God of Love - Redeemer Episcopal Church

 Mark 12:28-34

The First Commandment

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.” 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.” 34 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.

God of love, open our hearts to love you and love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen. 

I have been to quite a few churches in my short life thus far. I have never seen any church with a sign like ours. Not the sign that faces Southside Boulevard— that is the sign that speaks to the rest of the world. I’m talking about the sign made for us. It’s actually one of the first things I noticed when I drove out of the Redeemer parking lot for the first time. And I read it every single time I leave this place— “this concludes our worship. Our service now begins.” It is also the last thing folks will see at the end of the live stream today. “This concludes our worship. Our service now begins.” These two short sentences tell us a lot about who we are and what is important to this community.

I think it strikes me so profoundly because it also reminds me of a song we used to sing in campus ministry when I was in college. The song is called “Madly” and part of the verse goes “let what we do in here, fill the streets out there.” That song, like that sign, aren’t words for the people outside of our church, they are not for the world to see and hear, but they are reminders to US, to THIS community. That what happens in this building is only important insofar as it changes what we do outside of this building.  

In the story we hear this morning, a scribe comes near and hears that people are asking Jesus all sorts of questions and when he realizes that Jesus knows what he’s talking about and that he answers the questions well, he asks “Which commandment is the first of all?” And Jesus answers with a common Jewish verse, “‘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.’” And then without being asked, Jesus goes right into the next commandment: “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

Jesus tells us about the first commandment— the most important commandment. And immediately follows with the second, which leads us to believe that it is just an extension of the first. 

And that is indeed true. These commandments cannot be separated from one another in Jewish culture. They are intricately connected, unable to be untwined from one another. To truly love God is to love our neighbor. That is how the Jewish people demonstrate their love and commitment to God— by their outward expressions of love for their neighbor. 

Of course, there would be questions about who actually counts as our neighbor. Are they the people in our community? The people who look like us? The people who believe the same things we believe? The people with the same sexuality or gender or disabilities or chronic illness as us? Are our neighbors just the folks who sit in our pews? Or those who live in the apartments down the street? What about the people who live around the world? 

When this question is asked, Jesus makes clear that our neighbor is everyone. That the definition of “neighbor” is ever-widening, ever-inclusive. No one is on the “outside” of the circle of those considered “neighbor.”

And then of course there is the question of what it really means to “love” someone. Is it enough to be nice? To smile and wave as they pass us on the sidewalk? What does it mean to truly love your neighbor as yourself? For Jesus, love is carried out on the cross. It is demonstrated in the sacrifice of his very body and blood for the sake of the whole world and all of creation. Love, for Jesus and his followers, is not about niceness or tolerance, but about the life-changing, world turning love that ushers in the Kingdom of God. 

These two commandments: to love God and to love our neighbors, are the most difficult and important things we will ever be called to do as the people of God. And they are what we come here to this place to learn how to do. In the scriptures and sermon and hymns, we learn what it means to love God and one another. In this meal, we come to understand what God means by love and we are changed and remade in the image of Christ, and empowered to love one another. 

As we leave this place, we read that sign and are reminded that we have an opportunity every minute of our lives to serve our neighbors and to love our neighbors. “This concludes our worship. Our service now begins.” 

And we won’t always get it right. More often than not, we are not going to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are going to participate in systems that exploit our neighbors and we are going to disregard the health and wholeness of the people around the world. We are going to mess up and stumble. 

But that’s why we come back here. That’s why we kneel before the cross and ask for forgiveness. It’s why we turn to our neighbors and offer Christ’s peace to one another. It’s why we come back to hear the commandments again and again, why we come back to hear the story of Jesus and how he loves us. It’s why we come to be nourished by his body and blood. Over and over again. Because we are God’s hands and feet in the world today. We are the ones who called to love as Jesus loved. Because love must never end. 

Dear ones, there is too much evil in this world. There is too much death and destruction and hate in this world. 

Therefore, love must never end. We must come here to rest and be renewed and reminded and then go back into the world to continue to love. And we live in the hope that in Christ Jesus, in his life, death, and resurrection, love never does end. Love is the last word. Love is the beginning and the ending of this cosmic story. And in that hope, in that knowledge, our service now begins. Amen. 

The Rich Man - Redeemer Episcopal Church

Mark 10:17-31

The Rich Man

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

 

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

God of unending grace and abundance, be with us this morning as we are reminded of your community, made whole through our Lord Christ Jesus. Amen.

If you flip through the channels of your tv or scroll through Netflix, you will see that minimalism and organization has become more and more popular over the last few years. There are entire documentaries about the “movement” of minimalism and tiny homes, re-organizing and downsizing. Each Marie Kondo-type trend has a process, steps that you can take to simplify your life and your space. I don’t think there is anything inherently bad about the movement to reduce the clutter of our lives, it seems to be another way of emphasizing the scarcity of this world, the self-preservation we crave in a world full of possessions and stuff.  

In the story we heard this morning, the man comes to Jesus and kneels before him— he seems to be sincere in his declaration that Jesus is a good teacher and truly wants to learn from him. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The man’s posture is correct, but his question is wrong. 

So Jesus reframes the question and helps the man understand that we are talking about the kingdom of God, which is not something we earn or possess, but something we participate in now and anticipate in the days to come. Jesus quotes the commandments that relate to how we interact with the people around us, the commandments that show us how to live in community with one another. 

The Kingdom of God, Jesus says is about belonging, not about what we do or a list of things to check off, but who we are as God’s children, it is about how we relate to one another. 

At the beginning of this reading we hear that Jesus was setting out on a journey. But he wasn’t on just any journey, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross. Come and follow me, Jesus invites us. Following Jesus is not a checklist of qualities or accomplishments, but a way of life that leads to the cross. And it is a way of life that is open to all people, regardless of who they are or where they came from.  

I presented this gospel text this morning to my students on campus this past Tuesday. I find it to be a difficult text, sharper than a double-edged sword as Paul would say, so I wanted to see what they had to say about it. I was expecting them to clap their hands and pump their fists at what Jesus says about the rich, that it is impossible for them to enter the Kingdom of God. I expected them to affirm Jesus’ teaching and say that of course Jesus is excluding the rich from the Kingdom. 

What I didn’t expect was for my students to turn the text around and use it as an example of how expansive God’s love and community truly is… 

God’s kingdom is not a small exclusive club that we earn our way into, but an expansive and inclusive community with people from all sorts of backgrounds that previous generations didn’t think fit into God’s plan. 

My students said “the rich man didn’t understand Jesus— it wasn’t about being rich, it was about his relationship with other people, it was about his status and power— and the fact that he thought he could earn his way into the community. When in reality, he’s already a part of the Kingdom of God, he just has to follow.” 

Each time Jesus is approached by people asking these questions about who belongs or how they “get in” to this community, instead of limiting the qualifications, Jesus expands them. When people approach Jesus about bad behavior or characteristics that might exclude them from the community, Jesus flings the gates wider still. Women, children, the sick, the disabled, and the poor— they are all included in the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ words to the rich man weren’t a critique of his possessions, but an invitation to a new way of life, a life that all people are invited into. 

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. 

Paul is not wrong. But the word of God is sharp because God continues to expand the Kingdom while our own inclination is to make it into an exclusive club. We WANT there to be limits on God’s Kingdom. If there is scarcity, then we can find ways of putting ourselves above others, of denying people this community. If there is a limit to God’s abundance, then we get to decide who is in and who is out according to the rules that we have set up in this world. If we can earn God’s love, then we can feel like we deserve it. 

I’ve told you the story of college students coming into our Tuesday night community and taking food without joining our conversation. I love that story because it demonstrates the hospitality that our students have for the people around them. This last week, a different thing happened— we were actually talking about this passage at Food for Thought and we had lots of extra food. I walked over to invite the students workers in the next room to come grab some food to go if they were hungry. Only one of the students came by and got a piece of pizza. My students said “where is everyone else? Don’t they want food?” 

She said “oh no, they didn’t want to come take your food. They thought they’d have to sit down and join your meeting if they ate the food.” They didn’t feel like they deserved to take part in our meal unless they did something to earn it. One of my students said “No! They don’t have to DO anything for the food! If they’re hungry, they should just come eat!” 

This is what Jesus invites us into this morning. Not eternal life that we can own or earn. We are invited into a new community in the Kingdom of God, simply because of who we are as God’s children. And the Kingdom is not a Marie-Kondo minimalist society, but one of abundance and more than enough for everyone. The Kingdom is not about specially curated furniture pieces, but a table where everyone is welcome and fed. 

Jesus reminds us that it is not about what we do, but it is about what God did, and is doing, and will do in this world. It is God who makes salvation possible. If it were up to us, we’d be in real trouble— as much trouble as a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle. But because we are God’s beloved children, because we have been invited to come and follow Jesus to the cross where he died for our sake and for the sake of the world… the kingdom gates have been swung wide and are ever-expanding. 

And it is right here, in this very community, in worship and at this table, that we are able to see a foretaste of what is to come, a preview of the life we we can live in the Kingdom of God. We don’t have to DO anything for the food. God has already laid it before us in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. If we’re hungry, we should just come and eat. Thanks be to God for that. Amen.