04 November 2018
Mark 12:28-34
God loves, we love.
by Fred Behnken, parish lay minister
My preparation for today’s sermon began several weeks ago after Pastor Bob asked me. I looked up the lectionary text for November 4th, 2018 and immersed myself in that text. I’d already gone through 2 or 3 drafts based on that text, Mark 12:28-34. Can you imagine my surprise and consternation when Pastor Bob gave me the service book a few days ago? The bulletin insert Gospel for All Saint’s Day was John 11:32-44. This text was the deferred celebration of All Saints Day that actually fell on November 1st. That text is from John focused on the raising of Lazarus!
After reading John 11:32 – 44 and struggling with that text, I felt that Mark 12:28-34 is most appropriate Gospel to be proclaimed today in our time. The text of Mark that I read as the Gospel for today is one of two Gospel accounts of “love your neighbor as yourself.” In Mark 12:28-34, a scribe asks Jesus,“What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus, answers, “The first is, ‘Hear of Israel: the Lord our God is the Lord of 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.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.’
What do you think when I said the word “neighbor?” Those who live next door or across the street? They are my neighbors. In this day, they are usually casual acquaintances, who greet each other “How are you doing?” or “Have great Day!”or “Good Morning!”. We assume that they share implied values because they live adjacent to us. Some neighbors become our friends. Yet, this is definitely not the “neighbor” Jesus meant when he quoted from the Torah “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Last week I asked Pastor Bob what if the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek might have a subtly that might clarify “neighbor” for me. He didn’t give me a direct answer but suggested that I should look at the parable of the Good Samaritan. So, I dug into this parable from Luke 10:25-37. Whoa,this sermon was already becoming more complicated.
Can you remember the Good Samaritan Parable in Luke, the same text is in Mark 12:28-34?
In Luke, a Temple lawyer comes to Jesus and asks what must I do to go to inherit eternal life? Jesus asks what is written in the Law? How do you read it? The lawyer answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all you soul, and with all your strength, and will all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “you have answered correctly” and tells him to go and do the same. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor” or perhaps how do I fulfill the requirement to be righteous and holy?
Remember the gist of this parable? A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is near the Dead Sea. Robbers took his money purse, beat him, stripped him of his sandals, clothing and anything of value. They left him bleeding and naked by the side of the road. He was unconscious and looked near death. Later, a priest came by, he sees the man and goes to the other side of the road and passes by.Sometime later, a Levite came by and he also passed by on the other side of the road. Then a Samaritan, a member of a Jewish community living outside of Judea.The Samaritans were despised by the Judean and Jerusalem Jews. The Samaritan sees the naked, beaten and bloody man, goes to him and finds him alive. He cleanses his wounds and lifts him up on his donkey, taking him to the closest inn. He tends to the man overnight. The next morning, Samaritan gives the innkeeper two days wages and tells him to care for the beaten man that he leaves at the inn. He says that he’ll repay the inn keeper if expenses are greater when he returns along this way.
Jesus asks the Lawyer, “Which of the three proved to be a neighbor to the injured man?”The lawyer replied, the one who showed him mercy. Jesus tells him to go and do the same. Jesus didn’t define the neighbor, but he did clarify what a true neighbor does. I’ve heard many sermons preached on this parable. Most were moral lectures and what it means to do good, rather than showing love and compassion.
What is noteworthy here and especially important is that Jesus didn’t condemn the Priest or the Levite. They acted as they did because of their framing of what they would have to do in order to be righteous and so please Yahweh. The frame or their understanding of God-pleasing obedience determined their behavior. The way they framed respect for the Law and worship of Yahweh was to be holy and righteous. Being and remaining holy and righteous is the highest respect that they could show for the Law and faithfulness to Yahweh. Their actions were true to their framing of what they had been taught and practiced would please Yahweh. To touch a bloody or possibly dead person would make them unclean and unacceptable to Yahweh. Their uncleanliness would require a humbling, costly and time-consuming ritual to be completed. They chose to remain clean and therefore, holy. They passed by.
The Samaritan truly “saw” the man for what he was, an individual desperately needing help. His “seeing” the man and situation resulted in compassion and loving care for the injured man.
In this parable, Jesus reframes living the spirit of the Law and true faithfulness to Yahweh – rather than seeking to remain separate and clean in order to be holy and righteous, Jesus shows that compassion and actions of love are most important. Jesus overturns the old ideas, the cultural prejudices, and long-lasting cultural norms. He reversed, overturned and redefined what is pleasing to Yahweh.
Jesus’ parable proclaims that loving action speaks louder than human values and fears,our fear of loss, the fear of the “other”, the fear of the unknown, and fear of what waits for us tomorrow.
The Samaritan, also a practicing Jew, risked becoming unclean by coming close to the unconscious and bleeding man lying in the bar ditch. He risked being ritually unclean by touching the blood oozing from an unknown, naked, badly,beaten man. The Samaritan was doing and re-enacting what Jesus had done in all his ministry and life here with us. Jesus never wavered and was willing and ready to touch the unclean, the outcast, those outside of the purity laws and therefore, the graces of the Temple.
The Samaritan saw and acted out of compassion. He provided mercy instead of yielding to his fear of loss. By Hebrew law and tradition at that time, his actions would have made him unclean and“unholy.”
Jesus told this parable that reflected his own actions to risk breaking the law but keeping the spirit of the Torah. Jesus’ actions shown through the parable of the Good Samaritan reveal the unearned, undeserved, unending and risky love of God. The spirit of the Law and Torah reminded the people of God that they were once strangers, aliens and sojourners and to treat others with love. God’s love knows no bounds, no limits, no racial or ethnic constraints. God’s love does not exclude the traveler or the sojourner, the stranger.
Jesus said if you have seen me, you have seen the Father (Yahweh). Jesus went to the unclean, those outside of the norms of Jewish culture and behavioral expectations. He tended the sick, healing those in need or declared unclean by the culture, e. g. the lepers and woman with a hemorrhage. Because he acted in this manner, he was even accused of having a demon by his family and the legalists.
Jesus lived the love, the grace, the charity of God by healing, lifting up, eating and associating with those rejected by those who valued purity and holiness as the way to please Yahweh. Jesus showed the way. Love, compassion, caring for those in need regardless of the expectation of cultural rejection or of payback.
This is what the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven means when it breaks into the world. The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven is now! The fear of undeserved rejection, the fear of the “other,” the fear of loss is overcome by love and compassion. Just as Jesus showed for all, for all people and for all creation.
This parable is really about the Kingdom of God being present in the world – here and now. The Kingdom of God is present now. Jesus through the Gospel turns human values, human fears and cultural boundaries inside out. What is accepted as good in the eyes of our community, our state and our nation is reversed,turned inside out by the Gospel. Fear of the “other”, fear of cultural change,desiring to be holy based on our own efforts, and thereby, separating ourselves and walking by or not seeing the “other”, the needy, the hungry and the injured, this is not what Jesus shows us about what God desires. Jesus “saw”the person, their physical needs, their wounds, and their alienation.
The KOG revolutionizes and overcomes our cultural expectations and fear and our cultural projections of the perceived worth of others. The KOG brings and energizes new meaning to living in Christ, living within God’s love, rejecting fear. God raising love and forgiveness within our lives. Traditional or devised cultural values and fears that oppress or lead to purposeful neglect are rejected, they are overturned in love.
We love as we are loved. We depart worship not being holy, but forgiven in love, freed so that we can truly “see” the people around us and their needs. We love because we are loved by God. We are loved because God’s forgiving, unending and unlimited love ensures that loving others is possible. AS the ELCA one sentence call to action says, “God’s work, our hands.”
Jesus is not being critical of the Priest or the Levite. They are living true to their framework of what pleasing, honoring God and to be holy requires. In Christ, we have a new frame of our reality, we and our entire world is embraced in unconditional love and charity.If we deny the love of Christ to a stranger, an alien sojourner, those persecuted and the needy, do we risk opposing Christ’s love itself? The devotion that Pr Bob sent out (Getting out the Word, located in the hard copy box in the visitation area) closes with God’s unending, unlimited, unearned and unmerited love and forgiveness, given without our asking. God’s love sets us free from the bondage of sin. We are freed to do the one thing that we never would or could do. We are free at last, to love. To love just as Jesus loves! Go and do the same! This is most certainly true!