Tag Archives: Loving Neighbor

The Greater Good

Kingdom Building

July 13, 2019

Scripture Reading: Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ –Luke 10:25-28

While I am no expert on the Hebrew Bible, my impression is that eternal life is not its primary focus. One source I looked at states Most Jewish ideas about the afterlife developed in post-biblical times*. The Hebrew bible plays with the idea of what happens after death, talks about the resurrection of the dead, leaves us guessing what happened to Moses, and describes Elijah being taken away into the heavens. In the NRSV translation the words eternal life occurs outside the New Testament only once at 4 Maccabees 15:3. There are 44 references in the New Testament. Is this the test the lawyer is presenting to Jesus?  Is he challenging Jesus to justify his teachings regarding eternal life? I also wonder about his use of the word inherit. If something is given by divine decision can it be earned by doing anything? Is an inheritance from God given by grace? Finally, the lawyers answer to Jesus when asked ‘What is written in the law? essentiallyquotes Jesus’ answer to the question which are the greatest of the laws as recorded in Matthew 22:36-40. It would be a whale of a coincidence if the lawyer independently drew together Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:9-18 as Jesus did in describing the greatest laws.

The conundrum here is that the lawyer seems to be concerned about self-preservation while Jesus is concerned about how we are relating one to the other. All four gospels quote Jesus as saying something to the effect that Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for my sake will gain it**.

We live in a culture, world, where decisions are made most days based on what is in it for me? We follow a Savior who prescribes a way of being that demands we consider what is good for all.  

Prayer: Lord, help us short out the parts of our thinking that limits us to self-service and short in the part of our thinking that opens wide the whole world to the wonders of your love. Amen.

*https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/life-after-death/
**See Matthew 10:39, Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, John 12:25

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Fundamental Love

MertonLiving in the Spirit
September 24, 2015

Scripture Reading: Mark 9:38-50

John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. –Mark 9:38-4

I am sorry that the word “Fundamentalist” has been forever tied to a very specific group with very specific beliefs about Jesus and how his followers should be. Apparently there are also Fundamentalist Mormons and my guess is Fundamentalists in all the world religions fitting that description. Other words used to describe fundamental include basic, primary, formative, indispensable, irreducible.* Perhaps I simply see a shorter listing of beliefs as fundamental to being a follower of Jesus. For it seems to me we must rely on the basics that he gave us: Love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves and share that love throughout the world. With those three tenets as our foundation, we are not talking about a closed system that keeps people out but a system opened to all kinds of possibilities that draws people in.

The encounter described in this scripture from Mark describes just such a possibility. A man is casting out demons in Jesus’ name and Jesus said let him continue. If he is doing a good thing in Jesus’ name, does it matter that he doesn’t have his name on our membership list? The problem arising when what one thinks is absolutely imperative, others believe it to be a sin. Perhaps my three tenets are the easy way out but I see nowhere in the scriptures that any of us have been assigned the job of judging others whereas it is very clear that we have been assigned the job of loving others. It was certainly Jesus’ way and he was assigned the job of judging.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” — Mother Teresa

Prayer: O Love that will not let me go, enable me to be a source of your love for others. Amen.

*http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/fundamental

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Developing our Working-Together Skills

Working_Together_Teamwork_Puzzle_ConceptLiving in the Spirit
July 30, 2015

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4:1-16

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. –Ephesians 4:1-16

It has taken me a lifetime, two careers, and retirement to even begin to come to the understanding, much less accept it; God made us different on purpose. God created us to be interdependent, to need one another. God apparently equipped us with the skills to work together. Few of us tap into the vast array of skills that each of us have. We skim the surface of several and hone in on one or two perhaps. I fear not many of us in recent years have tried very hard to enhance our working-together skills.

We do work together on occasion. Particularly here in Oklahoma, we have responding to disasters down to a fine science. Had to. Our response to the Oklahoma City bombing was praised as being exemplary. It was forged on the backs of responses to tornados and other natural disasters. Our disaster readiness also could probably be traced back to the Dust Bowl of the great depression and even to the Indian removal to Oklahoma in the nineteenth century. I am glad we do respond but we really have little choice where disasters are concerned. It is in and of itself the source of motivation for response.

Where working together seems to falter is in the everyday challenges of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves and overflows into seeking the common good. The result of failure to do either of these activities is not as readily apparent as a foundation where a house once stood and a family that is now homeless, but the ramifications of our not loving our neighbor as we love ourselves and not taking the time to address the common good in the long run has even more serious consequences. We need to dust off our working-together skills and use them until we are one.

Prayer: Lord we need your instruction and guidance in developing our working-together skills. Make us whole, make us one. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Pleasing God

loving selfLiving in the Spirit
October 23, 2014

Scripture Reading: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. — 1 Thessalonians 2:1-4

Scholars believe that the letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest of Paul’s letters that have been identified. It appears that even though this correspondence dates from the first century, it describes quite well the state of our world today. No one knows who to trust so we didn’t trust anyone. We use every means possible, good or bad, to sway people toward our way of thinking as do others. One only has to listen to a few of the political ads on TV right now to see this in action. Paul thought the situation so tenuous in his day that he felt the need to explain his credibility by saying he was not trying to please anyone but God. In our world so many bad apples have tied themselves to God, God now has a bad name among some.

Skilled athletes, dancers, and singers continuously practice the fundamentals of their trade until they become automatic for them and then they practice some more. We, as followers of Christ, must practice the fundamentals of our faith working together as the one Body of Christ in the world today. No I am not talking about the Fundamentalism of the 19th century. I am talking about the fundamentals set forth by Jesus Christ in the first century: loving God and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. For most of us those words roll easily off our tongues, but practicing them until they become automatic is a very different experience. To love God first requires us to discern how we love and who and what we love in general. Where does God fit into that laundry list of our priorities? And that is just the first step.

In our world today, loving our neighbors is way out of sync. Of course, in God’s eyes when we are not loving our neighbors we are not really loving God. In all honesty if we read the whole verse from which that phrase is quoted (Matthew 22:3 records Jesus quoting Leviticus 19:18) we will see that it says You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Perhaps loving God also requires loving ourselves enough to be the people God created us to be and not to sell ourselves out to lesser Gods like greed and power and pride that are often at the core of how and why we treat our neighbors as we do.

Prayer: Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:10-12)

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Sin and Evildoing

Living in the Spirit
July 20, 2014

 Scripture Reading: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen! — Matthew 13:41-43

I was overdosed on the second coming as a child to the extent that for many years I did not want to read or hear anything that remotely related to it. I have since attended a seminary class on Revelation and facilitated a study of the book of Daniel in my Sunday School Class. What brought about that change? A wise seminary professor said to me that such works have a lot more to say to us than my limited experience had taught. It was a struggle because I started with a serious negative bias. One of the joys of plunging into this literature was finding that it is the source of the words for some of the most beautiful music ever written. Sometimes we need to let the arts say what we cannot adequately describe in words, but that is for another devotion.

Matthew in our scripture today says at that end time Christ will send angels to pluck out and destroy all sin and all evildoers. This is good news for we all engage in practices that we call sin, those things that makes us miss the mark toward which we along with Christ are striving or become separated from God. But what or who are evildoers? Is that different from being a sinner?

The Greek word translated in the NRSV as evildoer means, very simply put, having no law.* Now for those of us who accept Jesus as the Christ, we also accept his statement that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. (Matthew 5.17) I take that to mean that he is not as interested in our ridged obedience to the letter of the law as much as he is to our being ever vigilante to the intent of the law. Laws are not for individuals; they are created to provide order to the interactions in community. Thus, loving God is intrinsically intertwined with loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Sin may indeed deal with our separation from God. Evildoing, it would seem, relates to our failure to love our neighbors. Evildoing indeed is a sin as it surely separates us from God, but it apparently is to be dealt with in its own right in the final judgment. It indeed is our interactions in community that Jesus highlights in Matthew 25 when he talks about separating the sheep from the goats.

Prayer: Father, forgive me when I become self-righteous in law and when I fail to love my neighbor as myself. Amen

*Kittle, Gerhard and Friedrich, Gerhard Editors, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Will B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.

 

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.