This sermon was delivered to St Oswald’s, Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 4th November 2012; St Oswald’s is a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries.
The readings for today are: Ruth 1:1-18 Psalm 146 Hebrews 9:11-14 Mark 12:28-34
Our text for today’s sermon comes from the Gospel of Mark, the 12th chapter, verses 28 to 34:
One of the scribes came near and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, 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.’
The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself,’ — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
Prayer: In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit let these words speak for you, and bless each and every one of us Father, in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Introduction
The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are very familiar to us. We say them as part of our service every Sunday as the summary of the Law, and we could say as a creed.
‘Hear, O Israel, … You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength. … Also ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ ...
Now this is where I normally dive straight in, and deliver a sermon on today’s readings.
But today, it is not that simple. I don’t know about you, but I have had a terrible week. So much do, so many things going wrong, being put on the spotlight at work, working late and not sleeping to name but a few. Christine will tell what kind of mood I have been in; tired and crabbit and unbearable; and on top of all that I have to write and deliver a sermon about loving our Lord, and loving our neighbours also. What a week.
Christine is still speaking to me, just; but it is difficult writing a sermon when I cannot get on with the people I love; let alone telling others to love their neighbours as themselves.
There is nothing worse than having to listen to someone full of themselves dishing out advice that they themselves cannot master.
So let us humbly look at this passage. Today, Jesus is present in Jerusalem just a few days after his dramatic arrival on a donkey that Palm Sunday.
The crowds have welcomed him; … he has recently cleared the temple of the moneychangers; and … he has been involved in disputes with the Scribes and Pharisees, who were all trying to trick and trap him.
But Jesus was doing well; he was holding his own, when one of the Scribes asked the question, “Which commandment is the greatest?”
We are used to this question, but back then, the Scribes had been debating within themselves this very question for years, and there were no obvious answers. It was one of those questions that went on forever, you the type, lets change the subject, or we there is nothing I want to talk about, I know, “Which commandment is the greatest”? That will keep them all going.
Now it has been calculated that there are 613 commands in the Old Testament, and not simply the TEN that we are familiar with; that is a lot of commandments to keep, so obviously there must be a priority; and this is the question the Scribes asked.
I like Jesus answer. Jesus did not give an order in which the laws were to be obeyed; rather he gave a summary of these laws; a totally different way of addressing this problem.
You see, Jesus was preparing them for a new religion based on grace, and not one of laws, rules and regulations.
And to bring in this new religion, Jesus cleverly answers the question by referring the Jews to the book of Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 and 5 which says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”
Jesus is stating that this is the most important of the laws; while at the same time he is summarising all the 613 laws.
How do we love the Lord, well there are many answers and many people do it in there own way. I cannot say who is right or wrong, or what method should be used; but the bible does tell us to delight in the Lord always, to cherish him, and to seek and to know him.
We all know we do not love the Lord by simply going to the church on Sunday for an hour or so, we love him by inviting him in to our hearts, into our lives, into our very being, every moment of the day, if we can.
We love him by our prayers, or songs and our good deeds to others. I love him by reading his scripture, and learning all about him and his ways, trying to find out what he wants for us.
We love him through meditation, worship, and going to retreats or on pilgrimages. We can also love him by staying at home and doing his will locally. But we cannot presume to love God without drinking from his cup; the cup of suffering from which we build our relationship with him.
And in that relationship we learn to love the things he loves; like mercy, forgiveness, and giving oneself beyond the call of duty. We also develop a sense of justice, and start looking for ways we can help those less fortunate than ourselves.
But this is a very strong commandment because in it we see the 5 “all’s”. We are to love him with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, and all our strength, all the time. We are to love him with every part of our being, in every situation, in everything we do.
This is the greatest commandment of all, and yet it should be obvious that is impossible to keep.
Did I personally follow that commandment this week? No way; I am still fed up of apologising to people. I fell short by a mile; so you may ask, how can I justify what I just said, easy, we are not under law, we are under grace.
We have a saviour and redeemer called Jesus, and he will forgive our behaviour, our shortcomings, if we ask him with a true heart, confessing our sins.
I am sorry for being ill tempered this week, but I know he will deal with it; and I am sure Christine will add her bit.
Verse 31: ‘The second commandment is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
Oh no, this is worse! Not only have we to love God who we cannot see but we are to love our neighbours who we can see; and worse, neighbours can be translated as enemies. Just how exactly are we to love our enemies?
When things are going well for us, I dare say, if forced we can like our enemies a wee bit, but as soon as life challenges us, the enemies are the first to get it. After all, they are the enemy; they are opposing us.
But notice Jesus is not being original here:
Confucius said, “Do onto others what you would not they should do unto you.”
The Buddhist writings say, “Hurt no other with that which pains yourself.”
Islam says, “Not one of you is a believer, until he loves for his brother, what he loves from himself.”
So loving your neighbour as yourself is not in any way exclusively Christian; but there is a vast difference, and I will come to that in a minute.
Love of God and love of your neighbour are twins; but this second commandment is much more difficult. As one wit once said, “I just love humanity. It is the people I cannot stand.” Dealing with real live people, can be challenging and difficult as we all know, if not impossible.
Jesus said, loving God goes hand in hand with loving our neighbours; and I think a good scriptural reference for our neighbour is the Good Samaritan; where Jesus says everybody is our neighbour.
How do we do this, well there are many answers; in fact there have been more books, sermons and debates on this subject that any other, which implies to me, that there is no simple answer. I certain do not know.
I do know however that we are we to be concerned and help those around us? Our families and the people we come into contact with. We are to be good relatives, good to our local neighbours and our work colleagues.
And then we have to start loving further afield; to help the disadvantaged as much as we can; those shoe boxes there shows we are trying.
I do not know if you can see, but I am beginning to preach Law here, and in doing so, this will make you either proud of your own achievements or crushed under a sense of guilt to do more. For me personally, I gave more this year than any other year, yet deep down I wish I could given more still. I am feeling a sense of guilt; but the opposite could also be true here. You could have a sense of self importance.
There is so much to say on the subject of loving ones neighbour that I will keep it to another time; but to finish, I must say that I have never spent so long on a sermon talking about keeping the law; and I hope it will be a long time before I have to do it again.
There is however one verse in today’s reading which does not really fit in with the tone of this section and that is the last verse, 34 which reads “After that no one dared to ask him any question”.
Why not ask Jesus such questions again? Because the Jews knew these two commandments were impossible to keep. Jesus commanded them, and us, to do something that is totally impossible.
If you could show me somebody who could keep these commandments, I will show you somebody who tells lies.
And yet we are ordered to try because in our feeble attempt to keep them, we are keeping many of the other commandments as well; and this pleases God. But what happens when we fail?
Well, that is where Jesus fits in; when we fail, he is our saviour. Jesus is the one who died to free us from the law, and save us by grace. All our failings and all our shortcomings have been taken care of by him at the cross. We cannot approach God by who we are, we can only approach God because of who Jesus is. It has nothing to do with our ability to keep the commandments.
You see all those other religions are trying to approach God on what they have done. In the Christian faith, we approach God by what Jesus has done. There is a world of difference.
We will never, ever, measure up to the Law; so we do not need to beat ourselves up when we fail. Rather we take our shortcomings to the Lord, and confess our sins before him; because he is just and true, and he will step in that gap, to make us righteous before God himself; whether we deserve it or not. That is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, a Gospel of grace and not of Law.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Father we that you for Jesus. We thank you that he died on the cross taking our sins and shortcoming with him, so that we can approach you totally cleansed in his blood, and blameless in your sight.
Father we now approach you because of what Jesus achieved on the cross, and not by anything we have done. We bring to you now our shortcoming. We bring to you our sins and all things that do not bring you honour ………………….
We also confess to you the things that have done or not done, that upset those around us, and we say sorry for not living up to your standards ……………………
Finally we bring to you ourselves, ourselves with all our problems and failings which produce guilt and worthless in us, which burden and hinder us from being the people you want us to be. …………………
Father, we are truly sorry, and we ask that you forgive us. We ask that you take away all which condemns us, and all which stops us from being the people you want us to be.
We ask that you rebuild us to your specification, to be people that you are proud of, people that bring honour to you, and people commissioned and anointed to serve you.
We ask in Jesus name, Amen.
