20151108 23rd Sunday after Pentecost B
Title: Teaching to the Test... and Beyond
Text: Mark 12:28-34 (Matthew 22:37-40 and Luke 10:25-28)
Thesis: Ultimately, it is not only what you know… it’s what you do with what you know.
Introduction
Video Clip: “How NOT to Love Jesus”
The daughter heard her Father’s command to clean her room. She even memorized, “Clean your room” in Spanish. She read a book about how to clean your room. She discussed how to clean her room with her small group. And she even mapped out a strategy as to how to clean her room and envisioned what a clean room would look like.
Only one problem… she did not clean her room.
Of course it is a parody on how we often read or hear God’s Word. We memorize it. We read about it. We discuss it and imagine what it would look like if we actually obeyed God’s Word. But there is a problem… we don’t do God’s Word.
Jesus was the first to put the two commandments, to love God and neighbor together as one. It was Jesus’ way of saying that a person evidences his or her love for God by loving others. Jesus spoke this Great Commandment as something not necessarily felt but to be done. In James 1:22 we read, “But don’t just listen to God’s Word. You must do it what it says. Otherwise you are only fooling yourselves.”
Our text is what is known as The Great Commandment. The Great Commandment brings the commandment to love God and our neighbor as we love ourselves together.
We begin with loving God.
I. Loving God
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and all your mind and all your strength.”
Mark 12:30 (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21)
This scenario was prompted by a question posed by a teacher of religious law. It was not really an unusual question or asked with malicious intent. Religious students of the Law discussed and debated the Law like theologians today might discuss grace and works or eschatology or a biblical understanding of immigration or the Christian’s position on the LGBT movement or whatever…
The teachers of religious law ran the gamut of those who believed the Law was the Ten Commandments and others believed the law included some 613 do’s and don’ts lifted from the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy as well as a bunch of rules and regulations that were matters of interpretation…
So the question was simply, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
If Jesus were to speak to the most important of the 10 Commandments… would he say, “Having no gods other than God” or would he say, “You must not commit adultery” or would he say, “You shall not covet?”
If Jesus were to take a wider view of the Law, would Jesus make reference to Leviticus 20 and say, “If a man or woman practices homosexuality with another man or another woman, both shall be put to death?” Or would he reference Deuteronomy 22:8 and say, “When you build a new house, you must build a railing around the roof of the house so you will not be guilty of murder if someone falls from the roof?” Or would he quote verse 22, “If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die?”
From all of the 613 plus commandments found in the Books of the Law Jesus chose two. The first is from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4…
A. Love the Lord your God -
“You must love the Lord your God….” Mark 12:30 (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21)
If the commandment is to love the Lord your God… it is fair to ask, “What does it mean to love God?”
It means:
1. Getting to Know God, John 1:12-13 and I John 3:1
To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God… a birth that comes from God. John 1:12-13
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is who we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they do not know him. I John 3:1
We become children of God by entering into a relationship with God. When we become believers, as followers of Jesus we become children of God and as children of God and as we live into that relationship we get to know God more and more.
It may come as a huge surprise to you to learn that I have not always loved Bonnie. The first time I saw her, I was in my dorm room in college… like the first day of college life. I heard a girl screaming and looked out the window. There was Bonnie running in the grassy area between Old Main and the Men’s Dorm, carrying a football as four or five freshmen guys chased after her. It was kind of hot but I didn’t love her. Four years later we knew each other pretty well and were married.
The longer we live in relationship with God the more we get to know God and the greater our love and devotion for God.
2. Learning to Worship and Serve God by living for God, Luke 4:8 (Romans 12:1-2)
Jesus replied, “You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” Luke 4:8
Brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Romans 12:1
We love God when we set aside time to deliberately worship and praise and offer thanks to God. We do it Sunday morning and we do it throughout the week when we take time to read the Word and pray. The Christian life is living from grace, not for grace. We worship God throughout every day as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God… a truth our Conference Superintendent, Tammy Swanson-Draheim, so powerfully brought home to us last Sunday. Living our very lives as sacrifices to God is an act of worship… it is our reasonable service or worship.
On the Big Bang sitcom Sheldon Cooper is an excessive compulsive character who compartmentalizes every aspect of his life. On Monday morning he eats oatmeal for breakfast. On Tuesday he has a BBQ bacon sandwich at the Cheesecake Factory. On Wednesday night it is either Halo Night or New Comic Book Night. On Thursday it is pizza night except for the third Thursday of every month when it is Anything Goes Night. Friday is carry-out Chinese food and Vintage Game Night. And Saturday night is Laundry Night. And nothing, absolutely nothing can interfere with Laundry Night.
I think we tend to compartmentalize the activities of our lives. We may have our private life and our public life. We may have our on-the-clock work life and our off-the-clock free time. The point to be made about how we worship and serve God is to understand that there is no part of our lives that we may compartmentalize as being other than living for and serving God. Whatever we do in thought, word and deed we do for the glory of God.
It means:
3. Demonstrating Desire for God, Psalm 42:
As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you. O God. I thirst for the living God. Psalm 42:1-2
The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart… I Samuel 13:14
The image in our text is that of a deer racing, as if being pursued by hunters, and desperately in need of a drink. That is a powerful image that sets a pretty high bar for us… there have been times in my life when I was desperate for God… times of failure and sin, times of loss, times of crisis. My guess is that David was feeling some or all of that when he wrote of such an intense desire and need for God.
I do not mean to dumb down what it means to desire God but I am often drawn to the Old Testament text where Samuel is instructed to go to King Saul and tell him his days were numbered and that God had selected a new king whom Samuel described as a man after the heart of God or with a heart for God.
I begin my day with a quiet time with the Lord. I conclude that quiet time with a prayer inviting Jesus to be on my left and my right, to go before me and follow behind me, to be beneath me and above me, within me and without me and all about me… and I pray that the peace and the power and the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ go with me through the day.
Any time that routine is disrupted I find myself out-of- sync and in need of a renewed sense of God’s presence in my life.
It means:
4. Living in Obedience to God, John 14:15, 23-24; 15:12
“If you love me, obey my commandments. All who love me will do what I say. Anyone who doesn’t love me will not obey them. This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” John 14:15, 23-24 and 15:12
News of the Canon City Middle and High School sexting scandal has been front and center this week. This is not a new concern but the massive involvement of perhaps 500 or more students sharing photos of themselves and others on hidden apps has shaken that community and made national news. There is much that is being said about parental outrage and who is to blame for this scandal.
We hear about the outrage but not so much of the disappointment and the pain and the shame of those parents… parents who are broken by the knowledge of the involvement of their children...
One father of a 12 year old middle school daughter wept openly in disbelief that his little girl would do such a thing. He may not have said it but I am sure he was wondering how having loved his little girl as he does… she would so deliberately hurt that love. He may have wondered, “If you love me… how could you so disobey me?”
It is a time for the big people to demonstrate unconditional love for those kids. In light of that outrage the Superintendent of Schools counseled the community, “Bring our children close to us, putting our arms around them, letting them know we love them, letting them know this is not the end of the world, letting them know what they did was wrong.” (Canon City Re-1 School District Superintendent George Welsh)
When we love God or anyone… we do not deliberately defy or hurt them. When we love God we submit our will to the will of God.
The command to love God is an unrestricted love.
B. Love the Lord with your all
“You must love the Lord your God… with all your heart and all your soul, and all your mind and all your strength.”
Mark 12:30 (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21)
The word for “all” is holos. It means wholly or completely. It means every whit. A whit is the smallest amount. A whit is an iota, jot or tittle. A whit may be the last bit of warmth from a setting sun. A whit may be what you manage to squeeze from a tube of tooth paste. So to say our love for God is to be with our all it means every last bit of our being.
So how much do we love God?
The thought is that we love God with every whit of our being.
1. Heart. The heart is the center of our inner being...
2. Soul. The soul is our life.
3. Mind. The mind is the center of our mental or intellectual activity.
4. Strength. Strength speaks to our abilities and capabilities and resources.
The idea here is not to spend a lot of time in defining the heart, soul, mind and strength… the point here is that we love and serve God with all of our being, our will, emotion, intellect and capabilities, all the time.
If you use your Wi-Fi setting on your phone connections you have likely experienced the amazing world of Wi-Fi connection fluxuations. You have experienced a strong connection and you have experienced a weak connection and every connection in between.
The ideal for loving God is that we be conscientious about maintaining a strong signal… loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
The second and equally important piece of the Great Commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.
II. Love Your Neighbor (or the other person)
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12:31 (Leviticus 19:18)
Love for God and love for others…
A. Love for God and love for others are not mutually exclusive. We cannot compartmentalize or isolate our love for God from loving others.
We cannot love God in isolation from one’s other relationships in life. For this reason Jesus coupled the commandment to love God with the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
• If you love your neighbor you fulfill the requirements of God’s law. Romans 13:8-10
• For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself. Galatians 5:14
• It is good when you obey the royal law as found in the scriptures, Love your neighbor as yourself. James 2:8-9
Love for others is evidence…
B. Love for others is evidence of our love for God.
Love is our inner commitment to God that is expressed in all our conduct and relationships. Those who do not show love to others can hardly claim to love God.
• Let us not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. I John 3:14-18
• Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. I John 4:8
• If we love each other, God lives in us and his love is brought to full expression in us. I John 4:10-12
• If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? I John 4:20-22
This morning I brought two Styrofoam cups with me… One I compartmentalize as my love for God. The other I compartmentalize as my love for others. Two cups: One cup is my love for God cup and the other is my love for others cup.
If the Great Commandment is to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and of equal importance, love my neighbor as myself, is it possible to separate the two loves? Can I love God in this cup without loving those in the other cup? The command to love God and others is not a commandment we can dissect and separate… the way to understand the way loving God and others is to slip the love for others inside the love of God cup. Loving God and loving others are not two different commands… they are one.
Conclusion
We have been hearing about “teaching to the test” in our public education system for several years. Currently our students spend 25.3 hours taking tests in a given school year. The tests are standardized tests given to the students. The answers are standardized… so in the classroom teachers focus on what students will be tested on for the standardized tests. The idea is that these are the things we want the students to know for the test. So students practice in class… they rehearse the tests, so they can be successful on the standardized tests. The entire emphasis is on what will be on the test. The focus in the classroom is not a consideration of the different ways students learn or to introduce collaborative information or ask and answer questions or encourage the students to be critical thinkers. The focus is on putting down the right answer on the standardized test.
In my Confirmation Class I have a system wherein I introduce a subject. Then I instruct on that subject and then I integrate what we have learned into how what we know translates to life. I think that is part of the frustration with teaching to the test… we want students to be critical thinkers who understand and are able to integrate and apply the whole of learning to life.
This morning I have been teaching to the test. If I want you to walk out of here with the standardized test question, “What is the greatest commandment?” I want you to be able to answer that question, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and of equal importance, love your neighbor as yourself.” I want you to memorize it… not necessarily in Spanish or Hebrew, I want you to read about it and study what it means. I want you to talk about it in your Life Groups and I want you to even map out a strategy for loving God and others.
But I also want you to walk out of here as creative thinkers, with some idea of how that truth is integrated and lived out in your life… with the ability to be doers of the Word and not hearers only.
Ultimately, it is not only what you know… it’s what you do with what you know.
