"Not Far From the Kingdom, (Mark 12:28-34)

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 2, 2003

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214  Phone:  446-0960

phillchu@twcny.rr.com

Today’s gospel reading from Mark comes as a kind of refreshing break in the ongoing hostilities between Jesus and his detractors, or better, their hostility toward him. In several scenes just before this one the religious authorities had been trying either to test him or to trap him. But here, as Mark tells it, comes one of them, a scribe, who comes with an honest, genuine question. Without pretense, with no political or theological axe to grind, he approaches Jesus in all sincerity and asks which, of all the commandments (there were 613 of them!) was the greatest, the most important.

This man wasn’t so much what we might call a "seeker" today as much as he was a "yearner." That is, he wasn’t just looking for something to help give his life meaning. He already knew the commandments of God - probably all 613 of them. He knew the direction toward holiness and righteousness. But somehow, I think we can assume, he was floundering. He was knowledgeable of the many things that make for devotion to God, but he yearned for the one thing that would bring them together, an anchor for his devotion. He was impressed with the answers he heard Jesus give his colleagues, and so he came up to him and said: "Which commandment is the first of all?"

In our day there is a great interest in getting to the "bottom line." A phrase borrowed from financial accounting and applied to lots of other endeavors - the bottom line of an argument, or a process of negotiation or planning. It’s the desire to know the results, or the end-product, or the conclusion of something without having to deal with the process that arrived at it. It implies that we do not have the time or the inclination or the interest in how you got there, just give me the answer. That’s how we might be inclined to interpret the scribe’s question to Jesus. He see the opportunity, perhaps, to cut through all the stuff that has been bogging him down in his yearning for righteousness and get to the most important thing.

And Jesus, it would seem, does not disappoint him. He goes right to it and tells the man which is first. He quotes traditional scripture from the Torah, beginning with the Shema’: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord 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 mind (which Jesus adds), and all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6) But he also answers with a second, also a direct quotation from scripture (Leviticus 19:18) - "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This is nothing the scribe hasn’t heard before, and as a learned man he even uses scripture to respond back to Jesus, referring to Hosea 6, saying that to love God with everything you are, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, "Is much more than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." He clearly understood that an appropriate relationship with others comes from an appropriate relationship with God. There was nothing new in all this, no new teaching, no new information that Jesus conveys to him, and yet Jesus responds by the end of the exchange, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

". . . not far from the kingdom of God."

Presumably, what it would take to get the rest of the way is not just to be in agreement with Jesus, but to actually obey or observe the first commandment, actually to love God with all that you are, and actually to love your neighbor as yourself. To do that, you can’t skip to the bottom line.

Most of us here remember the Rodney King incident from a few years ago, the African American motorist who was videotaped being dragged from his car on a Los Angeles freeway and beaten by policemen. Riots broke out in the community after the white officers were found innocent of the charges against them. A despairing Rodney King appealed to everyone when interviewed on national TV: "Can’t we all just get along?"

Apparently not. Appeals to the bottom line, even the bottom line of respect, if not love, so often ring hollow in a world of fear, distrust and violence. It doesn’t even seem to have much effect in controversies within the church itself. It doesn’t seem to matter much that everyone recognizes, of course, that we are all children of the same God, that we are all sinners in need of forgiveness. Where God’s love for us is unconditional, we are so very good at attaching conditions.

As we look around us and at our world, it seems that so much of the conflict, hostility and controversy in our world, between religions, and even within the church itself, is intractable. We seem to be at impasse on so many fronts and in so many ways. I see the same thing for so many people with their own faith. The same questions, the same struggles persist. We seek a new word, a new sign, a further revelation, a dramatic new breakthrough of some kind. But Jesus points toward what has already been given. He offers not a new word or a new idea, not a novel organizing principle or a new technique. Instead, he brings a new covenant - a covenant pointed toward by the prophet Jeremiah of old, written not on stone but on the human heart. He brings a renewed relationship to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Naomi, Ruth, Job and his friends. He brings to all who truly yearn for it a clear word of life, rooted in love of God and love of one another.

In his own body he brings into clear focus the God who creates the world in love, and who continues to give to us all that we need to live "not far from the kingdom of God." It is not a matter of seeking it out amidst all the other options laid out before us, but a matter of the heart that yearns to know holiness in devotion to God and righteousness in living.

"Hear, O Israel. . ." Hear, O world, hear O church, hear O Pebble Hill - the Lord our God, the Lord, is one. There is no other but the One who has always been and always will be. Attach your heart to the love that is given - and also your soul, your mind and your strength - all of it. If there is to be a breakthrough in the impasse of the world’s despair, if we are to "get clear" on what is most important, what is "first of all," it won’t come just through satisfactory answers to our questions, but through the renewal of our faith by giving all that we are and all that we have within us to the love of God that spills over in love toward others.

I was thinking of the difference between being "not far" from something, and being "so close" to something. We normally use those two words "so close" as words of regret: "I was so close" - so close to hitting that home run, so close to making that deal, so close to getting that A. I like it that Jesus uses the words "not far" - not words of regret, but words of hope. He doesn’t focus on our failures, our defeats, but on the love that is out before us, that calls to all that is in us that yearns for fullness of life. They are words of journey more than words of arrival, words that lure us more than judge us, words of invitation more than words of destination.

As we gather around that table of the Lord we are not far from the kingdom of God; as we lift our hearts in earnest prayer, we are not far from the kingdom of God; as we serve one another in love, we are not far from the kingdom of God; as we offer a cup of water to the thirsty, or walk for the hungry, or work for social righteousness and peace in this troubled world, we are not far from the kingdom of God.

Let us live as people of hope and not of regret.

Amen.

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