Rev. Dr. Chris Montovino Mark 12:28-34 November 4, 2018 Loving Our Neighbor A man walks into a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh while the congregation is peacefully worshiping and starts shooting. Eleven people are left dead and six others wounded. That congregation has been permanently scarred. The gunman was known for posting anti-semitic statements online. It is considered to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history and a massacre that highlights the rise of hate crimes across the country. Fourteen pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democratic figures across the country. Thank God, none of those bombs detonated and authorities quickly arrested a Florida man and charged him with five federal crimes. Matthew Shepherd, the young gay man brutally murdered in Wyoming two decades ago, was finally laid to rest in the Washington Cathedral. Shepherd s family asked that their son s ashes be interred in the cathedral s crypt because they feared that his gravesite would be desecrated. Tensions are high. People are full of fear. Bipartisan politics are tearing us apart. America is hardly the land of the free. A land that is supposed to be flowing with milk and honey. A land that God blessed. My friends, we are struggling in America to love each other, especially those with whom we disagree. The same was true in Jesus day as well. One could have easily said the same things about Israel back then. Oppressive Roman occupation. Unfair taxes that burdened the lower class. Extreme brutality against the Jews. Bitter political and religious divides between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. People were struggling to get along. Why? Because they had lost sight of their calling as God s people. Through Abraham, God s people were to be a blessing to the nations. They were to channel those blessings to the world around them. Instead they were guarding, hoarding, and protecting those blessings for themselves which set up an us against them mentality. In our scripture today from Mark 12:28-34, Jesus reminds us that part of living generously is keeping the main thing, the main thing. In other words to keep our focus on God and our calling as God s people. If we just do that, then everything else would fall into its place. Listen now as I read this story for us today. Let us pray. Prayer of Illumination.!1
Over the past several weeks, we ve been talking about what it means to live generously. We have learned that this goes far beyond our pocketbooks and reaches into every aspect of our daily lives. We are called to live generously by offering our gifts and talents, by remaining connected to each other in the church, sharing our ideas and creativity, encouraging others, practicing hospitality, doing simple acts of service, and today we are called to love our neighbors as we do ourselves. This last topic is what we are focusing on as well at youth group as we teach our junior high and high school students how they can live more generously. It revolves around what we know as the The Greatest Commandment which Jesus said is to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbor. And this is what I d like to expound upon today as we talk about what means to live more generously. First, loving God. Guess what folks? I have news for us We are not the center of the universe. I know that s surprising! But the world doesn t revolve around us. Neither are aren t the creator and sustainer of all things. There is a God who purposefully created all that we see. We lift up our eyes to the beautiful mountains and we know that they weren t put here by some cosmic accident. Psalm 121 proclaims, We lift our eyes to the hills and we know from where our help comes. Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Not only does this say that God is our creator, but he his our helper. I have more news for us We were never designed to be self-sufficient, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps people. No! That a pipe dream of our arrogant American independent spirit. We are deeply dependent upon the benevolence of a kind heavenly Father who provides for us generously. To this Jesus said, Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives; they who seek finds, and the one who knocks, the door will be opened. He went on to say, Which of you, if their child asks for bread, will give them a stone? Of if they ask for a fish, will give them a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to this who ask him. 1 Psalm 103 says, The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion 1 Matthew 7:7-11!2
on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are are dust. A loving, compassionate, and generous God. That is pretty cool! How can we not but love a God like this in return as our act of worship? Sadly, this often isn t the God that our culture often sees in us, the Church. Ask many non-believing folks what their perspective of our God is and they would likely describe God as angry, condemning, judgmental, arrogant, selfrighteous. What if we were to project a different image of our God to others? What impact might that have on the world around us? Living more generously will witness to the goodness of our God to the world. The second piece to living out the Great Commandment is to love ourselves. Most of the hate that we see in our world stems from a lack of love of self. If we don t have a healthy sense of self, created and loved by God, then we will project that self-loathing onto others. Especially those who are different, weaker, or more vulnerable than we. They become the targets of our self loathing. It was quite an awakening when I realized that this is how most bullies operate. By projecting their self-hate toward others it tells people stay away because if you come too close, you may see that I am just as weird, weak, and vulnerable as you are. One of the first steps, however, toward loving ourselves is to know by whom and in whose image we ve been created. At Creation, God said Let us make humankind in our image and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created humans in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female. 2 David cries out in Psalm 139, For you, O God, created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 3 God says to the Prophet Jeremiah, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I had a plan for you. 4 Every human being is created in with image of God imprinted upon their soul. Every human being from even before the egg and sperm come together to begin the process of furiously setting our DNA in place has purpose. God does not create mistakes, though he may make something beautiful out of our mistakes. 2 Genesis 1:26-27 3 Psalm 139:13-14 4 Jeremiah 1:5!3
Before we can begin to live out the second commandment my friends, we must master the first and greatest one. To love God and to love ourselves. How is God calling us to think differently about ourselves today? Do we need a radical self-perception makeover? Finally, Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as we love our selves. As we do that, we will project our love of God and our love of self onto others in away that will be attractive and transformative. The Apostle Paul said, If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others, [even your neighbors as] better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others [and especially of those who live right next door]. 5 And then Paul challenges us to serve our neighbors sacrificially in the same way that Jesus would serve us. By laying down our lives for our friends. How do we do this today? We have to become intricately connected to our neighbors. Not just a friendly hello at the mailbox. I mean getting connected. Knowing their joys and sorrows, their hopes and dreams, their gifts and their brokenness. That is pretty scary because this kind of service is messy. And we Presbyterians, don t like messes. We like things neat and orderly. Not messy. But folks, our God is a God who dwells in the mess of our lives. If we want to be a reflection of Jesus Christ to our neighbors, we ve got to get in the muck and mire of our neighbors lives. 6 This kind of service is also very costly. It costs us our privacy, our independence, our security. It costs us our time. But many of us, and I m preaching to myself, are just too busy doing our own thing to take time and reach out to our neighbors in meaningful ways. Perhaps we need to slow down get to know our neighbors better. Even though they are strange, don t keep up their yards as we d prefer, or even noisy, we may just find that we have more in common with them than we have in difference. We may just find that the Kingdom of God is waiting for us right next door. How might that change our perspective of loving our neighbor? My friends, I believe that the greatest missional challenge of our age the hope for the church of tomorrow, rests not on our ability to create more attractive church programs that draw people in but on our ability to simply love and serve 5 Philippians 2:1-4 6 Jeff Vanderstelt, founder of a new church movement called SOMA here in Washington describes the impact that loving his neighbors had in his community. Tim Chester. A Meal with Jesus, Discovering Grace, Community & Mission around the Table (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 97-99.!4
our neighbors in this way. If we do this, people will be drawn to the hope that we have and flock to our faith community. So may we learn to love God in response to the way that God loves us. May we begin to love ourselves knowing that we are each wonderfully and fearfully made in God s image. And may we let Jesus light shine brightly through the darkness by the way we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. That is living generously. Amen!!5