The Greatest Commandment

Good morning! I am needing some help to get us started this morning, so I would like for all of the kids to come up here and have a seat facing me in this square. [Kids come up. Pull out covered cabinet and box of hinges.]

Okay, kids. I have some questions for you, and if you think you know the answer to one of my questions, I want you to raise your hand so that I can bring the microphone to you so everyone can hear your answer. Got it?

What is a commandment?

Can you name any commandments?

What commandment is the most important one for us to follow?

Did you know that in the Bible, there were a lot of men who knew allllllll the commandments. In fact, they knew and followed way more than 10… they knew and followed 613 commandments! That’s a LOT of commandments! Maybe it’s even too many commandments… Can you imagine if you had 613 rules to follow in your house? That would be really confusing!

So one of the men who knew alllllll the commandments came to Jesus and asked him which one was the most important one.

Jesus said that loving God with all that is in us is the most important commandment EVER. Everything in the whole entire Bible is about this most important commandment, and loving God is a big part of what makes us Christians, followers of Jesus. Y’all have been so good up here that I want to give you something. [Give each kid a hinge or pass one around].

Grown-ups, don’t give the kids any help on this, but I have given them each one of these contraptions. Kids, raise your hand if you think you know what these things are. [Get some of their answers].

It’s a hinge! Very good! What does a hinge do??? [Get their answers.] Right. A hinge holds a door up and allows it to swing open and closed. It is the thing that makes a door a door. If there’s not a hinge, a door is just a piece of wood, right? Wait a minute. That kind of reminds me of the greatest commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s like a hinge, and we are like the door. Loving God, our hinge, is what makes us Christians, just like the hinge makes a door a door.

So how many hinges does a door need in order to open and close? [Get answers.]

I have something to show you. Here is a cabinet door that is attached with just one hinge. Do you think it will open and close properly? [Demonstrate].

So wait a minute. Jesus said the most important commandment was to love God. He said that was the hinge! Is there something else I’m missing? Let’s see what else Jesus said.

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” ()

So Jesus added a SECOND HINGE! What was it? Do you think 2 hinges is enough to make the door work right? Let’s see. [Show second door].

You were right! Jesus said that the most important thing is kind of two things: love God and love people! Everything in our lives as followers of Jesus hinges on these two things, and does it work if we just have one? Nope!

Thank you, kids! I’ll take your hinges back, and you can go with Miss Shelly to Children’s Church.

Familiarity of Passage

Okay, grown-ups. Was your mind just blown by that illustration? I would be really surprised if it were, and I know that every illustration breaks down at some point, so don’t over-analyze my theology. My point is that this passage is sooooo familiar to us, right? Most of us could probably quote it because we’ve read it and heard it a million times. We understand what it means. We know that as believers we love God and we love our neighbors. We even know who our neighbors are because we are equally familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And this has been the great challenge and frustration for me in preaching from this text because we already know this. But here’s another familiar saying--familiarity breeds contempt (or, at least, indifference). “I know that. I do that. Done. Moving right along.” The power for us in this passage today will be in hearing it with new ears while taking an honest look at our lives.

So let’s start with the context of this passage in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is moving purposefully toward Jerusalem and toward his death. In , we have the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry, where people are waving their palm branches and hailing Jesus as Messiah. And this intensifies the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders. So Mark tells this series of stories that depict the Jewish religious leaders challenging Jesus and the conflict continuing to grow. The groups of religious leaders come, one after another, and throw out these highly debated theological questions to Jesus to see what he says and whose side he is on. First they question his authority. Then they ask him about whether or not they should pay taxes to Caesar. Then they ask him about marriage at the resurrection. And these religious leaders are not painted in a good light at all. They are portrayed as conniving, trying to trick Jesus or back him into a corner. Their motives for approaching him are to discredit him as a teacher and even find legal grounds to prosecute him. But every time, Jesus comes back with some amazing answer that puts them all in their place and then he really calls them on the carpet about their hypocrisy.

Uniqueness of Passage

The encounter we’re looking at today is the last in that series of stories, and it is markedly different. The scripture says that 28 ”One of the teachers of the law came and heard them [Jesus and the religious leaders] debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (). He approaches Jesus favorably, honestly, without the ulterior motives that drove his colleagues. He really seems to want to learn from Jesus, which was not the case for the other religious leaders. And he positively affirms Jesus’s answer to his question. 32“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (). And then the icing on the cake is that Jesus responds by affirming the teacher of the law. 34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions (). So in the middle of all of the intense heat and head-to-head combat between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders, there is this story, where Jesus and a teacher of the law actually agree and have a positive interaction with each other.

But Jesus ends the whole encounter with what I think is a strange and puzzling statement to the teacher of the law--”You are not far from the kingdom of God.” What does that mean? Is it like, “close but no cigar”? Or like when King Agrippa says to the Apostle Paul that he was “almost persuaded” to become a Christian? I have always read this story feeling sorry for the teacher of the law who almost got it right.

But what I learned in studying this passage is that Jesus was using a literary device called “litotes.” Litotes is an understatement so as to intensify. It is affirmation by the negative of the contrary. Clear as mud, right? It’s like when you try a new food and say, “that’s not bad at all.” When you say that, you’re not commenting on the food’s badness. You are commenting on its goodness. Similarly, Jesus was not commenting on the teacher of the law’s farness from the Kingdom. He was commenting on his nearness! This guy is near the Kingdom of God! He’s on the right track! He’s headed down the right road.

So then my question is, where does he go from there? I think the only thing left for this guy is to do it. The only thing left is for him to step into the way of Jesus by responding to God with all-consuming love that fuels and ignites his love for people. The Scripture doesn’t tell us if that happens or not, but Jesus indicates that he is on the right path. So I want to believe that his agreement with Jesus indicated his decision to follow Jesus, that this guy got this Kingdom Reality truth in his head and then it traveled to his heart and out through his actions, that his love for God released the love of God in his life.

Calling Ourselves to Account

I think it’s very possible that some of you are thinking right now, “Okay, Katie, with the exception of the word ‘litotes,’ you haven’t said anything I haven’t heard a million times before.” That may be entirely true, but let’s call ourselves to account.

As I was writing this sermon, I got a text from my foster agency case manager, the agency that is supposed to be supporting me and advocating for me in the whole process of fostering, and this text from my case manager basically told me I owed the agency over $1,000 because some piece of paperwork was submitted late. This was a piece of paperwork that I wasn’t even responsible for submitting, but no one was accepting the responsibility for it. Not only was responsibility not being taken, but my agency case manager was shifting blame all over the place, even onto me. Because I had had prior experience with similar behavior from my agency case manager that ended up meaning a loss of thousands of dollars for my son Joshua at the beginning of this year, I pinned her to the wall (figuratively speaking) and point blank asked her who was supposed to have submitted this paperwork. She finally said that she was. She finally said it had been her fault and that she had made a mistake and she was sorry that her mistake was costing me $1,000. I’m still steamed about this, and everything in me wanted to rail my case manager and badmouth her and leave the agency and everything else. But this stinkin’ sermon. And this stinkin’ passage. This text that I know so well that I forget it has major implications for my day-to-day life and interactions with others.

I want to love God with everything in me because of the great love and mercy that he has poured out on me when I was completely undeserving, completely at fault, completely responsible for my own sin and sinful choices and consequences. And it cost God the life of his Son, way more than my measly $1,000. When I think about that, it gives me not only the heart to extend loving mercy to others, but it gives me the ability to extend loving mercy. I can’t give what I haven’t fully received. Love for God releases the love of God for others.

Love for God releases the love of God for the most unworthy politicians. President Trump, his supporters, and his opponents are all my neighbors. Brett Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford are both my neighbors. Elizabeth Warren is my neighbor. Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke are my neighbors. The things that I see Christians post on social media about various politicians, who are people made in the image of God, breaks my heart. It’s as if they don’t think these people they are slamming are real live people. They are ideas, not people created by God in his image just like you and me. No matter how vehemently I agree or disagree with any of these people, or anyone else for that matter, the truth is that in my own rebellion, I set myself up as an enemy of the cross, yet Christ died for me. says that we love because he first loved us, and that hating others makes liars out of those who claim to love God.

Church, let’s love God from so deep within ourselves the his love is released through us for the LGBTQ community, for the Islamic community, for the poor and unemployed who take government assistance, for the irritating co-workers and the impossible family members. Don’t allow people to lose their personhood in your mind. Don’t allow people to become causes or ideas to be destroyed or stereotyped or harshly debated. Within every person, even the person you may have the most strong negative feelings about for whatever reason, is a whole suitcase full of hurt and need and brokenness, and Jesus died to restore that brokenness.

May the Lord break our hearts for our neighbors who stand in places of desperate need, whose futures seem so bleak that they would risk everything to flee to a place where they think there might be hope. May the Lord break our hearts for our neighbors who self-medicate in harmful and dangerous ways or become abusers because they themselves are victims of cycles of abuse. May the Lord break our hearts for generations of people who do things so differently from us but carry similar suitcases of hurt, need, and brokenness.

And as our hearts are broken, may we love actively with the same kind of love that God had for us first--a love that pursued us when we were enemies, a love that did not give us what our sins deserved, a love that reached out to us in kindness, with healing, with both grace and truth. May our very lives hinge on an all-consuming love of God that compels us to actively love others. And God forgive us for doing anything less.

Response

We are going to respond to the Scripture today as a community, and I know no better way to respond in unity than to sing to the Lord together. We are going to start by singing about God’s great love for us that he demonstrated on the cross---while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And the last line of this song simply says, that kind of amazing love demands my soul, my life, my all. There is no other response to the love of God than to surrender ourselves to him completely. But we are going to follow that line of surrender with a song whose tune is familiar (it is the tune of the song “Be Still, My Soul”) but whose lyrics may be new to us, and this song describes the hard work of love that we are committing to in response to the Lord’s love for us. I want to read you some of the lyrics:

I then shall live as one who's been forgiven.

I'll walk with joy to know my debts are paid.

I know my name is clear before my Father;

I am His child and I am not afraid.

So, greatly pardoned, I'll forgive my brother;

The law of love I gladly will obey.

I then shall live as one who's learned compassion.

I've been so loved, that I'll risk loving too.

I know how fear builds walls instead of bridges;

I'll dare to see another's point of view.

And when relationships demand commitment,

Then I'll be there to care and follow through.

End with prayer and songs.

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