Love God. Love Your Neighbor

Mark 12: 28-34

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is having a theological discussion with the Sadducees as they attempt to discredit Jesus' position on the resurrection of the dead, w hen in the midst of this discussion; an expert in the Law actives. Seeing that Jesus answers the Sadducees with knowledge and skill and being one who admires a quick mind and a fair debate, the expert of the Law asks Jesus' opinion about the dilemma that he faces in his scholarly task of determining `Which is the first commandment of all?" Jesus couches his profound answer in the simplest Truth and draws out of the scholar a spiritual insight that advances him to the threshold of the Kingdom of God.

The primary task of the scribal expert was to interpret the Law so the people would understand. A scribe of the Pharisees would find it particularly difficult to make their laws simple and meaningful: 613 statutes comprise the oral law with 365 prohibitions to coincide with the number of days in the year and 248 commandments to equal the reputed number of generations of the human race.

The challenge before Jesus was to develop a single. simple, working principle that would encompass all of these 613 statutes. Reaching back to Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus confirms the foundational truth of the Shema which serves as the call to worship in the Jewish synagogue, "Hear. 0 Israel: The Lord is our God. the Lord alone." From this basic premise, Jesus proceeds to the principle revealed in Deuteronomy 6:5, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" Jesus then applies the principle by matching it with the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 "...you shall love your neighbor as yourself." With scarcely a breath in between, Jesus has summed up the Law, the prophets. and the Gospel, so that He can say, "There is no other commandment greater than these."

Ordinarily. we might expect that power, not love, would rule the relationship between a sovereign God and humanity. But Jesus identifies love as the dynamic agent in our relationship to God, If we are to love God with all our heart. soul and might then we must recognize that we are the beloved of God. We tend to identify ourselves with labels of relationship (mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife. son, daughter, friend. acquaintance, enemy). Or we may identify ourselves by our vocation (lawyer, nurse, teacher. pastor, factory worker); by labels of economic status (rich, poor, middle class. homeless); by political labels (liberal. conservative, moderate); by religious labels (Protestant, Roman Catholic. Greek or Russian Orthodox. Moslem, Buddhist. Hindu): by labels that describe our leaning with a particular denomination (fundamental, evangelical, traditionalist, progressive); or labels of orientation (heterosexual. homosexual, transgender). However at the core of our being, we are all the beloved of God.

How is it that we arrive at the knowledge that we are the beloved of God? Just as Jesus went into the wilderness of solitude to team who He was in relation to God, so we must go for the same reason, We don't literally seek out a desert or a wilderness, but we go inward into the center of our being where God's Spirit communes with our spirit. This practice of going inward is called Contemplation. It calls its into solitude and silence. It calls us to "be" with God. Contemplative prayer is a mean by which we open ourselves to the presence of God. We tend to think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words. Thomas Keating describes contemplative prayer as the "opening of mind and heart—our whole being to God...beyond thoughts. words, and emotion." Marjorie Thompson in her book, Soul Feast, describes contemplative prayer as “resting in God, allowing the Spirit to fill and move us as God wills.”

As I study the life of Jesus, I am beginning to understand how important solitude and silence were for him. Many times in scripture, we read how Jesus drew apart from the crowds to pray, to be alone with God. When Jesus was alone, do we think that he was always verbal in his praying? I think not. Nor do I think that his prayer was necessarily a silent prayer where he "thought" the words. Jesus drew part to be silent, to listen, and to feel the need and the love of God. I think that much of his prayer time, his time apart from the crowds was spent in silent communion—in contemplative prayer.

Most of us don't deal very well with silence. We till our worship services with singing, with the spoken words, and if we have a moment of silence, that is what it is, a moment. Maybe we could learn a lesson from the Quakers! We think they are silent waiting for the Spirit to move them. In pan that is true. But I think they are silent, because they expect that in the silence, they will be aware of God's presence. The prophet. Habakuk tells us that when the Lord is in his holy temple. the earth should keep silent before him. Elijah. hiding in a cave, expected to hear God in the wind, in the earthquake, and in the fire. But when he emerged from the cave, Elijah was struck by the sheer silence. And in that sheer silence, Elijah heard the Lord (1 Kings 19:9-13).

Genuine dialogue asks us to "listen" as well as to speak, to receive in order to respond. It is the listening part where we humans often fail. Even in our relationship with others, too often, aye speak when we should be listening. Have you ever noticed that the letters that spell "listen" also spell `silent?" To listen requires that we be silent. Soren Kierkegaard writes, "A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening." In solitude, God intrudes. surprises, startles. In solitude we are attentive only to God. We can cause nothing. Joseph Nassal writes: 'Nothingness is the goal of solitude so we can be filled with the "somethingness" of God. God says, "You are mine, : -You belong to me" "You are my beloved." We become aware that "we love because God first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

Several years ago I was involved in a program designed for those who want to dedicate themselves more intentionally to a contemplative grounding in their daily life. An integral part of the program was to spend at least twenty minutes a day in Centering Prayer. The whole emphasis in Centering Prayer is on the Presence of God in the Center that can only be known by faith and reached by love. We were not to read, nor pray verbally or otherwise, but were to be silent, focusing on the word that the Holy Spirit would give each of us. For me the word was, and to this day remains, "Jesus." When thoughts protrude upon our consciousness or our mind wanders, we gently return to that word enabling us to return to the Presence, to God at the Center of our being.

Month after month, I sat quietly. eyes closed, focusing on the word. “Jesus. I had read about others' experience. How in the silence, they were aware of Gods presence at the very center of their being. But it was not happening for me and because it was not, I thought that maybe I should be content with being verbal or praying silently. After all familiarity breeds contentment. What was I doing wrong? One morning as I sat quietly, I cried out in frustration:

"God, why can't I make it happen? Why can't I feel your presence? What am I not doing that I should be doing? I give up. You take control. If I am to know you in the silence, then you have to make it happen, I can't."

I sat quietly having finally surrendered control. Morning after morning, I would sit quietly focused on the word. "Jesus.” Deep contemplation draws us into an experience with God that transcends time. Time passed. Had I been asleep? Perhaps I had, but when I opened my eyes and was aware of my surroundings, I knew that I had been resting in the arms of God. Silence had given birth to a presence of God beyond words.

Preoccupation with myself had made me focus on my experience instead of focusing on my beloved Lord. My emotions had become so dominant that my prayer had become a listening to myself rather than a giving of my heart to the Lord. When we let go of all effort to speak or even to listen and simply become quiet before God, God blesses us with those Aha moments when we are bathed in God loving presence.

Jesus makes it simple for us'. Love God and love your neighbor. If we really understand and embrace the depth of God's love for us: if we feel in every fiber of our being that God's love is expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we cannot help but live this Spirit of love. We find solidarity in solitude. By praying attention to God within us and by acknowledging our true identity as children of God. we are better able to pay attention to God within the other. In our aloneness with God, we recognize the value of relationship, of seeing God visible and present in the other. We become aware that our neighbor is everyone, anywhere.

God desires and longs for us to love God for who God is not what God can do for us. Relationship with God presupposes a two-way relationship in which love engages heart, soul, mind and strength. Every facet of the human personality—affection, intellect, or will, is touched and transformed by God's love for us and our love for God. In contemplative spirituality a "oneness" with God occurs. But to make this "oneness" complete, the same self-giving love must flow in person-to-person relationships, '`You shall love your neighbor as yourself' is the point of proof that God is one God and that a person's heart, soul. mind, and strength are transformed by love. Jesus makes it clear that there is no separating what we believe about God and how we relate to God from how we treat our neighbor. Jesus ends his answer to the expert of the Law. "There is no other commandment greater than these "(v. 31) Were we to ask the question today, the reply would be the same. "Love God, love your neighbor."

Sandra Whirr

First United Methodist Church

Berkeley Springs, WV

1. David L. McKenna. The Communicator's Commentary Series. Volume 2: Mark

(Warn. TX: Word Book, Publisher, 1982), 251-254.

2. Joseph Nassal, The Conspiracy of Compassion (Leavenworth, KS: Forest of Peace Publishing, Inc. 1997), 51, 64, 108. 147.

3. Thomas Keating, Open Mind. Open Heart (New York: NY: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1986), 146.

4. Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast, An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life,

(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 44.

5. M. Basil Pennington. O.C.S.O., Centered Living, The Way of Centering Prayer,

New York; NY: Doubleday, 1998), 62-63.