How many of you noticed that the Gospel reading for today
quoted from the Old Testament reading for today?
Checking to see how many of you are listening to the lessons.
During the liturgy this is where we are in the discipleship school.
The part repeated is the Shema – the Summary of the Law:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
A version of this appears in all three of the Synoptic Gospels,
Matthew, Mark and Luke,
along with the 2nd Commandment:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,”
and in John’s Gospel we hear echoes in the New Commandment
that Jesus gave his disciples:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”
Mark’s version of Jesus giving the Summary of the Law
that we just heard in the Gospel reading
presents a different view of Jesus in conversation with the religious leaders.
In all those passages with the Sadduces, the priests of the temple,
or with the Pharisees, the good, upstanding, reliable examples
of how to keep all the commandments,
or with the scribes,
the Torah experts who know the Law like the back of their hands,
in all those conversations Jesus would usually end up
pointing out their hypocrisy or spiritual blindness or hardness of heart.
Jesus would poke them – frequently – to see if they got it
about what the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus was bringing
what it was really all about.
But here in Mark’s Gospel something different is going on.
In this case Jesus actually complements the scribe, the Torah expert:
When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
But what was he complementing the scribe about?
This religious leader first had said
what all the religious hierarchy would have already known.
The Shema
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
And the second commandment:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The Torah expert acknowledges that this love was to be a total engagement love,
“to love with all the heart,
and with all the understanding, and with all the strength.”
And then the Torah expert goes one step further when he adds:
“This is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
“This is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
This religious leader just reduced all the Temple worship and rituals
to a footnote.
The whole enterprise of the priests at the Temple
and all the Levitical commandments about what was to be sacrificed
and when it was to be sacrificed and how it was to be sacrificed
were in that instance reduced in value to zero
without that Love for God and neighbor.
And Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
There is some self reflection for us here at Nativity.
It behoves us to do some self reflection
as the Vestry prepares to interview someone
who will become the next priest here.
What are our religious traditions, rituals, customs
that we are so invested in?
How do these hold up in contrast to those two greatest of commandments?
Are we in any way like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day?
How are we NOT like them?
If Jesus were talking to us today,
what would he say to us?
How would he challenge us?
How might he poke us to see if we get it
about what the Gospel, the Good News, is really about?
I’m posing these question for you to ponder.
I won’t answer these questions for you.
This is really the spiritual work each of you must do on your own.
And then, can we make a connection
between being close to the Kingdom of God,
and the connection with Jesus?
and what is more important that all the burnt offerings?
What is “more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices?”
They will pass away
and they did
in 67 AD after the Temple was destroyed.
Jesus replaced all that system of blood sacrifices
once and for all.
We have had a series of readings from he Epistle to the Hebrews
during the last few weeks.
The theme of these lessons from Hebrews
comes through in today’s selection:
“When Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, … he entered once for all into the Holy Place,
not with the blood of goats and calves,
but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls, …
sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,
how much more will the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God,
purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!”
Can you get into that 1st Century mindset? This not how we usually think.
But at the time of Jesus with the Temple in Jerusalem, this was big.
And we need also to look at
what happened with that one, pure sacrifice freely offered?
Surprise! God showed that blood and death through sacrifices
was not what this was all about
because God raised Jesus from the dead.
Resurrection nullified blood sacrifice. Can you see that?
The 1st Century mind would be blown away by this.
So let’s consider this coming from a different angle:
from a different Epistle: Ephesians, Chapter 2:
“You were dead through the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, …
3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, …
and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us
5 even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved.”
Through his death that became resurrection,
Jesus changed the whole religious enterprise;
he brought about the huge Reversal.
That one, pure sacrifice, freely offered,
brought life and mercy and grace and liberation,
so that we could experience for ourselves
the great Love of God
that, indeed, enables us to love God
with as much of our heart, mind, strength and understanding
as we know at the moment.
And then by God’s grace we may actually begin
to truly love our neighbors as ourselves,
every last one of them.
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