Too Close For Comfort

Mark 12:28-34

The Autumn meeting of the Presbytery of the Cascades was held this weekend in Vancouver, Washington. Amid the business of these meetings, we generally vote on the comings and goings of dozens of pastors. It reminded me that when pastors say good-bye to congregations it is one of the hardest preaching assignments there is. A few years ago I stood in a pulpit and said good-bye to a congregation. What could I say to them that I had not already said in dozens of sermons, countless Bible study sessions, weekly "Parson to Person" columns, hundreds of prayers by hospital bedsides and over living room coffee tables? How could I help them move into a new moment of congregational life that I would not be there to share? This is not a new story for congregations. Faces may change, but all churches go through these very experiences with the comings and goings of pastors.

The day before he was killed, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about peering into the promised land with his people, and that though he might not get to enter with them, "Mine eyes have seen the glory...I have been to the mountaintop."

So it is that the book of Deuteronomy records that Moses stood before the children of Israel as the whole nation waited, poised to enter the Promised Land. What was he supposed to say at such a critical juncture? How could he choose his final words to guide them when his physical presence no longer could?

He did what parents often do when speaking to their children: "Hear, O Israel..." that's like taking a child's face into your hands and saying, "Listen to me! " "You shall love the Lord your God..." How much? "with all your heart..." that is, we shall love God emotionally, with the whole range of emotion that is part of what God made us to be; "and with all your soul..." that is, we shall love God spiritually, giving God your worship and praise, and being open to his leading in life; "and with all your might..." that is, we shall love God physically, with the very work of our hands and the sweat of our brow, the stewardship of our human effort. The Septuagint--the Greek version of the Old Testament that was in use in Jesus' day--included "and with all your mind..." that is, mentally, with all the rational thought and profound human wisdom of which we are capable with our large brains. In other words, there is not a single way in which a person can be alive in the world that is not to be held up before God as a love offering.

Moses drove the point home by telling the children of Israel, as figuratively he held their chins in his grip to keep their attention, this commandment should be so plain to you, so much in your mind that it should function like a scroll attached to your forehead, which enters the new land ahead of you. Wherever you go, you will be following the command to love God. And it should function like another scroll which hangs at the doorway into your house, so whenever you go home again, whenever you return to your roots, you will recall that God was with you at the beginning. Whatever new adventures you hear calling you, whatever old loyalties bring you home again, the command to love God first and last must provide the ultimate loyalty.

So, what happened to the children of Israel after Moses let them go on to meet their destiny in a land flowing with milk and honey? Did they go on to become an unfailingly faithful people never wavering from their promise to love the Lord their God? Hardly!

The temptations of the other religions of the Promised Land were going to prove to be too great for them. Their kings were going to take foreign wives and begin the worship of Ba'al to please them. Their national leaders were going to mislead them into unfruitful and ultimately destructive alliances with the unbelieving kingdoms all around them. At one time or another, it seemed that they loved everything and everyone else more than they loved the Lord their God. God's heart was going to be broken. Time and time again the temptations of other gods, other loyalties were going to prove to be too much for the will- power of the children of promise. Almost any time that the kingdom that was established in Israel underwent suffering and trouble, we can be certain that the root cause could be traced back to a failure to keep this command ever before and behind them.

One day, a scribe approached Jesus and asked him a question. Now, there were no people in Israel more picky about the details of the Law than the scribes. It was their whole life. So it's not surprising that Jesus turned the question back on him, inviting him to look into the wealth of the Law of Israel for an answer to his own question. Which commandment is first of all? Is it not one that a scribe could recite without having even to pause to think, the one that every Jewish child has learned to recite from the time he could speak: "Hear, O Israel..."? It is no surprise that the very core of Moses' speech to the children of Israel should form the basis of Jesus' answer. But as the scribe must also have known, the delivery of this commandment, and the high esteem in which it was held, did not guarantee anything about the obedience of the people.

If this was the greatest commandment in the law, wasn't it true that it also represented the greatest failure of the people of Israel, for hadn't they failed miserably in their attempts to obey its implications? So Jesus included the second aspect which flows naturally from the first. Love God, "and your neighbor as yourself."

November traditionally has been stewardship month in many churches. As you know, the Session of our church has made Springtime the season for our annual stewardship focus. Still, for those who are lonesome for some Autumn stewardship conversation, it is helpful to remember in any season that stewardship is a biblical concept that reaches far beyond annual pledge drives. It is a style of life, living as stewards. It is about our love for God and his love for us.

Once C.S. Lewis was asked to speak about stewardship, and his response was that, on the whole, God's love for us is a much safer topic than our love for him. He was right. Because the fact is, it is impossible for us to keep the primary command in the whole law of Israel, to love God, unless we also live according to the second, to love neighbors.

The surprising feature of this story is that the scribe caught on so quickly to the essence of Jesus' message. Having caught on, he expressed his new discovery: "You are right, Teacher...to love him...is much more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices." To love God in heart, and to live it in life means more to God than all the ritual fripperies we can offer. Then, finally, came the dangerous part.

"And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, `You are not far from the kingdom of God.' And after that no one dared to ask him any question."

The old, rather gruesome saying that used to make the rounds in the military, and still does, I suppose, was that "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Far more often, being close is just as good as having missed altogether, as in a football game in which the score was close. In the end, what does it matter? Losing by 1 point, or losing by 25 is still losing. Being close hardly provides much satisfaction to a team that is struggling through an 11 game season in which several games were close, but none close enough.

Imagine being told after months and even years of discouragement that even though you still weren't pregnant, you had been close a couple of times. What good is close, when there is all that matters to you? Being told you were close to landing the airplane correctly as you are being taken away in the ambulance; being told you were close to the group that made the cut-off for acceptance into medical school; being told you were close to being a decent human being...Sometimes--lots of times--close just isn't good enough. It's being almost there, but not quite there.

In effect, Jesus left the scribe and the others who were listening to him, just where Moses left the children of Israel, and just where Mark wanted to leave his readers. We are close. If we have come this far into our faith in Jesus Christ, we are close to the kingdom of God, no doubt about it. But we aren't there yet. Jesus' words, "You are not far from the kingdom of God" hang in this story like an unresolved chord, a murder mystery with the last chapter missing, serving not to frustrate, but to invite. It is an invitation delivered not only to the children of Israel waiting in dust up to their ankles in the region across the Jordan, not only to a nameless scribe in Palestine, not only to the first readers of Mark's gospel in the first century, but to us. We are called upon to supply the response to the unanswered invitation of this passage.

Dear friends, we are close. Dare we move ahead and get there? Shall we be like the children of Israel, and cry like children for the fleshpots of Egypt and the easy, comfortable slavery of what we have already known of the kingdom? Or shall we be fearless in our liberation, fearless in our nearness to the kingdom of God, fearless as we face an uncertain future, because we have gained the certainty of God's love, the one certainty that is important? Unavoidable new circumstances face our congregation here, just as they face every church. It can't be helped, it's part of being alive. New people are coming into our church to look and see. The reality of being faithful people requires an openness to the new thing that God would have us do for his world. It requires a degree of daring.

How can we make a difference? If every member of this church invited just one person into membership here during the next 12 months, our church would double in size! If every household in our church determined to invite one neighboring family or friend to worship with us sometime this Autumn, we would have to add an additional service to accommodate everyone! If we truly intend to be a light for the world, a witness for the gospel in Salem, we have to swing the doors of the church open wide and invite others to join with us on our journey toward the kingdom of God.

We can choose today to move into those changes with the fearless determination of a people claimed by a God who loves us enough to redeem even the false steps we make; or we can choose to murmur. I think singing sounds better than murmuring. We may sing the mighty power of God fearlessly in faith.

Friends, we are not far from the kingdom of God!

Robert Elder Salem, OR

Jesus the Pharisee

Mark 12:28-34

Our Gospel lesson for today reads, "Then one of the scribes came and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these." The response of the scribe is that Jesus had spoken correctly. Jesus' response to the scribe is "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

In my new book, The Land and Jesus (to be published by Abingdon Press on February 1995), I explore the possibility of Jesus' joining the School of Hillel with the Pharisee movement of the first century CE. No where is this more evident than in Jesus answer to the scribe's question, the scribe's reply, and Jesus' second response.

The two dominant divisions or branches among the Pharisees at this time were the School (or Houses) of Hillel and The School of Shammai. The School of Hillel was more moderate in its theology, some might even liberal. The School of Shammai, while more conservative than the School of Hillel, was still more moderate than either the Essenes or Sadducees.

As you are aware, one of the major areas of disagreement between the Pharisees and Sadducees was the issue of resurrection. One of the primary points of disagreement between the school of Hillel and Shammai adhered to a very strict observance of the Sabbath laws, no work, excessive walking, and, especially, no healing on the Sabbath. In Luke 13 we find a story where Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath and is criticized for doing so. This, no doubt, is a village where the theology of the School of Shammai is dominant. In Luke 4 we find that Jesus heals a man possessed of a demon on the Sabbath, and he is praised for his work, not condemned. Clearly, Capernaum, where this miracle is reported to have taken place, is a village with a strong Hillelian influence.

The heart of Hillelian theology is the Shema, the Jewish creedal statement found in Deuteronomy 6:4 ff. For followers of the teaching of Hillel, the Law of loving God and one's neighbor took precedence over all other laws. The scribe in our lesson says as much. "Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all of the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices," (Mark 12:32-33). Jesus, in Matthew's version of this reference, also stresses this point when he says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets," (Matthew 22:40).

For the House of Hillel, everything should be measured against the test of love of God and people. This is why they encouraged healing, even on the Sabbath. To deliver a brother or sister from an oppressive illness would be of the highest good. So here, again, we see evidence of Jesus' relationship to the House of Hillel, the most liberal wing of Judaism of the first century.

Charles Page, II

Charles Page writes from Jerusalem where he is the Academic Dean of the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies, an ecumenical biblical teaching center in Israel. For more information about study opportunities in Israel, call 1-800-929-4678.