The Words of Jesus We Ignore

Imagine a person praying at bedtime. He is confused. Unsure of what to do in life. What are his next steps, he wonders? He prays fervently to God for direction.

Amazingly enough, God answers!

Love God
Love one another

The person praying listens. Stops. "Okay, God, I still have no idea what you want me to do..."

Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, look after the sick

"God, I beg you... please give me some direction, anything..."

Do good to those who hurt you
Love your enemies
Forgive over and over again
Turn the other cheek 

"Anything, God..."

Hunger for righteousness, don't be afraid to mourn, be a peacemaker, 
Be merciful, meek and pure of heart
Always look to the poor, prefer them and celebrate those persecuted for justice...

The person stops praying and shakes his head, frustrated by the emptiness he feels. He rolls over and falls asleep, hoping that by some miracle God might provide some kind of answer in the future.

You can laugh, but this is how many Christians actually respond to Jesus's words to us.

Let's break it down:

Most Christians believe that Jesus is God—and not just in some metaphorical way, but literally God in actual flesh and bones.

Many of Jesus's words are recorded in the Bible. Most Christians believe that the Bible itself is the Word of God.

Going further, many of Jesus's words in the Bible are actual commands to us.

Some Christians take the Bible literally. All followers should take it seriously.

What I find so puzzling is that so few Christians seem to pay much attention to what Jesus said at all. That's a very strange reaction to a guy most Christians claim is actually God who walked among us in flesh and bones. I mean, here's God actually coming down to our level and talking to us. He lays out the path. He tells us what to do. He even helps us prioritize:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” 

— (Matthew 22:37-40)

I don't know how to be more clear. Jesus himself—you know, God—directly says it is a command. On top of that, he makes it clear that it is the greatest of all the commands. And then going further, to erase any possible doubt, he describes that everything else hangs on it. Love comes first and then all other considerations are not only secondary but dependent on it. So any other command, rule or doctrine you find in the Bible must be viewed through the lens of the Greatest Commandment.

Did I mention that this was a command? By God. A command by God.

After that comes the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7. It begins with the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

    for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

    for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

    for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

    for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

    for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Then there's the The Works of Mercy (Matthew 25: 31-46):

Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, look after the sick

The Bible is full of commands, advice and assorted lessons of all types. It has profound understandings that only open up to us as we pray deeply, do our Christian work and grow in our discipleship. It speaks in riddles, parables and paradoxes. It speaks out of a context that is thousands of years old. Even with a lifetime of constant study you will never mine all the depths of its teachings.

But some things are clear! Especially when Jesus himself is quite direct about it.

Even with those commands, life can still be extremely difficult to navigate. Jesus tell us to love doesn't tell us how to do it. He does not micromanage but rather gives the blueprint. That can be frustrating, but I think that's the point: Jesus probably doesn't want us to passively check activities off a list but rather put our whole heart, soul, mind and hands into what we do. We are to struggle with the question. With every step we take, every decision we make, we should be constantly asking ourselves—am I serving the Greatest Commandment in this action or not? Do my actions reflect the Beatitudes? How can I apply the Works of Mercy right now in this situation? Those should be our first considerations always and never an afterthought. We are never without some advice from God as to what to do next.

***

So how do we apply these teachings to important issues today?

Many Christians are worried about refugees and undocumented immigrants coming into the U.S. I assume that Christians bring these concerns openly to prayer before coming to a conclusion: "God, what shall we do?"

Love one another. Be merciful. Welcome the stranger. Be a peacemaker.

"But God, what about securing our borders?"

Love one another. Be merciful. Welcome the stranger. Be a peacemaker.

The Christian tradition acknowledges some value in securing borders, but it's certainly not mentioned as a direct command of Jesus. His commands were more about expanding borders to find ways to make room for all. Securing borders should never be our first concern! First: Welcome, show mercy, be a peacemaker, look to and prefer the poor! Then later, much, much later, there is some value in having a border and having some kind of regulations for crossing it but only if that border allows us to love abundantly and show mercy.

You don't get to talk about securing borders until you have done the other things! Only after you have welcomed and loved and shown mercy abundantly are you in any position at all to talk about what a "secure border" can and should look like given the circumstances and the people involved. And that "secure border" must serve love and mercy, not the other way around. A secure border can only be legitimate if it serves the God who commands us to love, show mercy, make peace and look after one another. If a border allow us to do that, then it is just. If it doesn't, it is not of God.

Love of God and neighbor is the greatest commandment and all else hangs on it, as Jesus says above. Let's imagine that the Greatest Commandment is a tree. We hang "secure borders" on that tree as an ornament. Those secure borders are not just a secondary consideration, but they are also dependent on the tree for structure and support. We can only hang them on the tree if they do not break or disrupt the tree on which they hang. It is in this way that love is primary and all else is not only secondary, but in a dependent position to love.

***

Keith Giles wrote a fantastic piece entitled Christless Christianity. I love his words and they help inspire this post. They resonate with topics I've explored elsewhere, particularly in my series "What Makes a Christian." 

The First Commandment Shall Be Last

 

When Jesus said, "The last shall be first and the first shall be last," I highly doubt He meant that the first and Greatest Commandment should be the last thing on our list of things to do.

If you run a successful business, you are probably centered on a mission. You evaluate everything you do in light of that mission. Knowing human nature, you have to be reminded of it time and again, to make sure it stays front and center.

You might distill that mission into a motto and share it on bumper stickers, placards hanging on doors and anywhere else eye-worthy.

Great businesses keep their eyes on the ball.

This is part five in a series exploring the centrality to Christian faith of what we have traditionally called the Greatest Commandment (links to the others are at the bottom of this post).

Jesus told us in all four Gospels: We are to love God and neighbor abundantly. Jesus gave many commands throughout the Gospels, but this one is called the "Greatest" for a reason--Jesus actually said this was primary.

Being loving is not just a collection of isolated actions. Love is not just something we tack onto our other actions. Rather, Jesus tells us that Love is the essential infrastructure on which all the other rules and parameters hang, as we explored in the previous post. We ought to put it first and then re-order everything else in light of it.

If what we do isn't loving God and neighbor, we should seriously question why we are doing it at all.  We should immediately give some serious thought to what else we should be doing instead.

Before we do anything and everything, the question that should be forever on our lips from the moment we wake till we bed down to sleep at night is: Are we loving God and loving neighbor in what we do? 

We should be researching, compiling lists, best practices. It should be out front and open.

There should be study groups at every church on how to love God and love one another. I've been to a lot of churches and I have yet to see a "Greatest Commandment Ministry Group."
 

In response to that, I find myself asking: What part of "Greatest" and "Commandment" are we not understanding?

A "commandment" is what is sounds like--a command. 

And "greatest" is also pretty self-explanatory. I'm really not sure where the confusion is here.

I don't mean to be snarky, but this is really extraordinarily simple. This is one of the reasons why Jesus said that children will get it but adults may not--why the poor will get it but the rich won't. There is nothing intellectually difficult about the Greatest Commandment. It is the centerpiece around which all else should be built, it is the structure on which the Law should hang and it should be our primary focus as disciples and as church communities. It is the sign of our Cristian identity.

Unfortunately, religion--for all its benefits--can often train people to doubt their own childlike wisdom and common sense. It becomes a way to dumb us down rather than open us up to the Mystery.

What makes The Greatest Commandment difficult is our enormous resistance to its message. It is enormously simple. It is also enormously difficult. It takes spiritual maturity to even entertain it. It requires us having tremendous trust in God and letting go of all of our attachments. It is so strong it is like looking at the sun--we can only catch a glimpse and then our bodily reflexes immediately jolt us away.

No sooner do we hear the Commandment than we immediately find all sorts of exceptions and exemptions. We seize every opportunity to push this commandment away, keep it at arm's length, minimize it or just put it off for a rainy day. We hear it but it vibes with a massive cognitive dissonance contrary to the ways of this world, so we reflexively dismiss it--Jesus couldn't possibly have meant that, right? It's so different, it's just--out of this world.

***

You could easily say you're tired of me complaining.

You could call me out on this.

I've been rambling now for several blog posts about how much of Christianity seems to ignore--or at the very least minimize--the Greatest Commandment to love God and one another, something Jesus explicitly told us to do in all four Gospels.

You could say--and rightfully so--that love is indeed preached in the churches in all that we say and do.

It IS like looking at the sun in that we don't look at it directly, but it does illuminate everything we do.

You could say that all we do flows out of love: Our worship is a love for God. Our social justice and charity efforts come out of desire to love our neighbor. You would be hard pressed to find any positive movement for mercy and justice that did not showcase the church right in the middle of it, oftentimes starting the whole movement.

Love is everywhere in the churches, you could say.

We may not have a "Greatest Commandment" ministry group, but we do have a food pantry, a hospital visitation ministry, a social justice club and a worship committee.

It might seem trite to have a church group devoted to sewing robes for the choir--but we show love for God through worship and those robes are part of that expression. When we ask ourselves, what does love look like? The answer may be: Arthritic hands delicately tending to worn holes in altar robes or a person on their hands and knees removing wax from long-burning candles on the carpet.

Jesus tells us what to do but like a good leader He does not tell us how to do it (this is a paraphrase of General George S. Patton, who seems like a very awkward person to compare with Jesus, but I must give credit for the quote where it's due).

It's up to us to work it out, sweat it out, to paraphrase someone else (this time, it's Fr. Daniel Berrigan from Ten Commandments for the Long Haul (that's better, I'm must more comfortable with the person I'm quoting here)).

But I also know from experience that those people leading those movements for social change are often the minority. They are often mocked, ridiculed and marginalized by their own church communities. Likewise, those old men and women who stay late to clean the church are often left by themselves as the rest of the congregation hurries out the door towards Sunday picnics.

Yet, when the roll call is announced, we all-too-often want to claim those marginalized people as representing us, too. We all take pride in a clean church and in the acts of service done in our name by others.

We can read about the wondrous life of St. Francis and be convinced of his saintliness. But when Francis of Assisi knocks on the door, beckoning us to follow his example of intentional poverty and service, we refuse to open. When Martin Luther King, Jr., calls us to follow his path of nonviolent social change ,we stall.

Yet, I bet if God were to hold the church accountable for following His Commandment, we would be the first to claim that the church clean-up crew, St. Francis and MLK Jr were one of us! We'd pull them right out of the margins and push them to the front of the crowd and say, "You see! They belong with us, too!"

That is the scandal--the fact that the people who love abundantly are used as a cover for the rest of us.

There probably is some truth that these saintly people are instruments in the redemption of their respective communities--redemption and reconciliation are not exclusively individual affairs (Colossians 1:20), but that should not be an excuse for the rest of us to sit idly by.

You see, there are many places to run from the totally life-changing call of this Commandment. We have no shortage of places to wiggle out of it, deny, divert attention or claim that we are following the Commandment when we are not really heeding it much at all. This blog series is, after all, a look at all little (and not so little) ways we push the Commandment off to the side.

The way we handle saints is much like the way we treat the Greatest Commandment--which should not come as a surprise, as they are the closest living embodiments to that Commandment. We enshrine them and push them away in one brilliant, clever move.


Dorothy Day figured this out. She is famous for saying: "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily."

We either ignore the saints or we celebrate them. Both are devious ways of avoiding the task of actually being like them. Once someone has been made into a saint, we subtly put them into a category of "superhuman" and just keep them at arm's length. It's like the more we honor them the less we have to be like them!

Dorothy Day tried hard to avoid that. She's a person like me and you. What she did is something we could all do. As much as she loved the litany of saints, she knew the risks that come with that designation.

I wish I could remember who said this, and if I ever figure out how to properly attribute it, I will gladly do so. It was a great quote that went something like: Everybody loves St. Francis, but nobody wants to be St. Francis!

We love this belief stuff.

We aren't so fond of this action stuff.

Love is there. But it's not front and center like Jesus told us it should be. That is the scandal.

And yes, love does factor into why we do what we do. Why we have social justice committees is to love our neighbor. Why we have beautiful worship services is because we love God. But when God Himself gives us the Commandment to follow, how often have we made that the #1 priority?

We don't flat out deny Jesus' Commandment--we just mention it and then quietly push it off to the side to focus on something else.

We entertain the Greatest Commandment and nurture gentle embers. But why isn't it preached front and center? Why isn't it preached as essential? Why isn't it preached as fundamental? It's like we kept the words of Scripture, but we have removed all its teeth.

The Greatest Commandment comes off like something we do on the side--and that's how we have ignored it. It's hiding in plain sight. We keep it--sure. We do a few good things in the name of love, of course. We honor many saints throughout history, hoping that their witness, by association, somehow gives credit and credibility to us.

If we had just tossed out the Commandment, it would have been a pretty obvious affront to Jesus. So we keep it, and we just sort of . . . ignore it. And we all benefit from ignoring it. We talk about it just enough to act like we have checked it off our list. But Jesus wants our enthusiastic "all in."

We put The Greatest Commandment in its golden cage: Right in the middle and completely neutralized, ignored and immobilized, like the poor elephant in the living room.

***


This is part 5 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love

Part 4 in the series What Makes a Christian? Each part stands on its own. See below for links to the other installments.

 

 

Sometimes our greatest breach with Scripture is not when we outright contradict it--it's what we choose to prioritize, diminish or outright ignore. There is a time for everything under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We need to put first things first and second things second.

 

Much of Christianity focuses on salvation plans and doctrinal ideas.

However, Jesus in full voice in Scripture is very clear what we should prioritize: It is the Greatest Commandment, i.e. love God and love one another.

Maybe I'm just a simple country boy at heart, but it just seems straightforward.

Remember that Jesus presented the Greatest Commandment as the full package: It's the key to the Kingdom and eternity; it's the key to our public witness of our faith; and it's the key to interpreting all of Law--See John 13:34-35, Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-37 and Matthew 22:34-40, respectively.

That last clause above is crucial. In the debate about what to prioritize, Jesus gives us a clue in the Gospel of Matthew's treatment of the Greatest Commandment:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:34-40.

The last line there hits me like a bullet: All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

This is a huge statement.

It is a statement that has not gotten anywhere near the attention it deserves. Most Christians are busy arguing about what the Law should be. Jesus is saying there is something bigger, more pivotal and more fundamental than that.

The vast traditions of Christian denominations have this absolutely backwards--we try to figure out how to pepper in love and compassion into a rigid structure of rules, doctrines and practices. Jesus is calling our imagination to do the very opposite--to be immersed in the practice of love in which we pepper in rules, doctrines and practices to give it form and ornamentation when appropriate.

It makes you wonder if we have been reading Scripture at all.

Jesus is speaking against a cold, impersonal use for the Law. If there is anything that Jesus railed against during his years walking this earth, it was making a black-and-white interpretation of the Law as the interface between humankind and the Divine. He was constantly railing against the Pharisees with their tedious "gotcha" games with the Law. Jesus clearly put Love and Mercy before any literal interpretation of the Law.

What does it mean that this commandment is the structure on which the Law hangs? I don't even know. I'm not sure that anyone knows. I think it is extremely difficult for our human minds to wrap around. But we also haven't been working very hard to unpack this meaning diligently over the past 2,000 years.

Jesus Himself is giving us an enormous clue as to how the whole kit-n-caboodle of Church and society ought to be put together--He's saying the whole thing hangs on the Commandment to love. I've been all around the Christian denominational world, and I've never heard a single sermon trying to unpack they meaning of this statement from Matthew.

When your church community makes rules, rubrics and procedures, does it ask:  How does this hang off the commandment to love God and one another?

The question may be implied, but why isn't it more explicit?

The Good News is that Jesus gave some examples to show how to be in relationship with the Law:

Jesus fed the hungry and healed on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-13). It may be hard for us to understand this today, but at the time, these were serious offenses. He was violating some of the most sacred practices of his faith tradition. He was not keeping the Sabbath day Holy by resting. Sure, people may have suffered being hungry and ill, but that was considered unfortunate but acceptable collateral damage for being true to God's Commandment.

In terms of the letter of the Law, there was no question that Jesus was at fault.  He did not observe the Sabbath, and the Law allowed for no exceptions--case closed. Jesus had a different view, however.  He saw that he was fulfilling the Law rather than contradicting it (Matthew 5:12). Perhaps feeding the hungry and healing the sick is what made the day Holy, after all.

I would suggest that what Jesus is requiring of us is to take the Law--which is an evolving piece as it is--and keep it in constant relationship with the demands of mercy and the lived experiences of people in their conscience and context.

I hear the Scribes and Pharisees yelling at Jesus, saying, "You broke the law!"

I hear Jesus saying in reply, "You had to be there, and then you would understand."

And that's just it--we have to be there. After all, the word "compassion" literally means, "to suffer with." Outside of a true compassion that can only come--by definition--out of solidarity with others, we cannot possibly interpret--nor implement--the Law appropriately.

While most Christians today do not have any aversion to working on the Sabbath, what are some other religious and lifestyle practices today that are completely prohibited?  What might Jesus say to those in light of this passage from Matthew 12?

***

Some argue that Jesus came to abolish the rigid, black-and-white legal system of Jewish Law only to replace it with a rigid, black-and-white legal system of Christian Law.

This is to profoundly miss the point. I can imagine Jesus doing a major face palm here. Jesus wasn't just changing the content of the Laws themselves but rather our whole approach to Law altogether!

We try to build Love into the Law, but maybe that's not possible. Perhaps Love simply needs to accompany the Law. Or as Jesus puts it, Love needs to support the Law.

The reason is simple: Jesus said that Love is more than just a part of the Law. He said that Love is the structure on which all the Law hangs. In other words, all of Law is in relationship with the commandment to Love. Jesus had every opportunity to tell us to scrap the old Law in favor of a new one. He didn't--He told us that the Law will find its fulfillment in relationship with Love--and in that relationship, Law is secondary to Love. Love and Law are both related and  distinct.


Like double helixes of DNA - Love and Law must be in constant dialogue.

A good way to look at this might be like the double helix of a DNA structure: The letter of the Law is one strand. It must be in constant dialogue with the lived experiences of people and the demands of mercy. The two strands constantly intermingle with many points of direct contact in between.

The DNA model may be inadequate, however. It gives the impression that Love and the Law are equivalents. That is not what Jesus is saying in Matthew--Love is more foundational. The DNA model is a great way to show the interrelationship between the two, but perhaps another model is needed to properly showcase what Jesus is describing.

Maybe the best visual is to use the old standby symbol for Law:  The justice scales--with a tweak. As Francis E. Madojemu says, the key word in Matthew's passage is "hang." The Law hangs on the Commandment to Love:  "Remove it and everything falls down," says Madojemu. In this model, Love is the structure which entirely supports the rest of the Laws.

I hesitate to push any metaphor too far, but I think Jesus gives us a wide berth here. If the Law hangs on Love, then we can infer some things--that Law can only be something that will not disrupt what Love has put in place. If the Law is too heavy and drags down the structure of Love, then it is out of balance. I would refer people to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 for examples of what qualities this love would have in order to support the weight of the Law. "Love" is, after all, not merely some abstract concept but some rigorous behaviors.

Jesus gave us a metaphor that we should work with, mediate on and pray about.

Take any Church Law and visualize it this way--imagine it hanging delicately in the balance. It's sole lifeline of support is it's connection to the Commandment to love God and one another. How does that change our view of each and every Church Law?

Jesus was ushering in the Law of Love--something that he proclaimed was at the heart of Jewish Law in the first place but had been scabbed over by centuries of human insecurities and institutions.  In short, the Law had become to many a false idol. Fundamentalism is always that--a breaking of the 1st Commandment by making the religious structure an absolute rather than our best attempt to point to God. Jesus was calling us out of making pronouncements without being personally involved and walking side-by-side with people in compassion. He was ushering in the primacy of conscience.

Matthew 22:36-40 is a glaring instance where we can get all the words of Scripture right and still get the message wrong. If we build a system of Laws and make room for Love only as an optional ornament, we have a fundamentally different system compared to a system of Love which is only afterwards adorned with Laws--a system where the Laws simply cannot support themselves at all in the absence of Love.

* * *


This is part 4 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

John 3:16 vs The Greatest Commandment

Part 3 in the series, What Makes a Christian? See end for links to the others.

I can go into any number of churches this weekend hear them "preach salvation." What does this mean? Believe this-or-that and you'll be guaranteed an afterlife in Heaven. In many churches across Christendom, this is probably the most common theme in a Sunday morning sermon, Bible study or prayer gathering of any kind, especially in the Evangelical world.

I can understand why people are preoccupied with their own fate--but in the words of Brian McLaren, when did Christianity become an "earth evacuation plan"?

There are a lot of assumptions that go into this kind of theology. It's quite a loaded statement, actually! We assume that the point of religion is to secure an afterlife--an afterlife that is either questionable or not available to us otherwise--and that the key to navigating this properly is to have the right beliefs.

Before you think I am picking on Evangelicals, a similar thing happens in Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. The Creed is rolled out about halfway through liturgy with a litany of "I believe this" and "I believe that."

When did belief trump action? What about simply doing what God tells us to do and trusting our fate in that?

Jesus seems to say it's not what you think but rather who you are that matters:

Jesus is very clear that the fundamental commandment is to love God and neighbor and that our witness of this will be the very mark of our Christian identity (John 13:34-35), that our closeness to the Kingdom (Mark 12:28-34) and participation in eternity (Luke 10:25-37) are contingent on it and that all other rules and parameters can be understood only in light of it (Matthew 22:34-40).

An incredible trickery happened somewhere in the history of Christianity. Early Christians were known as "followers of the Way" (Acts 9:2). Christianity was a holistic practice that impacted all areas of their lives. Somewhere this got truncated, and Christianity started looking more and more like a detached mental exercise.

I suspect I know why: Actions are difficult. Beliefs are easy. Changing one's lifestyle is just about the hardest thing to do. Ask anyone who has struggled with an addiction or has tried to lose weight or change any habit.

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Like the vagabond poetic soul Qoheleth writes above, all things fit in God's Kingdom.

All words from Scripture fit, too.

I believe our task is to figure out how to order and prioritize them. We can end up with entirely different understandings of what it means to be a Christian--not by outright denying or contradicting anything in Scripture--but rather by choosing what to prioritize and reordering everything else in light of it.

A lot of churches start out with John 3:16 as their starting point. Catholics and many mainline Protestants start off with their doctrinal beliefs as expressed by the Creed. In this series, I explore the centrality of the Greatest Commandment to the faith--putting the commandment to love God and love one another as first and then reordering everything else in light of that. You may end up with a different theology, and frankly a whole different church this way!

For God so loved the world
 that he gave his one and only Son,

that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

There is no other verse more widely shared as the end all, be all of Christianity. This is the ultra-succinct, Cliff Notes version of Christianity. You'll see John 3:16 signs at sporting events, on automobiles and shirts. It's just everywhere. It's like Christians are saying: If all you hear from Scripture is one thing, make sure you hear John 3:16.

What's curious is that Jesus gave very different advice. When asked directly, He said follow the Greatest Commandment: Love God and neighbor abundantly. He didn't say "believe." He said, "do."

What's gotten us into this whole mess is our understanding of the word "belief." Scholars say that the modern American mind has been thoroughly influenced by the ultra-literalist approach to English Law that was in vogue several centuries ago. Words were stripped of their literary and artistic allusions and taken in the most basic, face value way.

I don't see any suggestions in Scripture to read it that way, but each of us brings his or her own interpretive lens whenever we read anything. There is a whole science called Hermeneutics devoted to understanding this phenomenon.

So when Scripture says that our duty is to "believe" in Jesus, we interpret that to mean the intellectual assent to the idea of Jesus as God and Christ. It's right there on the page, that's what the word "belief" means, right?

If elsewhere in Scripture it says we are saved "in the name of Jesus," we apply the same interpretive lens: We end up confident that if we profess the name of Jesus as the God we adhere to, then our duties toward our salvation are fulfilled. We have to say "Jesus" and not "Mohammed" or "Buddha" or "Krishna."

It's no wonder that many denominations in Christianity have violently split due to their vociferous disagreements over theological matters. When your entire stake in eternity hinges on getting the right theological concepts in order with the right nomenclature, it is no small wonder this has become such a high anxiety scenario!

In The Name Of . . .

Imagine if I were to say I am living my life "in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Let's be honest--that would probably sound pretty awkward at first listen, because nobody talks like that. But with a moment of reflection, you would probably think this sounds like an old fashioned, perhaps overly poetic way of saying that I try to emulate the values and lifestyle of MLK.

In other words, I am trying to live in the tradition of MLK. I don't think anyone would assume that this has anything to do with renaming buildings or streets or that the name itself has some magical significance. Even if there were a change in nomenclature somewhere along the line, it would only be because of what that name represents, rather than some inherent quality of the name itself.

If I say I am trying to live, "in the name of MLK," you would expect me to lead a movement for civil rights or practice nonviolent resistance to structures of injustice. You can't really separate the name of MLK from those activities, because those activities are why you know the name of MLK in the first place.

The name of MLK. only has meaning because of who he was--and who he was is not a static entity--it is a reflection of how he lived and what he said and stood for. Who he was as a noun only makes sense in light of who he was as a verb.

In other words, if we are going to be saved by the "name" of Jesus, let's not be so literalistic to think uttering the name itself is the only condition. "The name of Jesus" is shorthand for all that Jesus has said and done--His teachings and model of life.

This makes perfect sense when you hold it up to Jesus' statement of inheriting eternal life from Luke's passage (Luke 10:25-37). Inheriting eternal life is about being merciful, just as Jesus showed us by being merciful Himself. In other words, helping our injured neighbor by the side of the road IS proclaiming "the name of Jesus."

In Biblical times, your name was tied to your inheritance. If your name is "Smith," that was not just some random combination of letters to make a sound. It was rather your connection to the legacy of the Smith family--their lands, their reputation, their culture. If you conquer some new territories "in the name of Smith," you are not just assigning the unique combination of letters and sounds to this land. You are invoking the legacy and reputation of the people known as "Smith."

If you're going to be saved "in the name of Jesus," it's because you are living into the Greatest Commandment.

With a literalistic eye, it looks like Scripture is contradicting itself. In some passage, it says that we are saved by a profession of belief. In other passages, we are saved by love and good deeds. I'm here to say that those are not in conflict at all.

Scripture is not divided up between a theology of belief and a theology of action--it is a combined, holistic expression.

John 3:16 is a beautiful verse, understood this way--that God's act of sharing Jesus with us comes out of love, and that all who participate in that love through loving both God and one another follow in the Way of Jesus, which is the Way of eternity--to love Jesus so much that you imitate Him and follow His Way. To believe in His message so much that you follow it.

This is part 3 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

Like Looking at the Sun

Part 2 in the series, What Makes a Christian?

***

It is amazing how often we fail a most basic mark of the faith.

It is a downright scandal how rarely it is preached.

It's questionable how directly our religious and moral practices stem from it.

Yet if we believe the direct words of Jesus Himself--you know, God--the very ability of others to recognize our Christian identity is dependent on how we follow this.

We gather in churches. We have elaborate worship and praise. And yet we barely give lip service to the first and foremost of the commandments. When we do, it is often to give exceptions--No, Jesus didn't really mean that . . .

I'm talking about the Greatest Commandment--love God and love neighbor. Abundantly.

Christians often spend more time talking about obscure lines from the Bible or obscure doctrines about obscure topics, and it's amazing how very little time we actually spend on the fundamental, core command that Jesus Himself preached to us.

If you want to take the Bible literally: God Himself actually told us what to focus on!

Jesus is very clear that the fundamental commandment is to love God and neighbor and that our public witness of this will be the very mark of our Christian identity (John 13:34-35), that our closeness to the Kingdom (Mark 12:28-34) and participation in eternity (Luke 10:25-37) are contingent on it, that all other rules and parameters can be understood only in light of it (Matthew 22:34-40). That's it. All else gets at best a distant second or third place.

And yet our denial knows no bounds. It's rubrics. It's obscure passages. It's theologizing about the finer points of a Baptism--full immersion or partial? Oil or water?

How about loving God and neighbor as the only full immersion God asks for?

Given the seriousness and centrality of the Greatest Commandment, you would think two out of every three sermons would be focused on it. You would think we'd have task forces set up to evaluate how good we are doing in living it out and suggesting ways to do it better and better.

It is so simple, yet so difficult. We do everything we can to make being "Christian" about something else--it's about church membership, a certain baptismal formula or having the right "beliefs." Even denominations at odds with one another have this in common! Way to go, ecumenism!

You could argue those other things are important, too. But we put them front and center when Jesus was clear that something else was front and center. He actually comes out and tells us to put this commandment first, and we do everything except that.

We don't outright deny the Greatest Commandment. Oh no, we would never be so bold. Rather, we do something far more sinister--we just sort of brush it aside, put it on a pedestal and otherwise ignore it.

We box it in, limit it, put the ropes around it because, in truth, it scares the living daylights out of us.

Rubrics, rules, doctrines, Morse code, alien symbols and Cracker Jack box toys--all of these only make sense in their proper place. All too often, we place them first and foremost rather than as secondary or tertiary matters which can only be properly viewed and understood in light of the primary commandment, according to the passage from Matthew above.

We find ways to rationalize. We claim that God must want our bitterness, divisions, hatreds and such, so "loving God" then becomes manifesting these things. We find every excuse NOT to love abundantly, NOT to overflow with mercy, NOT to do all that love requires of us. We can contort anything into what we want, but much of it isn't in the spirit of the New Testament. For example, we can find all sorts of examples in Scripture and Church history to support all sorts of actions. The Bible is full of war and violence of all kinds, so we could claim Biblical support for these actions. Before we blindly imitate them and claim some Scriptural backing, we should ask--does this love God and love neighbor abundantly? If not, it should go to the fires of Gehenna.

Still, individuals and churches do everything they can to wiggle out of these requirements and try to make it out to be about something else. It's not that those other things aren't important--the scandal is the disproportionate amount of energy we put into those obscure things compared to what should be first and foremost.

And let's be clear: It's absolutely and totally a scandal how we treat the Greatest Commandment.

We give lip service to love. We attempt it here and there. But we are like unruly teenagers whose parents have told us to clean the house while they are gone. So we first spend several hours watching TV, talking to our friends, and yes, thinking about cleaning the house from time to time. About 10 minutes before they return, we run roughshod over the house to give the appearance of cleanliness. That is how I see us regarding the commandment to love. We do talk about it, just enough to get that monkey off our back and claim that we are following it. But the level of enthusiasm and energy we put into it is not anywhere near what we are commanded to do by Jesus--you know, God Himself.

I'll stand up and say that theology matters. We need to ponder over the deep stuff. I'm doing it right now. We need to meditate on who Jesus was and is and what that means for us today. Our churches have all been enriched by deep theological traditions. Rituals, church institutions, doctrines--all these matter, too. They have their place--the problem is that they are not staying in their place but have all-too-often assumed center stage.

We shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that theologizing about God is the same thing as being a Christian. That would be like mistaking the pre-game huddle with the football game itself. The preparation time is NOT the game. For far too many, simply "figuring out" their personal theology is an end unto itself. Pope Francis challenges us on this: It 's not just church leaders, but also theologians who should "smell like the sheep." No one is exempt from the hard work of living out the Commandment.

I love theology, but I have to admit my faith is pretty simple.

To me, Jesus' message is both incredibly simple and also incredibly difficult at the same time. Little children get it. The poor get it. Those on the margins of society get it. The more and more "stuff" we have just makes it more difficult to hear the message. It doesn't matter if the "stuff" is material wealth or just something else we are holding onto. It could be anger. It could be our ego. It could be our need to be right. The Gospels predict this. The more attached people were to their stuff the harder time they had accepting the truth of Jesus and following.

Let that stuff go and you start to see Jesus.

Maybe the message of Jesus is like looking into the sun. It's just so bright we can't do it for long. All we can do is hint and squint at it and try to come back to it later when we are ready. There is a case to be made for that.

Maybe humankind will always be sun worshippers--the first and perhaps the only religion.

God Himself gave us the commandment. Why is this not being preached from the mountaintops? Why is this not the cornerstone of all that we say and do? Because:

Jesus is the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22, Ephesians 2:20)

and

Jesus is God (John 1:1, 1:14, Matthew 1:23)

and

 "God is love.

Whoever lives in love

lives in God,

and God in them."

(1 John 4:16)

Therefore love is the cornerstone. Our active participation in love puts us in line with God, the Creator, as love is the creative energy of the universe, and love is the wavelength of eternity.

 

***

 

This is part 2 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.

Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

The Elephant in the Living Room

Part 1 of the series, What Makes a Christian?

Sometimes I think that the collective witness of Christianity is best expressed by the expression, "the elephant in the living room."

I can close my eyes and envision millions--perhaps even billions--of Christians in this large room, all talking, milling about and being energetic about their faith--but virtually ignoring this giant elephant who is right there in the middle of it all.

They even have to bend and contort themselves to see around this elephant, but they continue to ignore him.

What is this elephant?

Let's look at it this way:

Christians profess that God Himself lived on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

You with me so far?

God Himself walked among us, teaching, preaching and showing what He meant by His life example. He was very clear what was the most important. 

That giant elephant is the Greatest Commandment.

I hear Jesus saying: Of all the things you do, do this.

If you're gonna put your time and attention anywhere, put it here: Love God and love neighbor abundantly.

Yet, how often is this preached?

Of course, it is mentioned.

What I mean is: How often is it preached like this? 

How often is it preached the way Jesus preached it:

With intensity,

Centrality,

And a sense of utter, singular importance?

I'm sometimes baffled by our ignorance--it must be some kind of collective denial. But it is certainly immensely disrespectful to the person Who we claim is God.

* * *

The Greatest Commandment is in all 4 Gospels:

In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus makes a connection between following this commandment and one's closeness to the Kingdom of God:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus tells us that all other laws are to be read through the lens of the Greatest Commandment. All other laws are qualified by--and cannot be otherwise understood--outside of this context:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus not only gives the command to love God and neighbor, but he also says this is what you must do to inherit eternal life. How often have you heard that preached at church? I am not a betting man, but it would be easy money to say that most preachers only mention this line in order caution us not to take it too seriously--using other lines from the Bible to qualify--or outright negate--this statement by Jesus Himself. They say that Jesus could not possibly have meant what He, you know, actually said:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus then tells the story of the Good Samaritan. He gives the answer in verse 37:

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

In John 13:34-35, Jesus states that our very public witness of our Christian identity itself depends on whether or not we love one another. Otherwise, people will not recognize that we are indeed Christians. Jesus tells us to follow his example. Jesus not only gives the commandment to love, but also states that His life has modeled this love. 

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

If there is any doubt as to who is included in the list of people to show love toward, the New Testament is clear--the commandment to love includes everyone from those in our own Christian group to the widows, orphans, outsiders, marginalized people on up to and including our enemies. In other words: Everyone. There is no shortage of Scripture citations to back this up. We will explore this further in the next post, stay tuned!

***

This is part 1 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last