Welcome to our Service for Sunday March the 17th - Love in the End

Welcome to our Service for Sunday, March the 17th 2024

Our Sunday morning service at Clevedon is at 10 am. You watch the live stream on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBzxjBb3xU8ra2NHwvD_9A

(The service can also be viewed at any time afterwards.)

The Reading and Reflection for the service can be found below:

²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" ²⁹ Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with your entire mind, and with all your strength.' ³¹ The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." ³² Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; ³³ and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbour as oneself,'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." ³⁴ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

In our reading this morning, a Scribe comes to Jesus.

Scribes could read and write. They were the educated elite, lawyers of a sort.  

Literacy - the ability to read and write - at the time of Jesus was around about 15% of the population.

If you could read and write you had legal power, you had economic power and you had religious power.  You could quote scripture, you could tell someone if they were obeying God’s law or not, pass judgment on lawbreakers, or say who were the saints and who were the sinners.

Along with the chief priest and elders, you had a place in the Sanhedrin, the court in which judgements were made.  That’s where Jesus was taken before being handed over to the Romans for execution.

The scribe comes to Jesus, and asks him what is the most important commandment, Jesus says:

'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ 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"

So, the first point this morning:

The love we hear about here comes as a gift. It is not an emotion or a feeling. This love is something that we can't fall in love with, or fall out of. It is a love we sing about in old hymns – it is the love that will not me go.

I lie on my back on a summer’s night on the sandhills and gaze up at the stars, and I’m overwhelmed with a sense of awe and wonder, how the heavens declare the glory of God.

The point is the heavens were there before I was there, Matariki, Pleiades, the Southern Cross -  they were all there before me, and their existence makes possible my overwhelming sense of awe and wonder.

So, the simple theological affirmation being made here in the covenant with the Jewish people, in God’s love made real in Jesus, we are loved as a foundation stone in our lives, and there is nothing we can do about it. Like the stars, it was there before we were. 

So for a scribe, a lawyer, this could be difficult. There is no process, no system , that we can put in place to weigh things up, or consider different points of view. The starting point is the acknowledgement that we are loved because of who God is.

I am not sure who it was that reminded me just the other week, that God loves our children even more than we do.

And though there might be a lot to be worried about, this love is a love we are told in Scripture “casts out fear.”  

We often get the impression in Scripture that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Is it love or fear which we make the cornerstone of our lives?

The second point is about loving our neighbour. How important this is when we think about the challenges today.

Loving our neighbour. How do we love our neighbour when we don’t particularly like them, or we don’t like their music or we are suspicious that they are breaking the rules or using their chainsaw late into the evening?

 From a Biblical point of view, to love our neighbour cannot mean that we love our neighbour like we love God. To do so would be an act of idolatry.

The language in Greek is quite important. Unlike erotic love, eros, and friendship phileo, agape - the love for neighbour - does not depend on the admirable traits or my personal relationship with my neighbour.

We love God because God first loved us; agape toward the neighbour means that we love our neighbour even when our neighbour refuses to love, or even, like us.

Jesus has already told us something very difficult.  In God's kingdom, love is even due to our enemies.

To love my neighbour means that I recognize my neighbour as one who is irreducibly valued. This means in our dealing with our neighbour we can never regard them as less than a person like us who is loved by God.  No quality, characteristic, or behaviour of another person can reduce their value to God.

Jesus keeps inviting us, giving us a glimpse into this world called the Kingdom of God.  Jews loving Palestinians. Russians loving Ukrainians.  

And we all say that that is idealistic and ridiculous. To imagine what it is to live in peace. And it's not realistic. It is foolishness.

And it is just that foolishness which we contend with when we claim the Son of God crucified and risen. What is impossible for us is possible with God.

Loving our neighbour is a commitment to the wellbeing of others whoever they are.

This Scribe comes to understand that following Jesus means that things will be different. This Kingdom of God.

In response to what Jesus says, this Scribe - powerful, educated elite, says to Jesus:

You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him, there is no other'; ³³ and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbour as oneself,'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

³⁴ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

Here he is. A pillar of the religious and cultural elite.  He depends on the current religious system with its rituals and systems for his standing. Religion is important, and vital to him. And he says to Jesus that loving God and loving our neighbour is much more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. All the rituals.

There is a final point here, and in some ways a more difficult one to speak about.

I drove to Thames on Monday. I was picking up Sandy after she had just completed another tramp, this time around the top of the Coromandel Peninsula, with her brother and sister-in-law.

I’ve always been interested in the signs that people put up. And as you drive along State Highway 2 there are quite a number of signs. Signs in opposition to the previous government, and their three waters policies. Signs opposing abortion. Signs supporting a woman’s right to choose. Signs against mining on the Coromandel, and several other things.  Lately, too I have also been getting a large number of politically motivated emails asking me to sign various petitions.

Sometimes it is too easy to see ourselves in terms of what or who we don’t like, what we disagree with, and what we oppose. To label the other in a way that dismisses their opinion or experience or belief.

But let’s pause to think of how unusual the story is today.

Our reading today tells of a Scribe coming to Jesus.

We will read further on in the text that the Scribes belong to the very group, along with the temple priests, who will shortly work to orchestrate Jesus ‘execution.

So, the story reminds us that no opposition to Jesus, however entrenched, is entirely closed off to the work of God in the world.

Here is a Scribe. And in his recognition of love as the key to devotion and obedience, he is told by Jesus that he is not far from the kingdom of God.

And after that “no one dared to ask Jesus any question.”  

So, after this scene, we find that love has the last word here.

The Scribe hears about a greater purpose which places things in a different perspective.  The greatest commandments. Where fear and worry are replaced with hope and reassurance.

Not more religious, but loving God, loving ourselves as God loves us, forgiving fearlessly, hopefully - and loving our neighbour.

And also acknowledging that God might still be working in the lives of those who we see as being quite different from ourselves.

For people of faith, we find that Jesus teaches us that our first identity is as a person known and loved by God.

So precious, lived for died for, given eternal life. Each of us called into the lifelong learning of discipleship.

AMEN