“Let’s Not Come Unhinged”- Nov 4, 2012 Sermon
November 4, 2012
Scripture:
Mark 12: 28-34
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered the Pharisees 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 neighbor 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 neighbor 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.
Sermon: Let’s Not Come Unhinged
Rev. Doreen Oughton
Does anyone know what these are (hinges)? And what they are for? Yes, they are on doors. They are not on all doors, because some doors are sliders, but they are on all other doors. Look around you, do you see any doors here without them? Would a door work without hinges? Well, it would still keep one place closed off from another, which seems to be the purpose of a door. But a wall does that also. What makes a door different from the wall? It opens, so you can easily go from one place to the other. Can you do that without hinges? Not easily.
Now is one hinge enough for a door? What happens if you have a door with just one hinge? It starts to pull away, it hangs crooked. It doesn’t work as well. So what has this got to do with today’s reading? We have scribe approaching Jesus with a question. He has heard Jesus debating with the Pharisees and sees Jesus is very wise. But still, I wonder if he suspects that he himself is still wiser than Jesus. So he asks him a question, maybe to test him, maybe just to hear his perspective. He asks Jesus which commandment is first of all, or in other words, which is most important. How many commandments are there? No, not 10. The Jewish scripture says that God gave the Israelites 613 commandments. It was important to the Rabbis and other religious leaders to know all the commandments by heart, to teach them to others so that they could all try to obey them. They spent a lot of time studying them, figuring out the best way to obey them because they weren’t always clear. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out which ones were most important. If you couldn’t obey all 613 commandments, maybe couldn’t even remember all 613, you would want a guide on which are the most important, wouldn’t you? So this scribe has probably thought a lot about how he would answer this question himself. Which is the most important of all out of these 613 laws?
Jesus gives his answer. He names not only the first most important, but the second most important. He says every other commandment, every other law, every other way of being obedient to God hinges on these two commandments. Jesus knows that one hinge is not enough for the door to God’s kindom to swing open. It takes both commandments. The first one, the one that you hang at the top of the door – it will hold better if it takes a little time to install or repair the second one – is to love God with every part of you. The scribes and Pharisees were very concerned about fearing God and obeying God, but Jesus says we ought to focus on LOVING God. Now it might seem weird that this is a commandment. Can you command feelings? Love is a feeling, right? Can someone just tell you to love someone else and make you do it? Not usually, not usually. But in addition to being a feeling, love is a decision, and love is actions. You can think about the type of actions that are loving – things that are kind, thoughtful, appreciative, and understand them as a type of love whether or not you are all googly-eyed about someone. Jesus tells us to make a decision to do those actions towards God. Be thoughtful and grateful to God. Show appreciation, give praise, think well of God, wonder about what would make God happy and do those things. And if you don’t have loving feelings when you start out, I bet you will have loving feelings grow in you with each kind action, with each good thought.
The second most important commandment, the second hinge, is to love our neighbor as ourselves. I love how Jesus included both self and neighbor, not one over the other. Jesus wants us to have kind thought, appreciative thoughts, kind actions towards our own selves. He doesn’t want us to berate ourselves for gaining weight, for making mistakes, for not being perfect. He wants us to be truly kind to ourselves, not by indulging because overdoing anything can hurt us. But he wants us to hold gentle, appreciative thoughts of ourselves. He wants us to consider what would truly make us happy and do those things. Except when they would hurt another. Because we have to love our neighbor, which means who? – everybody – as ourselves. And Jesus believes that if we make those two things the most important, then all of heaven will open up to us. We will still want to get to know God better by reading the bible, understanding more of the commandments, finding more ways to be holy and righteous, but the way will be so much easier if we stay hinged with those two commandments.
Well, maybe “easier” is not the right word. Because it isn’t easy to follow those commandments. It can be hard. I don’t know why, whether it’s because it is a tough world we are born into, and we feel we have to toughen up to survive it, or because there is a flaw in humanity that makes us too fearful to love anyone too much. I was struck by this ironic little blurb I got in one of my daily inspirational message. It’s called $3 worth of God, by Wilbur Rees. “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”
Maybe the problem is not just that it can be hard to love with our whole selves – heart, soul, mind and strength – but maybe we are not sure just how easily we want to swing open those doors to the kingdom of God. That would be such a different world, so unfamiliar. And again our fear creeps in, the hinges get stuck, the door starts to serve as a wall and we are stuck with our little paper sack of the eternal. Can we help each other strive for more? Can we practice our loving right here, loving God, thanking God, wondering what pleases God right here? And then practice loving each other and ourselves right here, being kind to each other, thoughtful, appreciative, gentle? And just start to oil those hinges a little more and a little more? We don’t have to face this scary prospect on our own, we have the saints who have gone before us, encouraging us, believing in us even as we pray for them. And of course we have Christ, who comes to us, who sets a table before us to remind us of God’s love. And so we prepare ourselves now to come to his table.
