Mark 12: 28-34

On Wednesday evenings we have been discussing the book, The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers. Fred Rogers told about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news. His mother would say to him, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” In times of trouble, look for the helpers. God’s call to each of us this morning is to be a helper. We can all find ways to be a helper. We can all find ways to love our neighbor. We can all find ways to practice compassion...

includes lots of Greek exegesis!!

always good insights!

(excellent exegesis)

How many of you remember learning how to drive? For some of you it was probably just a couple of years ago… I hate to admit that it’s now been 29 years ago so I’m sure things have changed in those decades. But back in the day – we had it as part of our physical education and health classes. So our health teacher, Mrs. Ratched had us in a classroom setting going though a book from the NJ Department of Motor Vehicles (that looked like it had been written in the 60’s) that had all kinds of rules, laws about driving. We would have videos about how to drive that also looked like they came from the 1960’s since most of the women had beehives and poodle skirts, guys in shirts and ties demonstrating how to drive. The one exception was a much more current film showing the effects of drunk driving (I think it was called “Death Highway” or something… I just remember it was pretty horrific – making the point of how horrific drunk driving was). Mrs. Ratched was responsible to teach us the theories behind the practice of driving. I remember her teaching us“the rule of thumb” for highway driveway (or as they called it “on the speedway” or “the Motor-highway”) for every 10 mph you drove, you should be 1 car length away from the car in front of you so at 40 MPH, you should be back 4 car lengths – that you’d measure by thumb in front of you… (Can you imagine?) I remember one guy in my class raised his hand and said “Mrs. Ratched, I thought we were supposed to keep both hands on the wheel, how are we supposed to use our thumbs to count car lengths.” She threw him out of our class...

Saturday morning, at a synagogue maybe a mile from my home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a man armed with an assault rifle and several handguns came in and murdered eleven worshippers, shouting anti-Semitic statements. He too was shot. He had his wounds treated by Jewish physicians at a local hospital, apparently continuing with his insults all the while. I’m not getting a ton of work done. Walking down the street I’m prone to bursting into tears. I have no idea whether the murderer professed my faith or not but, God knows, countless anti-Semitic murders and other atrocities have been done ostensibly in the name of Jesus.

I like the movie The Incredibles. It's about a family of superheroes who try to save the world from destruction. In Bob Goff's book "Love Does," he writes about the superhero dad in the movie. He is an insurance claims adjustor, but he really wants to use his superhero powers. He begins drawing pictures of the superhero suits he wants to wear. Of course, all the suits he draws include capes. The dad has a friend named Edna who makes superhero suits and she keeps telling him that he needs to lose the cape. She mentions how capes cause big problems for super heroes. They get caught on things like fences or jet engines. Edna is famous for saying, "No capes!" You get a lot more stuff done if you lose the cape. Bob Goff thinks Jesus agrees and so do I! You know what I think will draw the world to Christ? When Christians lose the cape...

The renowned Polish psychiatrist, Kasmir Dabrowski, had a thought-provoking theory about human maturity and what it takes to get here. For him, we grow by breaking down, by being driven to our knees through various crises which force us to move beyond our mediocre habits and immaturities. Richard Rohr calls this falling upwards: We mature through failure, grow arrogant through success. Mostly that’s true. Success, more than failure, destroys lives. But is that logical? Isn’t it more logical to grow through success? Shouldn’t success induce gratitude within us and make us more generous and big-hearted? Someone asked Dabrowski that question in class one day. This was his answer: “You’re right, success should make us more grateful and big-hearted; that’s the ideal way to grow … except, in more than 40 years of clinical experience, I have never seen it work that way. It only works that way in rare, exceptional cases … and that, I believe, is what makes for a great person.” A great person is someone in whom success enlarges the soul rather than swells the ego...

Daniel Grossman is an ER doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. A year ago, he was a terrible accident on a mountain bike that left him paralyzed from his mid-abdomen down. Today, he is back at work, although his life has changed drastically. A lot of what he now does is physically difficult and draining – he has had to learn to do things in new ways. Many patients are shocked to see this man in a wheelchair as their doctor. But it has made it easier for patients to open up to him. When he tells them they will be facing a difficult road, they know that he has traveled that road himself. His parents, in their 70’s, are both recently retired college professors. They spend a considerable amount of time and effort helping their son. On a recent broadcast of NPR’s Here and Now, Grossman told about the moment that he apologized to his father. His parents had been traveling in Europe. They came to Minnesota to stay with him for six months. He said to his dad that he was sorry, that he knew this is not what his parents had in mind for their retirement. For the first time, his father teared up and then became almost angry. “Don’t ever apologize to me again,” he said. “This is what I signed up for on the day you were born. This is my role as a father.”...

Fulton Sheen gave us this insight: “God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.” This is the bridge from love of God to love of neighbor. God created and Christ died for the least attractive, least accomplished, most annoying neighbor we have...

("THE film Of Gods and Men tells the true story of a small group of Trappist monks in Tibhirine, Algeria. We see them living and working alongside their Muslim neighbours, and the elderly Brother Luc providing medical care. The Algerian Civil War intervenes in their lives; there are tense moments when the monastic compound is invaded by extremist militia on Christmas Eve...")

("Rabbi Hillel felt that love of others was the core principle of Jewish teaching, and in a collection of his maxims there is an account of him being approached by a heathen who was considering becoming a Jew, and who asked the rabbi for a concise summation of the religion. Hillel told him: 'That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Law; the rest is commentary.'...")

includes several quotes and interesting observations on the text!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, spoke on a TED talk on NPR about Open Sourcing, the freedom from copyright, royalties, and all intellectual property rights into which Berners-Lee has dedicated the Web. Open Source makes available to the world all the codes and design language used in the Web project. The principle in doing this is that creating things freely and openly will lead to possibilities never imagined by the original author...

("A number of years ago, a young man came to me because he was in crisis: He had been having an affair with his girlfriend and she had become pregnant. For a variety of reasons, marriage was impossible. The pregnancy would have an irrevocable impact on a series of lives...")

("Steve and Lisa met and fell in love while earning their MBAs at a leading university. Young, sharp, and highly motivated, they shared a common goal to succeed in business, make a lot of money, and live the American dream. Immediately after receiving their MBA degrees, Steve and Lisa married. Soon thereafter they accepted business positions in a large city...")

"One of my favorite songs in The Wizard of Oz is the one where the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion take turns singing, If I Only Had…. It's a game that many of us still play today. If I Only Had… In the movie, each character had a different need..."

("It is said that the arch is the greatest Roman contribution to building technology. A wooden frame was built so that the wedge-shaped stones could be laid. They were made to fit together, to lean on one another. Finally, a larger stone wedge was dropped into place at the top...")

("Last week I mentioned the great Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As a youth he was a fervent Communist, but his loyal service did not prevent him from becoming one of the many victims of that brutal regime. Solzhenitsyn exposed some of the brutality in his novels...")

("Ethiopia has never seen a single day without war until today. War has been the national trademark, part of the national news, and it is always included in daily talks on the streets of the nation...")

("Today as much as ever, people need to know that this kingdom is real and available. They need to see the joy and the possibilities of that kingdom in us. Because often people are too easily satisfied just to make do with what is quick and easy and cheap. People settle for sex or liquor or a rock band or the distractions provided by entertainment...")

("From the time he was seven years old Will Campbell wanted to be a preacher. After ordination at the age of seventeen, for twenty years he devoted himself to the civil rights movement based upon his understanding of the Gospel. He had few peers...")

("I love the thought of Karl Rahner, a spiritual theologian. He talks about God and mystery, and how so many people say we simply must believe what we are told about God and if it doesn’t make sense to us we simply say it is part of the mystery of God...")

("There is a little Sufi story about a stream of water working itself across the country, experiencing little difficulty. It ran around the rocks and through the mountains. Then it arrived at the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared...")

("Once upon a time not so very long ago, a new pastor was assigned to a parish that was quite divided over the issue of what it means to be a good Christian...")

("Here are some laws that are said to have existed or still exist in parts of the United States of America: 'In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania it is against the law to sleep in a refrigerator. There was once a law in Iowa against women wearing corsets, and an official job of corset inspector who went around poking women in the ribs to make sure they weren't wearing one...")

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. "Its 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 its 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. "Does that include the saddle?", he asked.

A thoughtful, curious young man went to the desert to visit an elderly man, a monk, who had lived in the desert for many years. Arriving at the holy man's cave, the young man encountered the monk, who was sitting out enjoying the sun, his dog lying lazily at his side. This spiritual seeker asked, "Why is it, teacher, that some who seek God come to the desert and are zealous in prayer, but leave after a year or so, while others, like you, remain faithful to the quest for a lifetime?"...

Once there were two neighbors who farmed together. They shared equally in all of the work and split the profits exactly. Each had his own granary. One of the neighbors was married and had a large family; the other neighbor was single. One day the single neighbor thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. My neighbor has many mouths to feed, while I have but one. I know what I’ll do, I will take a sack of grain from my granary each evening and put in my neighbor’s granary.” So, each night when it was dark, he carefully carried a sack of grain, placing it in his neighbor’s barn. Now the married neighbor thought to himself, “It is not fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have many children to care for me in my old age, and my neighbor has none. I know what I’ll do, I will take a sack of grain from my granary each evening and put it in my neighbor’s granary.” And he did. Each morning the two neighbors were amazed to discover that though they had removed a sack of grain the night before, they had just as many. One night they met each other halfway between their barns, each carrying a sack of grain. Then they understood the mystery, and embraced with joy. And as God looked down from heaven, he saw the two neighbors embracing and said, “I declare this to be a holy place, for I have witnessed extraordinary love here.” It is said that God chose that spot for Solomon’s Temple...

("Writer and poet Kathleen Norris sometimes gets asked to come into schools to help students learn a little bit about writing poetry. One day Norris was in a 5th grade classroom where she asked the kids to write a poem using some similes. To Norris's surprise, one little boy wrote a strikingly good poem entitled, 'My Very First Dad.'...")

("A reporter was covering the conflict in Sarajevo when he saw a small girl shot by a sniper. He rushed to a man who had picked up the child, and helped them both into his car. Racing to the hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said: Hurry, my friend, my child is still alive...")

Jim was a 35 year old semi-successful mid-level manager in a larger corporation in Chicago. His father was on the board of directors. When he came to my office, he had the anxious look of someone who was about to undergo major surgery or be audited by the IRS. 'I get the feeling sometimes,' he said, 'That I somehow happened to be born on the wrong planet...

("Let it be said that I have a remarkable neighbor in Upstate New York. A former schoolteacher, ageless, who does endless favors and yet is never intrusive. She saved my house from certain death on the coldest night of last winter..." and other illustrations)

("Tom Troeger, who teaches preaching at Iliff Seminary in Denver, has a poem about this passage: 'If all you want, Lord, is my heart, my heart is yours alone -- providing I may set apart my mind to be my own..." and another poem)

("Today, you will notice a door, a doorframe, and doorknob, leaning against the church altar, and immediately some of you think that you know what this sermon is all about. Some of you have already guessed that this sermon is based on the Bible verse in Revelation: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens that door, I will come in and live in him and he in me....")

("Barbara Keener Shenk in her lovely book The God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel puts words in poetic form to Ruth's decision to stay with Naomi. Ruth says to Naomi: 'Your inner flame warmed me and helped me see That loyalty and truth form bonds and last eternally. I came to share your bitter dregs with you And found the cup was filled with joy for two.')

"Back in the 1920’s a divorced female journalist worked for a series of leftist periodicals and lived a bohemian life in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 1927 she became a Catholic, and then led a quiet rebellion within the church to reach out to the poor, the needy and the desperate. She was a pacifist, something of an anarchist and a crusader for social justice—not your standard-issue saint..." and other illustrations

("In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck has a lot of wise things to say about love, what it is not, what it is. He says that love is not something that you 'fall into'. We do not fall in love. We fall into a crush. What happens when boy meets girl is basically a sexual reaction or attraction and is of its nature temporary...")

("Probably, we all have that individual who we still miss dearly, who we hold up in our hearts and minds. For me, this person has been my grandfather, Millard Mudge. Grandpa wasn't a leader. He didn't start any great movements, he didn't make headlines very often. But when he died five years ago, and over 500 people showed up for his calling hours...")

("I was waiting at a car park the other day and it was full. So I was waiting there for a car to go out so that I could be let in and there was a young man who was at the barrier allowing the cars in and out. He looked at me and I looked at him and then said so what do you do for a living?...")

"I spent all of last week in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Amish country. Let me remind you of some of the recent events there. On the day after the killings at the school in West Nickel Mines, the Amish and the larger community supported the families of the victims..." and another illustration

"There is a United Methodist local pastor by the name of Rose Simms. She's written a marvelous little book about her life experience in the church. One of the things she says in it is that making connections is hard work. She gives an illustration..." and another illustration

("A particular church was having Vacation Bible School and the five year olds were outside playing Red Rover. You know 'Red Rover, Red Rover send Jimmy right over'. Then if you break the chain, you get someone for your team. If they catch you, you join their team..." and another illustration)

("In a little book by Margaret Craven, I Heard The Owl Call My Name there is a sentence spoken by the bishop that stands out for me. The story is about a young Anglican priest who goes up to Kingcome up on the northern coast of B.C. to the Indian village there...")

("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 subzero temperatures, in stormy weather, no matter how late she returned...")

("One time there was an Israeli soldier by the name of Yosef. He was in the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. He later became a tour guide in Israel. He was known as a kind and selfless person. Kelly Mustian was a tour guide in Egypt and the two became friends..." and another illustration)

("There was a young man named Johnny, who worked at a super market. He was inspired at a company meeting to add a 'personal signature' to his work. Johnny was a bagger, a boy with Down’s syndrome. He decided he wanted to give more to his job and had an idea...")

"Last week, Willam Cope Moyers came to town to speak at Riverbend Church. But since he's also a long-time friend of Austin Recovery, he came and did a little fund-raiser for us too. William is the son of the famous journalist Bill Moyers who served as press secretary to Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's."...

includes several quotes

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("A number of years ago, a young man came to me because he was in crisis: He had been having an affair with his girlfriend and she had become pregnant. For a variety of reasons, marriage was impossible. The pregnancy would have an irrevocable impact on a series of lives...")