Jesus and His Bible, Part 13

 The First of All Commandments and the Second, As Well

After the last round of thrust-parry-thrust-touché between Jesus and the Sadducees, a scribe asked his question. He asked it because he liked how Jesus had dealt with the previous question, and it was this: “Which is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and 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.’ And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mark 12:29-30). 

The first part of this quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Significantly, Jesus included this theological prologue—“the Lord our God is one.” This recapitulated his answer to the Sadducees, God’s self-identifying formula to Moses (Exodus 3:14), “I am who I am.” The present tense, Jesus said, shows that God is present and presence. Jesus required his Sadducee questioners to confront the enigma that all of time is present to God, all humans are present to God, all of God is present at any time; to admit that their model of the past is not God’s reality. This is such a mystery.  It may be one of the questions a human can pose but, when answered, cannot understand. 

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). This particular quotation from Deuteronomy 6 has two words for God in it: Elohim, which is plural (remember “Let us make human in our image…male and female”) and Yahweh, which is singular. Specifically, “Yahweh, our Elohim, is one Yahweh.” (This nuance is lost in Mark, written in Greek, in which the words are Kyrios and Theos, both singular.)

Again, we are plunging into an ocean of mystery.  This is (or is like?) the mystery of the Trinity, the three-in-one, affirmed by Christian creeds for centuries, often in response to challenges to trinitarian belief. Jesus emphasized the unity of purpose between himself and his Father, and in John’s Gospel, emphasized the unity of substance between himself and his Father, and said that when he was no longer physically present,  the Father would send the Spirit of truth to guide them.  The Trinity fits in well with the Elohim part of the Deuteronomy quotation.

The rest of the quotation is about loving God. Robert Alter says that this emphasis on love in Deuteronomy is new, that it is an addition to the traditional “fear of the Lord.” He also adds that it is the word used in treaties which pledge loyalty. 

Alter goes on to explain that the heart is the seat of understanding and is also associated with emotions. The “soul” is better translated “life-breath” or the “essential self.” And the word “might” is usually an adverb “very,” meaning “over the top.” (Alter, Moses, 641, n.) So if I put this into my own words:  You shall love the Lord your God with all your understanding and feelings, with your essential self and your life-breath, and with an unbreakable and complete loyalty.

I notice that Jesus added “with all your mind” into this list.  The questioner responded with his own list, which I suspect we are to consider parallel: “the heart, the understanding, the soul, the strength.” They were on the same page, despite the differences—Love God with all you are. This is the most important of all.

The second, which Jesus said is like the first, is to love your neighbor as yourself. This also derives from the Torah: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18).

This positive command occurs in the Levitical context of many “thou shalt not” admonitions centering on the following:

• Do not reap all your field, but leave some for the poor and the stranger
• Do not steal
• Do not deal falsely
• Do not lie to one another
• Do not take false oaths in God’s name
• Do not oppress your neighbor
• Do not rob your neighbor
• Do not withhold the wages of the day-laborer overnight
• Do not curse the deaf
• Do not trip up the blind
• Do no injustice in judgment
• Do not be partial to the poor
• Do not defer to the rich
• Do not slander others
• Do not take vengeance nor bear a grudge

All these are implicit in loving the neighbor as one’s self, but are made explicit for those of us who want to limit our love for our neighbors. Further on in the Leviticus chapter this occurs: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”  There is no exception to the command, in other words. 

The questioner and the crowd before Jesus were well aware of the context of this second command and likely squirmed over their own failures to love. Even if we can say, “Oh, I love God wholeheartedly and more than anyone or anything else,” can we say, “I love my neighbor as myself, and my behavior toward my neighbor is in line with the expectations of Jesus’s Testament?” I’m feeling a little uncomfortable right now.

Losing Faith, Faithlessness, and Keeping Faith: Jesus and Peter

I have fallen in love with really only one car in my lifetime, a 1975 Alfa Romeo Spyder, lemon yellow with a black rag top. I knew it was old when I bought it, and I could see that the top was rag in more than just the name, but I had such loving expectations of driving with the top down, my senses fully engaged, the pleasure of feeling close to the road. I wouldn’t let anyone else drive it.

Some 10 or more years later I sold it, glad to get out of it most of my initial payment for it. I had put perhaps 3000 miles on it, and I don’t want to remember how much in repairs and tune-ups. The nice Bulgarian man on SE Foster in Portland who repaired it for me raced Alfas and told me they ran best on half jet fuel. Maybe so. But I now am driving a 2018 Honda CR-V with an extended warranty because I lost faith in old cars as transportation and I don’t have the patience to make them work as investments. I want a car I can rely on to get me where I want to go without letting me down.

Losing faith in a car that I loved was sad, but it does not compare with losing faith in people, in churches, perhaps even in God. When something or someone disappoints us deeply, abandons us, or rejects us, or just quits returning our calls, our souls are wounded and we lose faith.

I want to approach the topic of losing faith in God as gently and carefully as possible. I highly value honesty, and I believe with all my heart that God does, too. So the best first step when we lose faith in God is to say so to God. “I have lost faith in you.” And then to explain to ourselves and God what that means.

Numbness

It might mean that we don’t feel emotionally connected to God. We are numb. Perhaps we see that others do express a strong sense of emotional connection to God, and we come to church and the songs are all about strong emotions with regard to God, and we can’t in honesty join in. “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.” Or “I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice.”  Or people share how God has lifted their hearts into joy or how a deep sense of peace has flooded their anxious spirits, and we just can’t relate. Our souls are troubled, our souls are exhausted, and our souls are numb. We feel so alone.

As anyone will tell you, this is a normal stage of life, one in which it is wise to sit quietly in your soul until it lifts, and if it does not lift, to seek professional help from a doctor or a counselor. Take care of yourself as if you were someone you love. See that you get good food, enough sleep, some outdoor time each day, moderate exercise. Do something you like to do. Keep yourself alive. These are acts of kindness that count as acts of faith. And, every now and then, write a letter to God.  There are Psalms and other passages of the Bible that are just this kind of letter to God.

Disappointed Expectations

Losing faith may mean that we become afraid that God is not who or what we wanted God to be.  Perhaps we expected God to be our loving and protective Father, and we experienced abuse and abandonment. What good Father would let those things happen? Perhaps we expected God to execute justice on evildoers, and instead we watched them prosper and ascend to power and prestige. What just judge allows the wicked to win? Perhaps we expected the compassionate Savior of the world to alleviate suffering and we watched horrific news stories of famine and disease or the illness of someone we love. In the book of Job, Job himself says to God, “I am a good person, and you’ve treated me worse than you treat the truly evil. What’s wrong with you?” Job teaches us that God welcomes honesty from humans. Job is angry for pages and pages, and God, while never settling Job’s questions, does show up and tell Job’s preachy friends to be quiet and listen to Job.

I myself have said to God, “If I claimed to be someone’s father, I’d never let this kind of stuff happen…” I had a friend tell me at a crucial period of my own life that I needed to forgive God for not measuring up to my expectations. I did come to a place of accepting that in a universe where God accepts human free will, a lot of suffering will ensue, and that God suffers with us and may in fact, through the work of Jesus, bear some of that suffering for us. This does not answer all my objections to the way the universe runs, but I can remain on speaking terms with God.

When we are fearful and angry about the way God runs the universe, we can still choose to do our best to make this world as livable as possible. In other words, we can still work at loving our neighbors, and these acts of love are acts of faith. 

Projected Faithlessness

Finally, I want to talk about when we are ourselves faithless, when we betray our relationship with God. There are some spectacular examples of this in the Bible, of course, in Judas and Peter, but I think we fall in and out of faithfulness every day. Indeed, there are times when we oppose God’s way of being in the world because it is so counter to our ideas of what will actually work to bring about God’s kingdom on earth.  And I think, when we are faithless, we tend to project that onto God and consider that God has broken faith with us as well.

It is common for us, looking back, to think that we would not have been as dull and dense as the disciples and the other followers of Jesus. We think we would have understood more of what Jesus was saying and been in greater sympathy with what Jesus revealed about God and how God works with humans and in human history.  

Jesus, the beloved Son of God, said, “I do nothing on my own, only what I hear from my Father. So you can know that when you see me, you’ve seen God. This is how God is and what God does and how God does it.” Right away, we can see from the life of Jesus that God doesn’t deliver by some sort of formula. It’s not a matter of us “getting it right” or “doing enough” or “following the rules” and then God comes through predictably. Jesus did miracles, yes, but not all the miracles possible to do on earth. He brought some dead people back to life, but not all the dead people who died while he was here. He stilled one storm. He fed two crowds of hungry people and provided wine for one wedding. Yes, these were amazing acts, and they were not enough to set the entire world at ease and at peace. And Jesus said, “I am not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Well, you know the disciples immediately thought that meant he would free them from Rome but instead he freed them from the law, from sin, from judgment. He set them free to love God and to love their neighbors, and that really wasn’t what they’d wanted.

As soon as Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, or the one sent by God to be the king, Jesus turned right around and started talking about how he was going to be arrested and crucified. (Matthew 16, Mark 8) Peter took him aside and rebuked him for talking like that.  And Jesus turned around and looked at the followers, and then rebuked Peter right back, calling him his adversary. “You strive for the things all humans strive for, not what God strives for. You could trip me up.” I’m guessing that Jesus could turn to me every day of my life and say this to me at least once.

Later, on the final evening before his crucifixion, Jesus told his followers that he was about to be betrayed by one of them, and that he would be tortured and killed. (Luke 22) And they went right on to argue about who would have the highest position in the new kingdom Jesus would be setting up. They could not even hear what Jesus was telling them. It did not compute that the one God sent to save them would do so by dying rather than by killing their enemies.  I don’t think we are different from them. Jesus tells us that whoever would be greatest needs to serve all the rest, and we go on worrying about who is eligible to be on elders or chair a committee. Jesus tells us that no one can bear fruit who doesn’t die first, and we just do not hear him.

Jesus Prays for Us

So, in our faithlessness, where is the hope?  I find it in what Jesus says to Peter. I’ll paraphrase a bit, the way I hear it, “My dear friend Peter, you have no idea of how shallow your faith is, how quickly you will let fear overrule your brave intentions. In fact, in the next few hours, you will publicly say you don’t know me 3 times. You have been my adversary in the past, and you will be again. This adversarial spirit will sift you like wheat. You will see how much of your professed faithfulness is worthless. But I have prayed for you that the light of your faith will not be completely put out.”

See this? Jesus has prayed for Peter. Jesus has prayed for me. Jesus has prayed for you. In all our small and large betrayals of faith, all the ways we have proven that God cannot trust us to see rightly and do the right thing, Jesus has prayed for us. Jesus is praying for us right now. Each time I betray the first commandment to love God wholeheartedly, Jesus is praying for me. Each time I violate the commandment to love my neighbor as I love myself, Jesus is praying for me. Each time I treat myself worse than dirt, Jesus is praying for me.

St. Paul says, “Who is it that judges us? It is even Christ who died, who is now risen, and is at the right hand of God, It is Christ who intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34).  Jesus Christ is judge and advocate.

“If anyone sin, we have an advocate, an intercessor, with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” writes St John in 1John 2:1. This is an intercessor who prays entirely according to the will of the Father. They are on the same page with regard to us. Jesus is praying that the light of our faith will not go completely out and his Father is on board with granting that prayer.

Keeping Faith

And then Jesus says to Peter and us, “And when you have turned back toward me again, strengthen your brothers and sisters. That’s what you’re here for.”

If we judge God’s trustworthiness, God’s faithfulness, by our own, we will find it very hard to trust in God.  If we judge God’s trustworthiness, God’s faithfulness, by the actions of Jesus Christ on our behalf and his continual prayers for us in our weakness, we have the space to pause and turn again to strengthen our brothers and sisters, to love our neighbors. 

It’s not every day I can end a sermon with a slightly modified quotation from Neil Diamond ("Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show"):

Brothers and sisters
Now you got yourself two good hands
And when your brother or sister is troubled,
You gotta reach out your one hand for them
'Cause that's what it's there for
And when your heart is troubled,
You gotta reach out your other hand
Reach it out to Jesus up there
'Cause that's what he's there for

Take my hand in yours Walk with me this day
In my heart I know We will never stray
Hallelujah

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Faithful and Wise Stewards

Northwest Yearly Meeting Keynote Address 2015

Becky Ankeny, General Superintendent

Luke 12:35-38, 41-44:

“Keep your pants on and your flashlights handy, like servants who wait for their employer to return from his honeymoon trip, so that when he comes and knocks, they will open the door immediately.  Blessed are those servants whom the employer finds prepared and watching when he arrives. This is the truth: he will put on his own apron, make them sit down to the table, and come and serve them dinner himself.  And if he comes in the middle of the night or at dawn and finds them watchful, those servants will be happy.” … Peter asked, “Lord, are you speaking this just to us disciples, or to everyone?” And the Lord said, “Who is the faithful and wise steward whom his employer shall put in charge over his household to feed everyone in the house at the appropriate times?  That steward will be happy if he or she is fulfilling that responsibility when the employer comes back.  This is the truth: the employer will make that steward boss of everything” (paraphrased).

There are so many parables about us and God as servants and master. This relationship helps us understand that we are not the ones who call the shots, not the ones who own the house. We are caretakers, we are stewards, we are trustees, we are servants. God has given us responsibilities, and key in that word is the idea of response. Our work is in response to God as our master. This parable helps us ask what is important to God. As the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends, what have we been trusted with by God?  What have we been given to care for? How do we fit into this parable and the various other parables where God leaves people in charge of some aspect of God’s world? 

It helps us answer these queries to look to the Bible to find what God loves and treasures and takes joy in. From there we can infer our own calling in this world and among the human beings God so obviously loves.

Creation

God loves creation and creating.  Genesis tells us of light gathered out of dark (Gen. 1:4), land gathered out of sea (1:9); plants, trees (1:11): sun, moon, stars, universe (1:16); sea monsters, fish, whales, birds (1:21); creepy-crawlies, livestock, wild animals (1:24); procreation itself (1;22); all living creatures, especially including human beings in God’s own image, to whom God entrusted the care of the living earth (1:26). Both male and female human beings, charged with filling and organizing and ruling over the earth (1:27), caring for plants particularly (1:29).  God also gave humans time, marking it off by Sabbaths—time to work, time to rest (Gen. 2:3, Ex. 20:11). And God gave humans choice—the choice to trust and obey God, the possibility of love—both human to human and human to Creator (Gen. 2:16,17; 2:23-25).

We are thus caretakers of God’s creation and creating.  We care for the oceans, the wilderness, the farmland, the gardens, the villages and cities where people live together.  We care for living things—we learn about them and from them, we find their usefulness in God’s grand scheme, we respect their natures and we help life to prosper. We hold the earth in trust for God. This is a human responsibility, not uniquely given to the NWYM Friends, but the widespread concern among us for the earth recognizes a God-given responsibility.

Traditions and Relationship

God loves being in relationship with humans (Ex. 20:6). When God led Israel out of Egypt, using Moses’s gifts and passion as the instrument, God gave the people clear instructions.  Don’t ever forget that I did this for you.  Steward this history, steward the Sabbath rest I require, steward all the feasts I’ve prescribed.  Let everyone see the uniqueness of our relationship.  Embody yourselves the universal pattern I, God, follow: setting slaves free (Ex. 20:2; 21:2; 22:21,22; Lev. 26:13), placing them in a way of life that has a gentle, restorative pace (Ex. 20:11; 23:11-12) and built in moments of festivity and joy (Ex. 23:14-17; Lev. 23), teaching them to remember their source—God—and their deliverer—God—and their shepherd—God—every day.  Treasure this relationship.  It is your inheritance, your heritage.  And remember this also. I have relationships with other peoples as well (Deut. 2; Amos 9:7; John 10:16; 11:52). I am not without a witness throughout the world’s peoples (Acts 17; John 1:9; Romans 1:19; Psalm 19:1-3).

When Jesus came into the world as a Jew, he showed what it means to hold a tradition in trust for God (Matt. 5:17). He reminded everyone continually that the primary purpose of a human being is to enjoy a personal interactive relationship with God (Matt. 6:25-34; 7:11; 10:19-20; 12:50; 18:14; 22:37; 25:40; John 14:23, and so much more). He argued most heatedly with those curators of Judaism who cared most about the tradition—I think he loved the Pharisees so dearly for their commitment—but he saw that they missed the point. They focused on externals (Matt. 23:23-32; Luke 6:6-9). They made slaves to the tradition; they themselves were enslaved (Matt. 23:2-4,13-15). And they curated God instead of living with God in gentle, restorative, festive relationship (Matt. 15:3-6; 22:37-38).

Jesus shocked them—so obviously a teacher, a holy man, a prophet (Luke 7:16)—because he ignored externals and went straight for heart issues, their genuine life before and with God (Luke 7:36-50; Mark 7:1-23)).  He told one curator of tradition, Nicodemus, you’ll never understand unless you are willing to start over, like a newborn infant—without preconceptions of what God wants and instead always a child in relation to God.  God’s spirit, like the wind, goes wherever it pleases, despite your efforts to contain and control it (John 3:1-8).  Don’t make the lethal mistake of attributing the work of God’s free spirit to the devil.  You cannot yourself leave your slavery if you do this (Mark 3:20-29).

Each Other and Our Neighbors

So besides the creation and a relationship with God that our traditions point to, what has God given us to care for as NWYM Friends? God has given us each other and our neighbors (Gen. 4:10; Deut. 15:7-11; 24:14-15, 17-22; Matt. 22:39; 25:34-40; Luke 10:25-37).

We are trustees of our children, holding them in trust for God, trying to keep them alive and making it normal to live honestly and openly before God (Deut. 11:18-19; Matt. 19:13-15; Luke 17:1-3).  We learn about and from the children God has sent us, we help those children find the gifts God has graced them with, we make space for them to take the place God made for them in God’s grand scheme (Luke 2:40-52). We are caretakers of our young people. NWYM Friends established Greenleaf Friends Academy and George Fox University as partial fulfillment of this care for our children. We need to welcome young people onto our YM boards and listen to what God is saying to them.

We care for others by clearing out the debris that prevents them from knowing God personally—knowing God experimentally.  God does not give us the right to control and limit how other people know God (John 4:23-24; 15:16-17; 21:22). God does not ask us to be in charge of who gets to be part of God’s family (John 5:19-30; 6:44-45).  Instead, God asks us to tell everyone everywhere the good news that Jesus is present to teach all of us (John 14:16-17, 26), that we have something in us that yearns toward God and that recognizes good (John 1:4, 12-13), and that God is also yearning toward us and eager to meet us more than halfway (Luke 15).  Friends have traveled the world, beginning in the first generation with the Valiant Sixty, to point people toward God.  NWYM Friends have traveled the whole world to embody and preach the good news—to Alaska, Bolivia, Peru, Palestine, Russia, China. NWYM Friends are also opening their hearts and church buildings to AA, Celebrate Recovery, neighbors from the street, children from around the world.

We are thus caretakers of each other. We listen to and learn from other people, we enrich others’ lives rather than impoverishing them; we make space for others to be in authentic personal relationship with God where God is making them whole and holy, where they can take joy in loving God and other humans. Friends’ heroes such as John Woolman and Elizabeth Gurney Fry, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Lucretia Mott, Hannah Whitall Smith, Herbert Hoover are excellent examples of living well into this kind of caretaking. 

Sadly, Friends’ record of fulfilling our call to care for each other has not been spotless.  Friends held slaves and trafficked in them for over 100 years before coming to recognize that slavery is inherently wrong.  Friends enforced conformity to external standards of dress and forbade marriage to non-Friends with fundamentalist rigidity. Friends disowned young men who fought for the Union against slavery for violating the testimony of non-violence.  Friends who adopted the practice of paying pastors soon fell away from the testimony of equality in ministry for both men and women. Friends are not immune to the currents and prejudices of their social contexts, not above racism or sexism or other prejudices, nor are they immune to the temptation to prefer economic stability to standing against social ills and the temptation to substitute form for living reality. We must acknowledge the truth that each of us has potential for blindness as well as sight, for evil as well as good, for error as well as truth. We need humility and repentance, and sometimes we need to change our minds, not in pursuit of some superficial relevance, but because sometimes we are wrong. And persisting in blindness, evil, and error alienates people from the Jesus we embody. We need to be born again, to start new in every generation and in every day of our individual and communal lives. We need to be born again to care for each other and our neighbors, all of whom God is trusting to our care.

God has also entrusted us with the good news, the Gospel. And we have this entrusted to us not so we can protect it but so we can share it. The dominance of Christianity in the U.S. is waning; we have seekers next door who need the Good News. NWYM has great opportunity to share our relationship with God with spiritual seekers outside the church, and we need to remember how far back to start. Like Paul among the Gentiles, we need to begin with the basics, namely the Creator God who gave humans freedom, is good, and uses human messengers (Acts 14).  Like Paul, Quakers tend to focus on the good God intends toward us.

The heart of the Gospel is Jesus.  We need to teach the history of the Incarnation.   The essentials are in Peter’s sermon to Cornelius (Acts 10):

1)   God anointed Jesus on earth with the Holy Spirit;

2)   Jesus came to bless, heal, and free human beings.

3)   Jesus was killed in Jerusalem;

4)   God raised Jesus from the dead.

5)   Many saw the risen Jesus, even eating and drinking with him.

6)   Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead;

7)   Whoever places his or her confidence and trust in Jesus will receive the remission of sins, release from slavery to error, dishonor, wrong-doing, disobedience

NWYM’s commitment to this Good News positions us well to speak to people who know little about Christianity.

When we care well for our neighbors, we may find that sometimes they bring alien ways into our congregations, creating tension.

Thus Peter’s sermon to insiders (Acts 11) reminds them that no human is common or unclean; that God shows no partiality, accepting any reverent and obedient person; and that God poured out the Holy Spirit on Gentiles, even before any ritual of baptism.

The story of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) represents the continual conflict between established expectations and new membership.

Believers need to learn to be as welcoming as God and to recognize that God’s gift of the Holy Spirit transcends ritual.  We NWYM Friends understand that Jesus has come to teach us himself and that within each person is the potential to respond to that teaching with obedience. We can invite our neighbors to “live up to the light you have.”

James’s response in the council of Jerusalem shows how an established group can welcome outsiders.  “We should not trouble these who are turning to God with our whole religious history.”  They asked new believers to commit to worshiping only God, to having sexual ethics, and to caring for the convictions of others in the fellowship. The Gospel is good news to all.

So let us consider together that we NWYM Friends hold the creation, our relationship with God, and each other and our neighbors in trust for God.  Let’s consider what the limits of our trusteeship are. Let’s be as simply authentic as we can with God, knowing that God will help us move toward wholeness as individuals and as a small part of the church universal, the bride of Christ whom Christ purifies. And let us care for our neighbors who have not yet heard that they can be in a personal authentic relationship with God by sharing the good news and helping them feel welcome among us. Then when our boss, Jesus, shows up, he will find us doing a good job of caring for the other servants and he will put on his apron, sit us down at the table, and serve us dinner. May it be so.