One of the things I learned early on in my pastoral ministry was the importance of the church I was serving to have a concise and memorable mission statement and discipleship strategy. The business world uses this strategy as well.
Here are some examples…
Tesla’s mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
LinkIn’s mission is “to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
PayPal’s mission is “to build the web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution.”
Nike’s mission statement is to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Nordstram’s mission is “to give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.”
And Facebook’s mission is evidently to spread misinformation and extremist views. They have some PR work to do.
What is the mission and discipleship strategy of Athens First United Methodist Church? Here it is… “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our community and world.” And our discipleship strategy to fulfill that mission is to provide ministries that help each person “to have a loving faith, a learning faith, and a living faith.”
It is so tempting to make a mission statement longer than it really needs to be. Sure, we could replace our fourteen word mission statement with a ten page single spaced document detailing all of our ministries and programs, but how would that be inspiring and memorable?
Today’s scripture readings from Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Mark offer us a concise and memorable way of living out our faith every single day.
In our Gospel reading, one of the scribes… Scribes. Who were the scribes? They were legal experts. Lawyers. They were a group of Jewish people in Jesus’ day who studied the laws found in the scriptures and would then draft lengthy legal documents that were used for people getting married, people getting divorced, loans, inheritance contracts, sales of land, etc.
In other words, they were wordy type people. If you count them all of the laws that are in the Old Testament, there are 613 laws of them.
613 laws! We often only think of the Ten Commandments, but there’s 603 other laws that we find in the Old Testament. And there was a belief in Jesus’ day by some Jewish people, that if every single Jewish person would obey all 613 laws for an entire day, that this would usher in God’s kingdom here on earth.
And of course, these 613 laws have a lot of gray areas to consider. Like, what does it means to do no work on the Sabbath? Does that include only work in which you make money? What about chores? The Rabbis of Jesus’ day debated questions like this on what is considered work and what is not considered work on the Sabbath. And this is just one of the 613 commandments that lead to all of these questions.
Back to our Gospel reading. One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all, the one that is most central to who we are as God’s people?”
Now, Jesus could have said that all 613 of the laws are tied for first because they’re all important, but he doesn’t. He refers to one law in particular which is at the heart of what it means to to live out our faith.
It’s known as the Shema which is from our Old Testament reading for today. The reason it is given the name, “Shema” is because the Hebrew word for listen is “Shema.” And that is how this commandment begins. “Hear, O Israel… You shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
So why does Jesus say this is the most important of all the 613 commandments? Why would this one best reflect what it means to be God’s people?
New Testament scholar, Tom Wright answers that question this way… “The Jewish law begins with worship, with the love of God, because if it’s true that we’re made in God’s image we will find our fullest meaning, our true selves, the more we learn to love and worship the one we are designed to reflect. No half measures: heart, soul, mind and strength – that is every aspect of human life is to be poured out gladly in worship of the one true God.”
And even though Jesus wasn’t asked about what he thought was the 2nd most important commandment, he offers it anyway. He says, “the second is this, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is a commandment that we find in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament.
So this is what Jesus wants us to remember by summing up the 613 commandments in this concise and memorable way. Don’t worry about trying to memorize all of those commandments. Just remember and live out this in your daily lives…
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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 you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
This summary of our faith has become known as the Great Commandment. The Great Commandment. It’s what I want everyone who is part of the church to know. So if someone would say, “what is the Great Commandment,” without even thinking, we would say, “to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.”
As a pastor, if I don’t emphasize this in my preaching and my teaching, then I feel like I have failed in my duty as your pastor. It’s that important.
Which leads me to this story of my dear friend, Keith Wasserman of Good Works here in Athens. Keith and I have been friends over the years. I’ve had him preach in my churches including here at Athens First.
For one of my churches I was serving, I had Keith preach on a Sunday morning and I also invited him to come and share with our Junior High confirmation class which was meeting that same morning during Sunday School. I was thinking that this would be a great opportunity for our young people to hear Keith share his faith and his ministry with Good Works.
But before he did any of that, Keith began by asking this group of confirmands who at that point had been meeting every single Sunday for the past six months, this very basic question. He asked them, “can any of you tell me what the Greatest Commandment is?
I gulped as I heard him ask that question, because I wasn’t sure if any of us who were teaching the class had specifically focused on that phrase, “The Great Commandment.” We had taught them every other possible Christian topic you can think of like how many books are in the Bible, major Christian history events, that John Wesley founded the Methodist Church, all of these things but we never went over The Great Commandment.
There was this long silence when Keith asked our youth that question. Nobody knew. I shamefully looked the other way to not make eye contact with Keith.
And without any shaming or judging, Keith simply said that Jesus taught us that there is only really one commandment we need to remember as Christians and it’s to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”
Keith went on to talk to them how the Great Commandment is what Good Works is all about. It’s that simple, and it’s all they really need to remember.
Speaking of Keith, I receive his monthly newsletter and this past summer he had an article that was so powerful that it seems fitting to share it with you here in the context of the Great Commandment.
Over the past thirty years, Keith has chosen to personally experience homelessness in eleven different cities in order to learn and better understand the people and and situation of being homeless. In his newsletter article, he offers these brief highlights to help remind him to not forget the Great Commandment.
In Akron, he went to the desk at the shelter to ask if he could use the bathroom. The staff person responded with a dramatic, “I just cleaned it!” He felt degraded by that statement. But then he asked himself, “Have I ever done that to someone at Good Works?”
In Pittsburgh, he was with a group of other homeless people who were accosted of stealing things from the pockets of the coats in the church foyer during the church service. They were taken aside and asked if they stole the items. On reflecting on that experience, Keith asks himself, “Have I ever done that to someone?”
In Charleston, he left the shelter right after breakfast, but the person in charge of his personal items would not give them to him and wouldn’t explain why. Keith continues to ask himself, “Have I ever done something like that to someone?”
He ended his article with these positive examples of how he was treated.
In Tulsa, he said that a man who ran the shelter allowed him to come in and out of the cold and sleep onside on the floor even though there were no beds and lots of people.
In Pittsburgh, a man would visit people before sleeping hours to say a prayer for each person and offer a kind word.
In Louisville, a resident of the shelter where he was staying worked in the kitchen and when he saw him, asked him if he was hungry and then went into the kitchen and gave Keith some freshly made chicken.
The point of sharing these experiences is to think about how we love our neighbors and live out our faith each and every day. Maybe this is why Jesus gave us a small business card size summary of all the commandments we find in the Bible.
Life happens so quickly as we encounter people from moment to moment in our daily lives. We might not be able to recite all of the commandments or even know they exist.
What if we could just remember this little summary of all of them? Just remember to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus says if we can obey this commandment, we are not that far from the kingdom of God.
Concise & Memorable
No comments:
Post a Comment