Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
Mark 12:28-34
If you had to summarize your life in six words, what would they be? Several years ago an online magazine asked that question. It was inspired by a possibly legendary challenge posed to Ernest Hemingway to write a six-word story that resulted in the classic and heartbreaking “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The magazine was flooded with so many responses that the site almost crashed, and the responses were eventually turned into a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning. It’s a book filled with six-word memoirs by writers, some famous, some unknown Here are some of the memoirs that range from funny to ironic to inspiring to heartbreaking:
“One tooth, one cavity; life’s cruel.”
“Savior complex makes for many disappointments.”
“Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends.” (This one was written by a nine-year-old boy with cancer).
“The psychic said I’d be richer.”
This one was only five words: “One long train to darkness.”
“Tombstone won’t say: ‘Had health insurance.’”
“Not a good Christian, but trying.”
“Thought I would have more impact.”
The challenge of the six-word limitation is its demand to focus on what matters most, to capture briefly something of significance. How would you summarize your life, or just last year, or maybe this upcoming year, in six words?[i]
A scribe who had been listening to Jesus respond to the loaded questions of other religious leaders asked a similar question of Jesus. There were 613 commandments in the Jewish law. 248 of them were positive – things “to do.” The other 365 were prohibitions – things “not to do.” And he asked Jesus: out of all of those commandments, out of the entirety of the law, which commandment is the most important? Which is the one that summarizes and encapsulates all the others? He wanted to know if Jesus could reduce the law to a single commandment.
The difference between his question and the questions asked by the others is that while they were trying to trap Jesus in his words, he really wanted to know what Jesus would say. It was still a test, of sorts. But it was an honest test. He wasn’t trying to trap Jesus. He was impressed with Jesus’ answers to the loaded questions he’d been asked. The way Jesus had outmaneuvered his opponents. And he wanted to know what Jesus thought. He didn’t expect to be taught by Jesus, because he had his own perspective. But he did want to see if the views of Jesus aligned with his own. And they did. But he still found himself being taught. Turn with me to Mark 12:28-34.
It was common among Jewish religious leaders in Jesus’ day to talk about the relative “weighty-ness” of the various commandments. Again, 613 in all. Some were considered greater, others smaller. In our day, we’d say that prohibitions against rape, or murder are weightier than the speed limit, which no one obeys. Like no one. Be honest. You know exactly how far over the limit you can drive without getting pulled over. And you probably know where police are more likely to be sitting with their radar guns out. But that isn’t what this scribe is asking. He isn’t interested in finding out what parts of the law he can ignore. He wants to know what Jesus thinks is the fundamental premise of the law. The commandment upon which all of the rest of the commandments depend. The hub around which it all rotates.
And Jesus immediately answers by quoting the Shema. Shema is the Hebrew word for “to hear,” and the Shema was the central prayer in Judaism. It is a prayer that affirms the oneness of God and emphasizes the special relationship between God and his people. It came from verses in Deuteronomy 6 and 11 and Numbers 15. And it began with these words: “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 and with all your strength” (Mk 12:29-30).
Notice that there is no mention HERE of what God does for his people. There is no mention of grace, or salvation, or healing, or deliverance. We are to come to God, first and foremost, because God is God. Not because of what God has done, is doing, will do, or can do for us. Not because of what WE get out of a relationship with God. Oh, God’s grace, his salvation of us in Christ, his power to heal and deliver, they’re real and they’re powerful and they’re a part of who God is. But we come to God, first and foremost, simply because God is God, and therefore deserves our worship and our faith. We seek God, first, for God’s own sake, and not for what God can do for us.
He, and he alone, is God. There are no others. There is no power in the cosmos that can match him. There is no being or principle in the universe worthy of being worshipped above him. He is not one of many. He is not subject to any other. God is God, and that is why we are to worship him and place our faith in him.
And that requires every part of us. Every inch. Every cell. Every molecule. Every last part of us. I want you to feel the rapid fire repetition of the word “all” here. “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.” What does “all” mean? It means every last morsel, doesn’t it. If someone asks you for all your money, they mean every last cent. If someone eats all of your cookies, it means they didn’t even leave you a crumb. All means all.
And we are to love God, first and foremost, with ALL of our hearts. Makes sense, because we think of love as coming from the heart. But for the Jews, the heart was more than just a blood-pumping organ, it metaphysically, it involved far more than just emotions or feelings. For them, the heart is the command center of the body. It is where decisions are made and the center of your inner world. The heart controls our feelings and emotions, yes, but also our desires and passions. The things that motivate us as we make decisions.
When we give our hearts to God, we are doing far more than saying, “I love you the same way I love my spouse, or my mom or dad.” We’re saying that God will now be the primary motivating factor in our lives. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel says that God has a reason for wanting our hearts. “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ez. 11:19-20).
Sin has hardened our hearts. We are no longer motivated by the things God wants to motivate us. Our hearts lead us away from God. The words about statutes and rules seem legalistic and cold and distant. But imagine that you live on a busy street, and you have a child who insists on wandering into that busy street. You know it is extremely dangerous for them to do that, but you can’t get them to stop. You tell them no, and they go right out and do it again. You erect a fence, and they find a way to climb over it. Their heart is turned away from you and from what you know is good for them. They just want to do what they want to do, regardless of the consequences. And the rules and boundaries you erect are there to keep them safe and close to you, not to kill their fun and stamp out their joy.
God’s law is there to keep us close to him and safe. It’s about relationship. The word we use to describe someone who keeps God’s law is “righteous.” But the word actually means “in right standing with.” It’s a relational word, not just a legal word. God wants us to give him ALL of our hearts so that he can take our hearts of stone that wander from him and replace them with soft hearts that want to be close to him. And we do that because he has given himself to us. He is our God, and therefore we are his people. We are close to him because he has drawn close to us.
We also love God with ALL of our souls. The soul is more than just the part of you that will live forever. It is the source of your vitality in life. It’s that part of you that is truly, eternally, ALIVE. It is the motivating power that brings strength to our wills and therefore, together with our heart, our soul determines our conduct. How we act. If my heart wants to be close to God, and my soul gives me the strength of will to actually move close to God, then I move willingly out of harms way and into God’s embrace. Your soul is the power of your life. The energy moving you forward. If the heart provides the direction, the soul moves you IN that direction.
Philippians 3:13-14 says, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” That is the heart and the soul working together, direction and motion.
We are to love God with ALL of our heart, and soul, AND mind. Your mind is your ability to perceive things and then reflect on them. Think about them. Perception is both seeing something AND understanding what you see. And reflection is thinking back later on what it means. It’s significance. It is your intelligence, and it directs your opinions and judgments. Our love of God has to be more than just an emotional response and a flurry of God-centered activity. It also involves our minds. Read through the New Testament, and you’ll soon discover that the early Christians out lived, out died, and out thought their opponents. They lived better, they died better, and they thought in higher ways.
One of the things I’ve discovered about people in 30 years of ministry and 10 years as a therapist is that we can loosely divide people into thinkers and feelers. Thinkers have a hard time feeling, they struggle to put words to what they are feeling, and they have little patience for the emotions of others. And feelers have a hard time moving their feelings aside so that they can see things and respond in a way that isn’t controlled by emotion. And these two people are usually married to each other. In the kingdom of God, we check neither heart nor mind at the door, we bring both, and we feed both, and we dedicate both to loving God well.
Paul, in Romans 12:2, says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Transformation toward Christ-likeness happens as our minds are transformed, as we allow God to reshape how we view him, how we view the world, how we view ourselves, and how we view others.
We are to love God with ALL of our heart, ALL of our soul, ALL of our mind, and ALL of our strength. Your strength includes your physical capacities. Our bodies are involved in our love of God. With transformed hearts and minds and souls that are moving us toward God and God’s will, our bodies do things differently. Our bodies are the way our hearts, souls, and minds interact tangibly with the world. We begin to LIVE differently. Our strength also includes our possessions. The things we have, we use to love God.
But Jesus doesn’t stop with just ONE unifying principle for the law of God. There’s another side to the coin of that one unifying principle. The fundamental premise of life in God’s kingdom is to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and as we do that, we will begin to love our neighbor just as much as we love ourselves. Love for God ALWAYS leads to love of neighbor. If it doesn’t, we aren’t loving God well, with ALL.
At the end of a long letter, C. S. Lewis wrote: “When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving toward the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”[ii]
And who is my neighbor? Jesus answered that question earlier in his ministry, most notably in the parable of the Good Samaritan. His answer: the person next to you wherever you go. Another religious leader had asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In that case, Jesus asked that man what he thought the fundamental premise of life in God’s kingdom was. And the man rightly 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” (Lk. 10:27). Sound familiar. It’s verbatim what Jesus said here. But then the man asked a clarifying question: “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk. 10:29).
That’s the question we all ask, isn’t it? We want to know, “What’s the least I can do?” Or we say, “I’ll love my neighbor so long as it isn’t …” and you can insert the name of a person, or the type of person you really don’t like, and you have no desire to allow God to change that. That’s why Jesus told a story about a good Samaritan. Because in the Jewish mindset, there was no such thing as a good Samaritan, and in the Samaritan mindset, there was no such thing as a good Jew. Jesus doesn’t allow for an easy or comfortable answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor.” The answer, is “Anyone.”
And we don’t like that answer, for one of two reasons. Either we don’t WANT to love that person. That’s a heart and soul matter – I don’t want to see people the way God sees them. I want to see them as bad, not broken and hurt. And therefore I don’t have the motivation to move toward loving them.
Or we don’t think we CAN love that person – their need is too great, I don’t have the resources. That’s a mind and strength issue. Because we’re looking at things from a human way of thinking instead of with the mind of Christ. Because when our minds are submitted to Christ, we know that every resource of the kingdom of God will back our attempt to love our neighbor. WE don’t have to have the resources. God already has them, and he will give them as we need them. And he will not give more until we use what he has already given.
In Portland magazine, a priest at a Catholic church in Portland, Oregon, tells a story about a street person named Big Ben who came daily to the church. He writes:
One Christmas Eve we decided to have a special café evening [to minister to the homeless]. An unusually large number of people came. At 9:00 we were down to the last pot of soup, though the hungry line still wove around the block. By 9:30 we were down to the last bowl, and there was Big Ben, face alight with his toothless grin. We filled his bowl to the brim, much to his delight, and that was the last of the last of the soup.
As Ben made his way to the table in the corner, a tiny teenage boy whom none of us had seen before appeared. He looked like he had slept in mud. He was shivering for lack of a coat and his left eye sported a nasty bruise. Seeing that the last of the soup was served, his eyes grew large and it seemed he was going to cry, but he didn’t. God knows how long he had waited in line only to find no soup. Some of us were reaching for our wallets when Big Ben appeared with his bowl and handed it to the boy. He then put his hand on the boy’s cheek and caressed it as a father would caress his son’s, and then mussed the boy’s hair, giggled, and wandered off.
It was a tender moment that stood in contrast to the steel, concrete, and cold that too often embrace those without hearth and home.[iii]
As we love God with all that we have and all that we are, our hearts, souls, minds, and strength are actually transformed by God. And we begin to understand that there is no limit to God’s love for us, and therefore, there is no limit to God’s ability to love through us. And we’ll begin to trust that God will provide what we need to do that, exactly when we need it.
If you were to summarize your life, maybe not in six words, but in one sentence, what would it be? For the person who follows Christ, that sentence is, “Love God with all of my heart, all of my soul, all of my mind, all of my strength, and my neighbor as myself.” That’s it. Let’s pray.
[i] Adapted from John Ortberg, All the Places You’ll Go … Except When You Don’t (Tyndale, 2015) pp. 1-2
[ii] C. S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)
[iii] Excerpted in Portland magazine (March/April, 2010) from Patrick Hannon’s upcoming book, The Long Yearning’s End (Acta, 2010)
