by Various Authors

Mark 12:28-34

A few years ago, a radio station ran a contest. Disc jockeys invited their listeners 
to tune in their clock radios. "Just for fun," they said, "when you wake up 
to the sound of FM-106, call and tell us the first words you spoke 
when you rolled out of bed. If you're the third caller, you'll win $106." 

It didn't take long for the contest to grow in enthusiasm. The first morning, 
a buoyant disc jockey said, "Caller number three, what did you say 
when you rolled out of bed this morning?" A groggy voice said, 
"Do I smell coffee burning?" Another day, a sleepy clerical worker said, 
"Oh no, I'm late for work." Somebody else said her first words were, 
"Honey, did I put out the dog last night?" A muffled curse was immediately heard 
in the background, and then a man was heard to say, "No, you didn't." 
It was a funny contest and drew a considerable audience. 

One morning, however, the third caller said something unusual. 
The station phone rang. "Good morning, this is FM-106. 
You're on the air. What did you say when you rolled out of bed this morning?" 

A voice with a Bronx accent replied, "You want to know my first words in the morning?" 

The bubbly DJ said, "Yes, sir! Tell us what you said." 

The Bronx voice responded, "Shema, Israel ... Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, 
the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, 
with all your soul, and with all your might." There was a moment of embarrassed silence. 
Then the radio announcer said, "Sorry, wrong number," and cut to a commercial. 

Try to remember. What did you say when you rolled out of bed today? 
Chances are, those words set the tone for the rest of the day. 
For the pious Jew the first words of each morning are always the same, 
and they were the words spoken that morning on FM-106. 
They were first spoken by Moses, who said, "Keep these words that I am commanding you 
today in your heart. Teach them to your children and talk about them 
when you lie down and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) 

In the passage we heard a few minutes ago, some scribe asked Jesus, 
"Which commandment comes first?" It was probably intended as a trick question. 
If Jesus picked only one of the 613 commandments, he left himself open 
for a barrage of criticism from those who favored another commandment. 
In the Gospel of Mark, there are over a dozen occasions when the scribes oppose Jesus. 
They mock him, dispute him, and conspire against him. Certainly they will pounce on 
whatever answer he offers. Yet the scribe immediately backs off when Jesus answers, 
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." 

It is no wonder. The primary obligation for every good Jew has always been 
to love God with the heart, with the center of all passion and trust. 
That is the primary purpose of human life. When we were baptized in the name 
of the Jewish Jesus and adopted into the promises of Israel, 
we were given the same script to follow. These words name our primary allegiance 
and bind us to our greatest responsibility: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." 

Today I want to spend some time unpacking what it means for us to love God. 
We know something about loving our neighbors. We have developed the notion 
of loving ourselves into a fine art. But loving God comes first, as our greatest obligation 
and our primary goal. What does it mean to...

1. Love God with all your heart?
2. Love God with all your soul?
3. Love God with all your mind?
4. Love God with all your strength?

In the days of the circuit riders a minister was out riding one afternoon and came upon a man out working in his field. 
"Fine day isn't it?" the minister called out. 
"It's fine for you", the man replied, "All you have to do is ride around on that horse thinking about God all day long, 
while I have to sweat here in this field and then walk home afterward. I don't think it is right you should have things so easy 
while I have to work so hard." 
"On the contrary", the minister answered, "thinking about God is one of the most difficult things you can do. 
And to prove it, I'll give you this horse if you can think about God and nothing else for one minute." 
"You're on,” said the man and immediately he sat down in silence. Thirty seconds later he looked up at the minister, 
and said, "Does that include the saddle?" 

(by Richard Fairchild from Not Far from the Kingdom of God)

 

Jesus wants us to love God and others with our soul. The soul is that part of us that denies logic. 
It is a mystery. Loving with our souls goes beyond what people would consider as normal. 
We give forth our love because we want to and it probably makes no sense to outsiders.

During the course of earning her master's degree, a woman found it necessary to commute several times a week 
from Victory, Vermont to the state university in Burlington, a good hundred miles away. Coming home late at night, 
she would see an old man sitting by the side of her road. He was always there, in sub zero temperatures, 
in stormy weather, no matter how late she returned. He made no acknowledgment of her passing. 
The snow settled on his cap and shoulders as if he were merely another gnarled old tree. 
She often wondered what brought him to that same spot every evening. Perhaps it was a stubborn habit, 
private grief or a mental disorder.

Finally, she asked a neighbor of hers, "Have you ever seen an old man who sits by the road late at night?" 
"Oh, yes," said her neighbor, "many times." "Is he a little touched upstairs? Does he ever go home?" 
The neighbor laughed and said, "He's no more touched than you or me. And he goes home right after you do. 
You see, he doesn't like the idea of you driving by yourself out late all alone on these back roads, 
so every night he walks out to wait for you. When he sees your taillights disappear around the bend, 
and he knows you're okay, he goes home to bed." 

(by Keith Wagner from Almost Heaven, adapted from Garret Keizer in Watchers in the Night)

 
Wouldn't it be great if I won a million dollars? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so great. Not everyone has the same idea of a great time. 
One person's wish may be another's nightmare. Take, for example, the story of three men who were sailing together in the Pacific Ocean. 
Their vessel was wrecked and they found themselves on an island. They had plenty of food, 
but their existence was in every way different from what their lives had been in the past. The men were walking by the seashore one day 
after they had been there for some months and found an ancient lantern. One man picked it up. As he began to rub it and clean it, 
a genie popped out and said, "Well, since you have been good enough to release me, I will give each of you one wish." 

The first man said, "Oh, that's perfectly marvelous. I'm a cattleman from Wyoming and I wish I were back on my ranch." Poof! 
He was back on his ranch. 
The second man said, "Well, I'm a stockbroker from New York, and I wish that I were back in Manhattan." Poof! 
He was back in Manhattan with his papers, his telephones, his clients and his computers. 
The third fellow was somewhat more relaxed about life and actually had rather enjoyed life there on the island. 
He said, "Well, I am quite happy here. I just wish my two friends were back." Poof! Poof! Everybody's idea of a "great time" isn't the same! 

So is it true? Are many Americans sitting around wishing, "Now wouldn't it be great ...if I won the lottery...if I had my dream house...
if I was famous...." As Christians...as the people of God...what if instead of wishing for money or fame or success or more "things," 
we could just as earnestly wish with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength that we could love the Lord our God and love our neighbor as ourselves?
 
(by David Beckett from Wouldn’t It Be Great?)

 
A rabbi was asked, "Which act of charity is higher--giving out of obligation or giving from the heart?" 

All in the class were inclined to respond that giving from the heart had something more in it, 
but they knew the rabbi was going to say just the opposite, because in spiritual teaching nothing is logical. 
They were not disappointed. 
"Giving from the heart is a wonderful thing," the rabbi said, "It is a very high act and should never be demeaned. 
But there is something much more important that happens when somebody gives charity out of obligation. 
"Consider who is doing the giving. When somebody gives from the heart, there is a clear sense of oneself doing something; 
in other words, heartfelt charity always involves ego gratification. 
"However, when we give out of obligation, when we give at a moment that every part of us is yelling NO! 
because of one reason or another--perhaps the beneficiary is disgusting, or it is too much money, or any of thousands 
of reasons we use to avoid giving charity--then we are confronting our own egos, and giving nonetheless. 
Why? Because we are supposed to. And what this means is that it is not us doing the giving, 
rather we are vehicles through which God gives... 

(by David A. Cooper from Entering the Sacred Mountain: A Mystical Odyssey, Bell Tower)

I think it was Charlie Brown who said, "I love humanity! It is people I can't stand!" Yet the costly love that Jesus embodies 
involves an intimate encounter with God's fierce and holy love. It involves pouring out self for real people, 
sinners all, with all their real-life quirks, faults, smells, and flesh-and-blood sins. 

That harried young mother in the doctor's waiting room (or maybe the next pew): perhaps loving her as yourself 
means offering to watch the toddler while she feeds the baby. That person in line at the bank who's stumbling over 
the English language and struggling to understand deposits and withdrawals: could loving him mean stepping out of line 
and helping him get it straight? That next-door neighbor struggling to keep his marriage together, 
that daughter who pushes your buttons every ten minutes, that husband scared of being laid off -- 
these are the ones who desperately need the strong saving love, the compassion and mercy, the challenge 
and holiness and presence of Jesus. In those moments, dare to risk being rebuffed or inconvenienced. 
Dare to look foolish and make mistakes. Dare to love God and that person, even if it wrings your heart with pain to do so. 
It's what we've been created, redeemed, and commanded to do. Hang your whole life on love, for the truth is, 
it's God's love, active in you. And his love will never fail.

(by Cathy A. Ammlung from Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing Company)

 
G. K. Chesterton once said that the really great lesson of the story of “Beauty and the Beast” is that a thing must be loved 
before it is loveable. A person must be loved before that person can be loveable. Some of the most unlovely people
I have known got that way because they thought that nobody loved them. The fact of the matter is that unless and until 
we feel ourselves loved, we cannot love. That’s not only a principle of theology but of psychology and sociology as well. 
Just as abused children grow up to abuse their children, loved children grow up to love their children. 
Loved persons are able to love. Unloved persons are not. Christianity says something startling. 
It says that God loves and accepts us “just as we are.” Therefore we can love and accept ourselves 
and in so doing, love and accept others. 

(by Donald B. Strobe from Collected Words, www.Sermons.com)

 

Love is not blind. Love is the only thing that sees. 

(by Frank Crane)

 
There is a story about a man who had a huge boulder in his front yard. He grew weary of this big, unattractive stone
in the center of his lawn, so he decided to take advantage of it and turn it into an object of art. He went to work on it 
with hammer and chisel, and chipped away at the huge boulder until it became a beautiful stone elephant. 
When he finished, it was gorgeous, breath-taking. 
A neighbor asked, "How did you ever carve such a marvelous likeness of an elephant?" 
The man answered, "I just chipped away everything that didn't look like an elephant!" 
If you have anything in your life right now that doesn't look like love, then, with the help of God, chip it away! 
If you have anything in your life that doesn't look like compassion or mercy or empathy, then, with the help of God, 
chip it away! If you have hatred or prejudice or vengeance or envy in your heart, for God's sake, 
and the for the other person's sake, and for your sake, get rid of it! Let God chip everything out of your life 
that doesn't look like tenderheartedness. 

(by James W. Moore from Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, p. 32)

When I was at Drew University in New Jersey, I became friends with a Catholic priest named Sean O'Kelly. 
Sean was redheaded and always seemed to have a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. 
He spoke with a heavy Irish brogue because he had only been in America for a few years.

While he was in school, he was also pastoring a Catholic church in the heart of Newark, New Jersey. 
If you want to talk about urban blight and poverty and hunger, all you have to do is to take a trip up and down the streets of Newark.

On one occasion, Sean heard that a family in his parish was hungry. Because of a bureaucratic foul-up, 
a mother with five small children had no food and no hope of getting any until the end of the month.

Although the family was not Catholic, Sean O'Kelly went to the grocery store and bought a supply of groceries. 
There were three full sacks, and he went to the apartment building where the family lived. 
After carrying the groceries up four flights of stairs and walking down a long hall, he came to the apartment. 
He rang the doorbell, and a little boy about seven years old answered the door. He looked at Father O'Kelly's clerical collar 
and the sacks of groceries, and then screamed at his mother: "Mama, Mama, come quick. Jesus brought us some food!"

In telling about that incident, Sean said, "I will never forget that child's comment. At that moment, 
I realized that I was the Christ for a hungry child."

If we are to be the neighbors that God calls us to be, then we need to understand that you and I are expected 
to help those we have the capacity to help. The opportunities for service are almost endless in every neighborhood - even yours. 
There are a dozen ways or more for you to help people if you are willing to be the neighbor God calls you to be! 
Religion in a nutshell means that you really are expected to be "Jesus" to your neighbors when they are in need.

(by Robert L. Allen from The Greatest Passages of the Bible, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.)

 

By loving the unlovable, You made me lovable. 

(Augustine to God)

The Love That Conquers the World
 
The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
 
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
 
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. 
The world is always bewildered by its saints.
 
And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The love of the tortured for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.
 
(by Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat)

Love of Christ
 
Legend has it that a wealthy merchant traveling through the Mediterranean world looking for the distinguished Pharisee, Paul, encountered Timothy, who arranged a visit. Paul was, at the time, a prisoner in Rome. 
Stepping inside the cell, the merchant was surprised to find a rather old man, physically frail, but whose serenity and magnetism challenged the visitor. They talked for hours. 
Finally the merchant left with Paul's blessing. Outside the prison, the concerned man inquired, 
 
"What is the secret of this man's power? I have never seen anything like it before."
 
Did you not guess?" replied Timothy. "Paul is in love."
 
The merchant looked bewildered. "In Love?"
 
"Yes," the missionary answered, "Paul is in love with Jesus Christ."
 
The merchant looked even more bewildered. "Is that all?"
 
Smiling, Timothy replied, "Sir, that is everything."
 
(by G. Curtis Jones from Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching, Nashville: Broadman, p. 225