Sample Issue
of The Sermon Mall

Sermon Ideas For Mark 12:28-34 Part 1

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous have a saying, "first things first," which is intended to order life in terms of what is most important. The saying orders life in terms of what is of ultimate concern, and implies what is only pen-ultimate.. Accepting powerlessness over alcohol, depending on a power greater than oneself, staying sober, and working the program are "first," while getting drunk, believing one has control, imagining some form of self-sufficiency, and living a life of deception come in a distant "second."

By the time a desperate person walks into an AA meeting looking for help, a genuine question is being formed. Is there help for me? What is missing in my life? How can I stop? What is most important, or first, in my life?

The confusion of life requires a kind of spiritual triage which asks, "what do I attend to first?" Without such questions we are drawn into the grand competition of feelings, relationships, and investments which call for our attention. The commandment, which is "first of all" in our lives, cannot be equal to all the other claims. It has priority over all the others. Not a "voice among the many," as H. Richard Niebuhr wrote, but a voice "beyond the many."

The Pharisees and Herodians intended to entrap Jesus with legal question. The Sadducees sought to test him via a doctrinal examination. However, the scribe, perhaps having "hit bottom," had grown tired of all the rhetorical and theoretical questions. He saw how persons used intellectualization and argumentation as a defense against having to choose the ultimate concern. He was desperate for the truth. Imagine his internal conversation: "I am lost. I do not know who or what I am. My life seems adrift, without purpose or direction. I am empty, though my calendar is full. What should be first in my life?"

The alcoholic, no more or less than the rest, cannot stop with the beginning point of awareness. Knowledge that one is addicted, or afflicted with any number of human maladies and frailties, is the springboard to a larger identity.

Pain leads us to the most important questions about what is "first of all" in life. Somewhere I learned the anonymous quote, "The baneful effect of a happy childhood is the loss of metaphysical concern." The mistreated have concern for many of the deeper questions of life.

However, even though tragedy and injustice are markers of life, they are not final destinations. How we live with what has happened to us is more important than what has occurred in our lives. Living with injury becomes an exercise in learning what is first.

Wayne Muller's book, Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood, explorrs the use of injury to achieve a higher level of peace and wholeness. He writes:

We increase our attachment to our suffering as the one thing that is most true in our lives: I was hurt. The memory of that hurt is so strong, it has colored who I have been, and shaped who I have become. This is one of the most powerful attachments to our families--the memory of being hurt.1

However, if one becomes fixed on the injustices of the past, the persons who injured, or the condition of injury, then it is possible to elevate human suffering to a level higher than understanding, love and service. Suffering cannot become an idol and still be useful.

Muller reminds us of the limits of finding one's identity in a condition or category. A person may have been abused or be the child of an alcoholic, but be much more. We gain our identity, or I.D., from the first source of all identity, the Imago Dei--the image of God.

The commandment, which is "first of all," reminds us of the necessity of devotion to God and to the ones created in God's image (the neighbor and the self). However, there is a fear about being devoted to anyone or anything with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Can faith be separated from fanaticism?

According to N. S. Xavier, we get the word "fanatic" from the Latin, "fanaticus," meaning inspired by a deity. Persons become fanatical when they are overly enthusiastic in commitment and underly critical of the object of their devotion.

Xavier describes, in The Two Faces of Religion, both healthy religion and sick religiosity.

Healthy spirituality enlightens the mind by

broadening the vision: it changes the heart for the better--to be more courageous and prudent--and transforms the will to be genuinely loving. On the other hand, unhealthy religiosity darkens the mind by narrowing the vision, hardens the heart with fear and foolhardiness, and transforms the will to be selfish and hateful in general, or at least toward people with a different belief system.2

The healthy aspects of religion are those which "enable people to be compassionate, truthful, disciplined, understanding, peace loving, responsible, creative, and open- minded." The sick side of religion is "what makes some religious people hateful, clannish, alienated, fearful, arrogant, destructive, irresponsible, rigid, and close-minded." Healthy spirituality is separated from sick religiosity by knowing what is "first of all" in the scheme of things.

The question, then and now, is not religion but which kind of religion? "Heart, soul, mind, and strength" are always given to something or someone. So we must ask again and again what is "first of all." Thereby we are found and known by God again. Sometimes we can hear Jesus answer, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

James L. Philpott

1. Wayne Muller, Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 3. 2. N.S. Xavier, The Two Faces of Religion (Tuscaloosa: Portals Press, 1987), p. 26.

 

This Journal is published by Theological Web Publishing, LLC. For more information e-mail us at: webedit@theology.org