Energy, Intelligence, Imagination, and Love
Mark 12:28-34[1]
It seems to me that we live in an age when it’s hard to focus on
anything for very long. It seems that we always have something clamoring for
our attention. Those of us who have “smartphones” may have “dings” or a “beeps”
coming at us on a regular basis all day long. When I got my first “smartphone,”
it was set to sound off at me for just about everything: email, text messages,
calendar reminders, Facebook notifications, and more. It didn’t take too long
for me to decide I needed to find out how to turn off most of that noise! Even
without the “dings” and “beeps,” we seem to be tethered to a whole web of
electronic connections.
But more than that, we all have a wide variety of involvements
that constantly claim our focus. Between work, family, social life, civic
organizations, exercise routines, financial obligations, church commitments,
and others, it can feel like we hardly have a moment in the day when we can
catch our breath. So much for the promise that advances in technology would
give us more leisure time![2] I would say that technology has actually
expanded the work week rather than shortening it, as some predicted in the
1960’s and 70’s. We’re accessible 24/7. It can make it difficult to focus on
anything spiritual.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus answers a question that was much
debated in his day: “which commandment is the first of all?” The question of
the “first commandment” was, of course, the question about which one was the
most important. The answer Jesus gave would have been considered fairly
conventional: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk. 12:29-31) That was the shema (Deut. 6:4-5), which devout Jewish
people recited every day. That he combined it with a “second” command, “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself,” would not have come as a surprise
either.
There was widespread agreement that these two commands constituted
the essence of what God wanted from his people. But I think then as well as
now, the real problem is how to fulfill these two great commandments. I’m not
the first person to wonder how we finite human beings can “love” God, the one
who is both far beyond all that we can understand and also who is as close to
us as the very air we’re breathing. It’s a question that St. Augustine framed
over 1600 years ago: “What do I love when I love my God?”[3] It’s a question that continues to be asked by
many who are willing to face the difficulty of living in relationship with the
God who made the heavens and the earth. Just how do you have a relationship
with a God you can’t see, you can’t touch, with whom you can’t have a regular
conversation?
Some insist that we love God by maintaining spiritual practices
like prayer, Bible reading, and worship—both publicly and privately. I would
agree that maintaining our personal and public spiritual lives is an important
component of what it means to love God. But those who have explored this
question throughout the ages developed other disciplines as well: welcoming
strangers, sharing what we have, helping others, and giving care wherever it’s
needed. This echoes a theme that is biblical: we love God when we walk in his
ways. I would say that we “walk in God’s ways” when we seek to live out God’s
grace, mercy, and love in our own lives. And if we want an example to follow, I
think we need look no farther than Jesus. He constantly and consistently lived out
God’s grace, mercy and love. He devoted his whole life to loving God and loving
others.
Loving God leads us naturally to the “second” commandment: loving
others. Scripture says that we cannot love God without loving others (1 John
4:11-12, 19-21). What we may not know is that this “second” command comes from
Leviticus 19. In that chapter, the Bible is actually very specific about what
it looks like to “love your neighbor as yourself.” It means to refrain from
oppressing your workers, cursing the deaf or trying to trip up a blind person;
it means that we’re not to show partiality to the rich over the poor, slander
anyone, hate another person, take vengeance, or bear a grudge (Lev. 19:13-18)!
Of course, there are other Bible passages that spell this out with different
specifics, but I think you get the idea. Loving God leads to loving your
neighbor in the real ways in which we treat other people on a daily basis.
In these distracted times, it can be difficult to keep our focus
on these matters. The push and pull of life constantly drags us away from our
primary calling: to love God and to love our neighbors. It’s not always easy to
determine what that kind of love looks like in practice. I will say this: if we
take it seriously, it will claim all that we are, and call forth the best we
can give. Those of us who are ordained officers in the Presbyterian Church take
an oath to serve others with “energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.”
That’s not a bad way to approach trying to fulfill the two great commands. As
we offer all that and more to God, I think we are setting out on a journey of
discipleship in which we are constantly learning what it means to love God with
all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
[1]
©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon
delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 11/4/2018 at Hickman Presbyterian Church,
Hickman, NE.
[2]
First introduced by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, “Cyborgs and Space,” Astronautics (September 1960): 26-27,
74-76.
[3]
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions,
10.6.8.
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