The Kingdom of Love: Sermon Mark 12:28-34

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Well it is that time of year again. The leaves have turned, the frost is beginning to cover our windshields every morning, college football is heating up, and every time you turn on your TV there is somebody running for some kind of office badmouthing some other person running for the same office. My opponent does this and doesn’t do that, he/she did something twenty years ago that had no relevance for today but I am going to tell you about it anyway and it’s just going to get worse until Tuesday. By the way, my name is Brad Smith and I approve this message.

If you think that this type of mudslinging is something new let me tell you something it is not. You could probably go back to the cave people and see a drawing on a cave slandering some guy who wants to be head of the tribe or something. Jesus was not immune to mudslinging. The past few weeks we have followed Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and now he has arrived, for the last time. He does not arrive quietly, but instead goes right to work over-turning the money changing tables at the Temple. Since his arrival those who are in power at the Temple have been trying everything and anything they could to discredit him or to even catch him in committing a crime against God. So those in power, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests and the scribes, have been questioning Jesus at every turn trying to get him to make a mistake but at every question Jesus gives the perfect answer. Our story this morning is no different. The scribes, who were experts in the Jewish law, tried to question Jesus’ knowledge of the law. They asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Now this was a trick question and Jesus had to be very careful in answering it, but Jesus never even broke a sweat, he said “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰you 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.’ ³¹The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” This is a quotation from Deuteronomy, so it was not something that the scribes had not heard before and so he once again perfectly answered their question and no juicy dirt could be found to sling on Jesus.

However, we are left we some questions of our own. How are we to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength? We can’t buy God flowers or take God to dinner and a movie; we can’t buy God a diamond ring, or a new car, so how can we express our love to God? The answers are there in the response that Jesus gave, but we have to dig a little deeper in order to understand their significance today.

First, Jesus says to love God with all our soul and with all our heart. The word soul would lead us to believe that Jesus is referring to loving God in spirit. How do we do this? We do it through worship. As we are sitting here this morning in God’s sanctuary singing songs, offering prayers, listening to a sermon, we are in the act of loving God with all our souls. There are also the Sacraments. We are going to be receiving Holy Communion in a little bit. Through the Holy Spirit present with us and through the elements of the table and through the community gathered here we are in the act of loving God when we take Communion. Also, through baptism we are in an act of love when a new person professes their faith and joins our community. Through all these things we love God with our souls.
Next, Jesus says to love God with all our hearts. Now, we could say that all of these things are originating through the love that is in our hearts. Loving with all our hearts is not so much about our source of love, but where hearts lie is when we love God. Do we love God because we truly want to love God and be in a relationship with him or do we love God because we are afraid of the consequences of not loving God? We will talk more in depth about loving God with our hearts next week.

Jesus says then to love God with all our minds. This is something that a lot of us neglect. We love God but we don’t think about God, we don’t wonder about God. We want the preacher to tell us what to think and so we don’t have to worry about it for ourselves. However, personal Bible study is of vital importance. Spending time daily with Scripture and spending time thinking about what God means within the Scriptures. We must form our own opinions about God and defend our beliefs and opinions when they are challenged. When we do this then we are worshiping God with all our minds.

This brings in the final part of the first commandment which is loving God with all our strength. The word strength is very interesting in this context, it seems to denote action. If we have strength then we use it, right? In order to become strong we must work out, lift weights, lift hay bales, we must do something. So if we are to love God with all our strength then we must do something. But, what is it that we must do?

I believe that loving God with our strength is bringing in the second part of the first commandment and that is to love our neighbors as ourselves. We know that when Jesus said to love your neighbor he meant everyone around us not just those who we live next door to. So if we connect the two then we see that to love God we must also love our neighbor.

Matthew 25:31-46 speaks of the judgment of nations, where Jesus separates the good from the bad. The standards of judgment are the treatment of the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the naked, the hungry and thirsty. If those are taken care of then the people are rewarded and if those are ignored the people are punished, and they ask why this judgment is so and Jesus replies, as you do to these least in society you do also to me. So loving one another and providing for the least members of the community is an act of loving God. We also can see I John 4:20-21 ^“Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” So even before we can begin to love God we must first love one another and continuing to love each other we continually love God.

We must use our strength to lift up the weak. We must use our wealth to help the poor. We must use our abundance to help their scarcity and do it not because we are commanded to or because we are afraid of hell and punishment, but because we genuinely love them and by that act of love we also love God.

God is all about relationships and community. This is where my theology is based. I do not see God as a king or a tyrant but as a loving parent who only wants what’s best for his creation. God desires community and he sent his son to die on a cross so that we might once again be in community with God. God wants all of us to be in community with one another as well, not as United Methodists, not as Tennesseans, or even as Christians, but as humans. When we do this and we are truly in community, then we can truly love God.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.