Love Actively

Mark 12:28-31 NRSVue

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 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.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

INTRO

This week, we continue our Wesleyan Rooted Sermon Series, as we explore our faith through a Wesleyan lens and come to understand what it means to be a Wesleyan people. We will examine what it means to follow Jesus through the Wesleyan tradition and explore what makes our tradition unique. In this, we hope to increase our understanding of how God’s grace is at work in our lives and work to restore the image of God in our lives as we grow in our call to love God and our neighbors. We began by exploring our call to be deeply rooted in the love of God as we allow God to work within us so that we might be changed. Last week, we explored what it means to read faithfully as we examined our Wesleyan understanding of reading and interpreting scripture. This week we continue as we understand what it means to love actively.

I have a question for you this morning. Is there someone in your life that you love? If I were to ask that person “How do you know that so and so loves you” how would they respond? I imagine it would be more than “they tell me all the time.” Instead, you would begin to hear love in action. “They make me feel special”, “they leave encouraging notes that make me smile”, “Their constant presence shows me that I am cared for”, and “they never stopped believing in me” - Whether this person is a spouse or partner, a child or grandchild, family member, or close friend, chances are its not words that mattered or that are remembered but actions that spoke louder than words of one’s love for the other.

Just before our text this morning, Jesus engaged in debates with Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes. As the debate dragged on, one scribe decided that he would approach Jesus with a question. This is hard for us to do. Being open to new ideas is hard when we are passionate about something. One commentary interestingly notes: “All disagreements are founded on agreements. We disagree when we share enough in common to recognize in the other’s statements a conclusion or perspective we do not share and think those conclusions or perspectives are worth challenging, because we might sway them or, perhaps, even be shaped by them. Disagreeing is what we do when we are neither talking past each other nor ignoring each other. Jesus’ engagements with the scribes in Mark 12 constitute just such a disagreement.”

You see, the Pharisees and Sadducees are passionately trying to change Jesus’ mind about the scriptures. They agree on just enough to disagree. So often, we give scribes a bad name. We tend to blanket all scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees with the reputation of those who opposed Jesus. But this scribe is different. Instead of coming across as combative, something in Jesus’ disposition allows the scribe to come to Jesus with pure genuine curiosity driven by his love for God and an admiration for the ways that Jesus has been responding. He comes ready to hear, to receive, not with preconceived thoughts or responses, but with an openness that is not grounded in winning the debate but in trying to understand.

Can you hear the tension in the air subside with curiosity? “Which commandment is the first of all?” “Which is the greatest commandment?” Jesus’ response might seem relatively simplistic “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.’ And ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Yet, Jesus’ response is rooted in the Torah and the traditions of the Jewish tradition. He gives a complex answer drawing on many resources to answer these experts of the law. He first cites the Shema, a biblical prayer that pious Jews throughout history have recited both in their morning and evening prayers. He then moves into Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and then expands his answer by citing Leviticus 19:18. Jesus does modify Deuteronomy which states “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” And adds the words “with all your mind.”

The implications are clear…Love God completely, Love God comprehensively, Love God with your whole being, and your whole soul ought to long for and desire the ways of God. Israel has been told to live and breathe these directives. To keep God’s word in their hearts, to recite them to their children, to talk about God’s precepts day and night, to even write them on their doorposts. Yet, somewhere along the way…these laws became a “list” of things to live by. We lose what should be the true motivation behind them. Rather than following God’s laws out of love, we pervert the scriptures and use them as a checklist for salvation.

And when we interpret the scriptures in these ways, like we talked about last week, when we read scripture literally, we begin to use scripture, not only to box in God but to judge others who don’t follow the checklist like we do. It’s why the Pharisees challenge Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. It’s why we judge people when our interpretation of scripture doesn’t line up with how “those people over there” interpret scripture. When scripture becomes a means of judging and works more like a checklist, it is truly devoid of love. We can’t love God with our hearts, souls minds, and strength if we use the law as a means of achieving something.

In fact, just after our text this morning, the scribe answers Jesus this way: “32 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’; 33 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” (Mark 12:32-33, NRSVue). Jesus responds to the scribe noting that the scribe is not far from God’s kingdom. In other words, more important than the way things had always been done, more important than the tradition of the church, more important than a legalistic view of scripture, is love…love of God and love of neighbor.

It’s why Paul writes, “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). If we do not love, we have failed.

Yet how do we respond to this call to love? What is the kind of love that we are called to this morning? Notice the text. Jesus doesn’t say, “you need to say that you love God and proclaim in a public space that you love your neighbor.” In the Biblical sense, love is not a noun. Love is not a feeling. Love is an action. It is a life lived out. And it is a life lived out because of God. God first loved us in Jesus Christ, so we are able to live out a life of love for others.

In living out this life, we are called to model our life after Jesus…a life full of love. It requires us to go out and care for all of God’s creation. Loving actively means that we truly work to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth. As one theologian puts it, “This mended world is God’s dream for creation and is nothing less than a world rightly ordered according to God’s good purposes. It is a world where all are fed and housed, with access to clean water, health care, adequate education, and meaningful work; where none is excluded for reasons of race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation; and where young and old alike are cherished, as God’s family endeavors to sustain the precious resources of this fragile earth.” And when we do this work, toward loving all of creation even small gestures become powerful models of loving actively in our lives.

[Give examples of mission and ministry in our contexts]

But if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes this work can be difficult. We know that sometimes following after Jesus is costly. Sometimes Jesus pushes us to places that make us uncomfortable. Sometimes Jesus calls us to mission and ministry that may look odd in the eyes of the world. And, Jesus doesn’t just mean our physical neighbors. Jesus means everybody, even our enemies.

John Wesley reminds us, “Thy neighbor—that is, not only thy friend, thy kinsman, or thy acquaintance; not only the virtuous, the friendly, him that loves thee, that prevents or returns thy kindness; but every child of man, every human creature, every soul which God hath made; not excepting him whom thou never hast seen in the flesh, whom thou knowest not either by face or by name; not excepting him whom thou knowest to be evil and unthankful, him that still despitefully uses and persecutes thee: Him thou shalt love as thyself.” Y’all I’ve said it before…sometimes it’s hard to love someone in our own family, much less somebody we don’t know or even somebody we don’t care for.

It is hard, because if we truly love actively, if we truly work for the betterment of all creation, the status quo will change. We will seek the better for everybody, not just ourselves. And when we struggle, Jesus’ ultimate act of self-giving love, his death on the cross, empowers us for the work of reaching out into a hurting world as we love actively even those we don’t know or even like. As we minister to the least, the last, and the lost, we participate in what John Wesley would call the means of grace. These means of grace are the activities that we participate in that convey God’s grace at work in our lives. Things like reading scripture, receiving holy communion, visiting the sick and the home bound. As we love actively, we participate in these means of grace and receive as much as we give.

And when we are deeply rooted in God’s love, faithfully read and interpret scripture, we begin to see God active at work in the world loving and caring for creation. As we receive this love and allow it to work in our lives, we are called to go out and share the love. And in moments when we need strength, look around. This is the family who journeys with us and comes alongside us to strengthen one another for this work and for this ministry. So much of loving actively takes place outside the walls of the church, but so much takes place here too. We grow and learn and wrestle with our community of faith. It’s in Sunday School classes, Bible Study, United Women in Faith, United Methodist Men, choir, etc. that we are grounded in community, renewed, and supported in the work of ministry, of loving actively. And ultimately, when we struggle, this work is not ultimately reliant on us, but on God’s love that continually renews our soul.

In the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.