Mark 12:28-34
Christian Identity: What Really Matters
James Sledge March 20, 2011
Most seminaries require their students to have some sort of internship in a church congregation. Many of you will remember that Jennifer Eastman Hinkle and Renee Coffman-Chavez did such internships with us. When I did my seminary internship, I served full-time for three months in a congregation in a small, eastern North Carolina town. Because it was just for the summer, Shawn and our girls stayed at our home in Richmond, and the congregation provided me with housing.
I’m not quite sure how this came about, but I lived in an attached mother-in-law suite, with its own kitchen and such, at the home of Reba, a widowed Jewish grandmother. Her family owned a small department store in town, and they may well have been the only Jewish family in that community. She was very kind and welcoming, and I had the run of her side of the house as well as my suite. She was thrilled when Shawn and the girls would visit, and we even exchanged Christmas cards for a number of years afterwards.
Sometimes in the evening we would sit and chat, and I remember one occasion where she offered that the differences between faiths didn’t much matter. All that really mattered was that we believed in God and tried to be good.
Now I suspect that in part this was just her being hospitable. It didn’t necessarily mean she saw no distinction between Judaism, Christianity, and other faiths. But then again lots of people do feel this way. It is a popular answer to the question of what really matters. Believe in God, and try to be good.
Questions about what really matters are not new. The scribe in our gospel this morning asks such a question. He is Jewish, and Jesus is a Jewish rabbi, so he asks a question from a Jewish point of view. “Which commandment is the first of all?” In other words, “What really matters?” If I’m going to be a good Jew, what do I absolutely have to do? The book we are studying this Lent asks a similar question from a Christian viewpoint. What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?
For much of American history the answer to that question has been simple: Go to church and be a good citizen. I suppose that’s only a slightly more focused version of my Jewish host’s “Believe in God, and try to be good.”
Imagine that someone walked up to you and asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian? What’s non-negotiable? What really matters?” What would your answer be?
When Jesus is asked about what is non-negotiable, he answers by quoting verses from the Old Testament. He starts with something from Deuteronomy known as the Shema. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul (or life), and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus was asked for the commandment that is “first of all,” but he does not stop with one. He adds, this time from Leviticus, “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.”
Now I don’t know about you, but to my ear, loving God with all your being and loving your neighbor as yourself has a very different ring to it than “Believe in God and try to be good.” I believe the world is round, but there’s no love involved, no relationship. I generally obey the law and think of myself as, in some ways, good, but again that’s not necessarily about love or relationship.
Belief is a private thing that I can keep to myself. And being good is something anyone can do regardless of their religion. And that means that when a person who doesn’t know a lot about Christianity walks into a church where faith has turned into “Believe in God and be good,” they may not see very much evidence of what Jesus says really matters. The may not see much love.
Now certainly worship can be an act of love in the same way that a lover authors a poem, sings a song, and brings flowers to his beloved; the way that a young child creates a work of art for her parent. But worship can also be little more than habit, a birthday card for a spouse grabbed at Target on the way home to a marriage that is mostly routines with not much love.
In fact, the example of a marriage may be instructive. It is all too common for marriages to become lifeless over time and not because either spouse has done anything terrible or bad. It’s simply a matter of other things getting in the way. Pursuing a career, raising children, keeping up with friends, working for important causes, dealing with life’s crises, and so on can push the marital relationship to the side, leaving little time for love.
Sometimes I think that the increasing disenchantment with the church among younger people parallels those same young people’s increasing distrust of marriage. They’ve seen too many marriages and too much religion that appear to them all habit, duty, belief, and routine, without much love, without much real relationship.
A time management guru was speaking to a class at a top tier business school. In the middle of his presentation he pulled out a one-gallon Mason-jar and carefully filled it with fist sized rocks. Then he asked the class, “Is this jar full?” and everyone said, “Yes.”
But then he took out a bucket of gravel and began pouring it into the jar, shaking it so that the gravel worked its way in between the rocks. Again he asked, “Is the jar full?”
“Probably not,” a single student answered.
Next he brought out a bucket of sand and proceeded to pour sand in the jar, filling those spaces between the rocks and the gravel. Once again he asked, “Is the jar full?” and the class shouted, “No!”
Then he took out a pitcher of water and poured it into the jar, filling it to the top. Then he asked the class if they understood the point of this illustration. One student offered, “No matter how full your schedule, if you try really hard, you can always fit more into it.”
“No,” the speaker replied, “that’s not the point. The point is—if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”[1]
All too often, our lives and our faith are filled with gravel and sand and water. Rarely are these really bad things, but they leave no room for the big rocks, for the really important things. And if our lives and faith have gotten filled with sand and gravel and water, the only way to get any big rocks in, the only way to give the things that really matter their proper place, is to dump out some of that other stuff.
If we want to restore a relationship so that it is founded on love, we have to make room for the big rocks. We have to create the space and the time to be together, to talk to one another, to enjoy each other’s presence, to listen to each other. We have to be willing to set aside some of the small stuff that crowds out the big rocks to do what matters to the other. This is true for marriages and other human relationships, and it is just true for relationship with God.
You know, congregations and denominations often seem to worry an awful lot about the sand and gravel and water. Christians argue over the style of music in worship, whether gays can be elders and deacons and pastors, and all manner of small stuff. I’ve heard it said that some of the nastiest church fights are over what color the carpet should be in the sanctuary. Sand and gravel. And to outsiders, it must look even worse.
But this is not the new life Jesus offers us, the good news that he embodies. He calls us to new life that is about love. It is about transformed life rooted in relationships, relationships of love with both God and neighbor. Jesus simply will not separate the two.
When Jesus answered that question about what was most important, what really mattered, the scribe was impressed and said, “You are right, Teacher… ‘To love (God) 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.” In our day he might add, than believing and going to church, than all sorts of sand and gravel.
And Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
[1] From the Leader’s Guide to What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian, which can be found online at http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/Content/Site115/FilesSamples/44533ThielenLea_00000006628.pdf
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