and disappoint one another.[1]
This can be so true…
A church our size is bound to have a few people that rub you the wrong way…
What a great opportunity to learn to love people.
Regardless of their politics…
Regardless of their theology…
Regardless of their mannerisms…
Can we love people that frustrate us?
Now, what I am not saying is this:
Just try being nicer and more kind and then we can all get along.
Frankly, I think we can only go so far with that idea.
We will struggle with the second commandment about loving our neighbor if we don’t get the first commandment right…
The first one is love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Often in our culture, the world approaches the Great Commandment backwards… starting with the self.
In our culture it has become trendy to love yourself, then love others once you have learned to love yourself.
It sounds good…
However, most people don’t ever move past loving themselves.
The commandment to love God and love others as yourself – it starts with loving God.
We don’t even know who we really are until we begin to love God.
The Bible says:
We love because he first loved us.
(1 John 4.19)
So, we truly begin to love when we understand and experience God’s love for us.
Theology, personhood, self-awareness, and the like all begin with God…
Not ourselves.
An understanding that God is God, and we are not.
All our relationships…
With others…
With family…
Even in loving ourselves…
Begins with loving God.
We begin to obey that first command when we humbly come to God and admit we can’t do it…
When we admit that we can’t live up to God’s requirements.
We can’t do it in our own strength…
with our own heart…
with our own intellect…
When we admit that we are broken and sinful and need forgiveness.
And in that confession God begins to do a work in our lives that transforms our hearts toward him…
We find the healing we need in him.
And in our confession and profession of Jesus as Lord…
The Holy Spirit comes into our lives and begins to transform our hearts and minds toward the things of God.
It’s not that we become perfect.
Hang around in church long enough and that becomes evident…
real quick.
But we become part of the people of God.
Members of the sainthood of all believers.
Children living in the grace of God…
We can’t live up to the Great Commandments of God on our own.
Jesus said:
I am the vine; you are the branches.
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing.
(John 15.5)
So we live and act in Christ.
Abiding in him.
As it is written in our Baptismal Covenant:
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
I will, with God’s help.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God’s help.
We live for justice and peace in this world in God’s gracious help.
And thanks be to God!
When we fail at this, God has made a way for us to be found righteous.
Through his Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins.
In him, by faith, we are made holy.
Not holy by works and good deeds.
Not because of merit.
But holy because the Holy Spirit is within us.
And that is what we are doing by the power of the Spirit.
Loving God and loving people.
And may this never become too far from our thinking.
May this never become too far from our actions.
Did you hear our reading from Deuteronomy?
Listen to these words as paraphrased in The Message:
Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts.
Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children.
Talk about them wherever you are,
sitting at home or walking in the street;
talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night.
Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder;
inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
Fathers, Mothers,
Grandparents,
Aunts, Uncles…
whoever you are.
You have influence!
Raise your children in this.
Model this.
Live this.
Demonstrate this.
By God’s grace… yielding to the ministry of the Holy Spirit… may we:
Love God.
Love people.
We need to…
Do it at home.
Do it on social media.
Do it at the grocery store.
Do it when the car in front of us is going really slow.
Do it no matter the outcome of Tuesday’s election.
Do it with people who think differently than us.
Do it with people that annoy us.
With God’s help…
Love God.
Love people.
As Jesus said:
There is no other commandment greater than these.
We will with God’s help.
Amen.
[1] James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 202-203.