Job One

Luke 10:25-28

July 19, 2015 • Mount Pleasant UMC

VIDEO: Home Improvement “Church”

Have you ever felt like that? Maybe some of you still feel like that—that church is a place you “earn points” with God. Some folks come to church because they believe God expects them to, or God will be angry with them if they don’t show up, or because they’ve been forced to come. The Gallup organization, in a poll taken a few years ago, found there are many different reasons people come to church. We sometimes assume we’re all here for the same purpose, but that’s not true if the poll is to be believed. Gallup found that some do come to worship God, or to find spiritual guidance and nurture. Others come because it’s a family tradition and they were brought up that way—maybe “forced to come” falls into this category. And still others come because they value the community and the fellowship that is found in most churches. Undoubtedly, if I took the microphone around and asked every one of you why you came this morning, we’d get answers like that and maybe a whole lot more. I’ve already had so many of you tell me you came here not knowing what you were getting into. Maybe you came through the invitation of a friend, or through Celebrate Recovery, or Upward sports, or children’s or youth ministries, or you grew up here. But most every person I’ve talked to so far has said when they came here they felt welcomed, included, wanted. That’s a good witness. One person even told me they came, thinking they’d just “check it out,” and they’ve never left.

Now, with last Sunday’s vote to move ahead on the ReBuild project, Mount Pleasant, we find ourselves at a crossroads of sorts. Over the next several months, it’s going to be easy to be focused on the building and the concerns with the project. It will be easy to become inwardly-focused. And it will be easy, when the building is done and we’re all moved in, to stay focused on the building, the physical structure. But the church is not about the building. Here’s one church who seems a bit confused about that. I don’t know how well you can see this, but it’s a church in New England, and above the front door, the banner declares that it is “a house of prayer for all people.” That’s great! Those are words from Jesus (cf. Mark 11:17) and it’s a great invitation! However, at the foot of the steps, there is a chain across the steps and a sandwich sign that says, “No Trespassing—Police Take Notice.” All are welcome—but you can’t come in. Now, I don’t know the situation of the community or the church, but if I were just walking by in front of that place, I think I would assume that I’m not really wanted there. It’s a bit of a mixed message, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps it’s time for that church to rethink what they are about.

And, actually, that’s a good practice for all of us from time to time, especially when we come to a moment like this in our church life. New pastor, new building to come, lots of changes that have taken place in recent months. For a number of years, our denomination, the United Methodist Church, has been asking us to “Rethink Church.” The idea has been to ask questions like this: “What if church was a door into something else, a door into a new life? What if church was a verb, not somewhere you go, but something you do?” What if, indeed? Church is not meant to be a noun, a building, an institution. As important as buildings are, Church is meant to be a verb, a movement, a life to be lived. That is at the heart of who we are as Methodists; we were not originally a church, but a movement meant to renew the church. Christianity is not a spectator sport. It’s a call to get out on the field and get involved. For a lot of us, when we watch a sports event on television or attend a ball game in person, we scream, we yell, we cheer because we want to feel as if we are involved, as if we have some say in the outcome (even though we don’t). But then sometimes we come to church, a place where the mission or outcome does in fact depend on us working alongside God, and we get this idea we’re supposed to be spectators. Just sit quietly, don’t get involved, and let someone else do all the work (cf. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pg. 225). Church—the Christian faith—is a life to be lived. Church is a verb.

For the last few weeks and months, this community has been been rethinking what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ in Terre Haute, Indiana. The arrival of the Revive Indiana team has begun to change the church culture in our community, and in our weekly pastor’s prayer meeting, we’re wrestling with just how that is all going to be lived out from this point on. Being the church is not just about believing the right things, though right belief and orthodox doctrine are important. Being the church is not just about having our name on a membership roll, though being part of a local body of believers is important. We here at Mount Pleasant have set our sights on our mission: to connect people and families with God and God’s family through Jesus Christ. And we’ve defined being the church in four important words: embrace, worship, grow and serve. Great words. But how often we think about what they really mean. What does it mean to follow that journey? For the next three weeks, I want to explore what it means for Mount Pleasant to “rethink church,” to open our doors to a new way of living out our faith, and this morning we’re going to start by focusing on two of those words: worship and grow. Or, as Jesus put it, we’re called to love God.

There was a man who came to Jesus once who wondered how he might live that out. Luke identifies him as “an expert in the law” (12:25); other translations call him a “lawyer,” but he would not have been a lawyer as we would think of it today. He was an expert and an interpreter of religious law, the law that God had given to Moses fourteen hundred years or so before, the law upon which the Jewish people based their lives (Liefeld, “Luke,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 942). This man would have studied and memorized and taught God’s law to the people. He knows it well, but for some reason, and Luke doesn’t tell us why, he wants to test Jesus, to see if Jesus knew as much about the religious law as he claimed. So Luke says he stood up—which almost has a confrontational sound to it, doesn’t it?—he stood up and asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (12:25). That was a standard way the rabbis in those days taught—ask a question that has an expected answer (Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 128), but his question is full of contradictions. He wants to inherit eternal life, but he also wants to be able to produce some sort of work, some sort of evidence to get that inheritance—except that an inheritance is usually (or ought to be) something you’re given, not something you earn. An inheritance is a free gift, given, most of the time, because of who you are related to. So he’s got it partly right—eternal life is a gift for those who have become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, but it’s not something you can earn by doing something. It’s a gift. It’s an inheritance. His question presents problems to begin with.

What this “expert” in the law is really asking is: what’s most important? Out of all of these laws we are expected to know and follow—613 of them (Feiler, Where God Was Born, pg. 172)—which one is “job one”? Like the old car commercial that reminded us “quality is job one,” maybe this lawyer wants to go back to those he teaches and tell them, “Jesus says this is job one, this is the most important thing you can do, doing this guarantees you eternal life. This is job one.” So what does Jesus say? Well, at first, Jesus doesn’t say anything. He answers the question with a question: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (12:26). Do you see what he’s doing there? He’s meeting the lawyer on his own turf. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “You’re an expert in the law. You tell me what is job one.” And the man answers with a part of the Law, presumably the standard answer to the question: “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’” (12:27). It’s a textbook answer—literally. The first part comes from the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament, from verses that were well known to every Jewish schoolchild. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 was recited daily by faithful Jews, and it’s known as the Shema. Shema is simply the first Hebrew word, “Hear,” and the full verse says this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (6:4-5). The second part is from Leviticus 19:18, which says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” Now, even though the two are intertwined—love of God and love of neighbor—I want to focus on the first one this morning and we’ll look at the second one next Sunday. So the Shema, that command which called the whole nation of Israel to love God fully, is the first thing that leaps to the lawyer’s mind, and Jesus affirms his answer. Jesus says, “You have answered correctly” (12:28). Literally, he says, “You are orthodox—you are believing correctly” (Liefeld 942). But then Jesus goes on to say that it’s not enough to just believe correctly. He tells the lawyer he needs to act on his belief. “Do this,” Jesus says, “and you will live.” Belief needs to be linked to action.

There are a lot of times in our lives when we believe something but we don’t act on it, we don’t live it out. A couple of years ago in mid-December, I ended up one Friday evening in the emergency room with a racing heart. It had been going on for a couple of weeks, but most of the time, I had been able to get it under control. And I hadn’t said anything to Cathy about it, which, I learned, was my first mistake. So on that Friday night, when it wouldn’t slow down and nothing I tried made any kind of difference, I had to tell Cathy about it. Almost immediately, she took me to the ER, where they ran several tests and determined that my problem was stress (imagine stress on a pastor in December!) plus too much caffeine. Now I already knew caffeine can be bad for you, and too much caffeine can have serious health effects. I knew that, I believed that, but I didn’t believe it enough to actually cut down the amount of caffeine I was taking in. I believed it to the point where I would sometimes lecture others about their caffeine intake, but I wasn’t willing to live out my belief—until my cardiologist said, in his kindest way, that he wouldn’t argue with me if I cut out most of my caffeine. We often do the same thing in our Christian lives. We know what we should do, the ways we should live out our faith, but we hold back. Sometimes we want to keep faith all in our head, but it’s not enough to just believe the right things. It’s time, Jesus says, for the next step: “Do this and you will live” (10:28).

So, how do we “do” love of God? If that is “job one,” how do we live it? Well, in Jesus’ answer to the lawyer we have a path—four areas of our life where we should be actively living out a love for God: heart, soul, strength and mind. We begin in the heart, but unlike our culture, the heart for the Hebrews was not the seat of the emotions. The seat of the emotions was the intestines, the bowels, so a young Hebrew man might say to his girlfriend, “I love you with all my guts.” I’m not sure Hallmark could sell cards like that. But we still talk that way when we talk about having a “gut feeling” or a “gut instinct;” that’s leftover from Hebrew thought. The heart, for the Hebrews, that’s the center of your physical and spiritual life. So we talk about giving our “hearts” to Jesus. We don’t say it that way because we give our feelings over to Jesus, though there may be feelings involved. No, when we give our hearts, it’s a symbol of giving our whole life, everything we are. We make a commitment of our whole being to Christ.

Loving God with our heart is a beginning step for all the rest. We give our lives to God, we make a lifetime commitment to living his way, and we begin to make decisions in ways that are consistent with what we know of God. The heart is not about feelings; it’s about our will, and trying to love God without committing our lives to him would be like me saying to Cathy, “I love you, but I’m not willing to give you all of me. I’ll check in now and again, and I’ll say nice things about you. You can have my money—well, some of it—and a little bit of my time—maybe an hour a week—but don’t expect me to make any significant changes in the way I live. I’ll call you if I need you.” What kind of a commitment is that? For lack of a better image, it’s dating with no long-term commitment, which only satisfies us for so long. It’s pretty shallow, and yet, isn’t that the way we often commit to God? I’ll give you a little bit of my money—whatever is left over—and I’ll give you an hour a week—if I can’t find anything else to do. That’s not loving God with our heart. That’s not worshipping and growing. Loving God involves giving our lives, our heart, everything we are. Do you love God with your heart?

Jesus says to love the Lord your God with all our heart, and all your soul. The word for “soul” in Luke is related to our word “psyche.” As the word suggests, “soul” is more than a floaty spirit that leaves our body after we die. The Hebrews equated “soul” with the breath of life God placed within us. It is tied to our affections, the things we love that shape us and mold us into who we are. To love God with all our soul means we seek to love those things and place ourselves in the path of those things that shape us into the people God wants us to be. It has to do with the way we respond to sin and temptation. It has to do with our willingness to give up the things in our life we know are not helping our relationship with God. What tempts us? Some folks talk about giving up things in the season of Lent, those forty days of preparation for Easter. But often the things we give up are things that aren’t all that tempting to us. When I was in seminary, every year I tried to give up homework for Lent; the professors didn’t seem to think that was a very good idea! The idea behind that practice is to give up something that is hindering our walk with God, our love for God. It’s easy to give up things that aren’t really tempting to us. Where we really develop a love for God is when we give up or choose to walk by the things that are tempting, the things that will interfere with our love for God.

A while back, I read a wonderful book called Have a Little Faith, which tells the story of Henry, a drug addict who had ruined his life and nearly gotten his wife and daughter killed because of his addiction. One night, hiding in the bushes, afraid he would be shot at any moment, Henry cried out to God and told God that if he made it through the night, he would be a different man. True to his word, the next day, Henry began a journey that led him, eventually, to pastoring a broken-down church in a run-down neighborhood, ministering to those who were like he had once been. He didn’t make much, if any, money, and he knew he could have easily gone back to drug dealing and been very wealthy very quickly. But for Henry, loving God with his soul, overcoming his greatest temptation, meant helping others fight their own addictions. Nothing else mattered, because Henry loved God with all his soul. What tempts you? What threatens your soul, and are you willing to work against that temptation? Do you love God with all your soul?

Jesus says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Strength is pretty much what it sounds like—loving God with your abilities, your action, your might. This is the most obvious “doing” we carry out in our love of God. It’s finding practical ways to be Jesus in the world, through acts of service toward others. Things like what our youth did this past week in Kansas City, working with those in need. It’s giving your time to work at a food pantry or to serve in some way at the 14th & Chestnut Community Center. It’s those who gave time to work at the yard sale, or coaching Upward Sports, or going to Guatemala or Haiti. We also love God with our strength in simple, day-to-day ways as we take a meal to a neighbor, as we read a book to a child, as we visit someone who is homebound or in the hospital or nursing home. In countless ways every day we can love God with our strength by serving those whom God loves. Have you loved God with your strength?

Jesus says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind. Now, you might have noticed that this one is not in the Shema from Deuteronomy. Apparently, this was added through the centuries by the rabbis or other teachers and had become fairly well accepted by Jesus’ time. The mind refers to our understanding, to the things we know. John Wesley, the founder of Methdoism, in reading this verse, said we should love God “in the most wise and reasonable manner” we can (Notes). Our faith is not an unreasonable faith and our God is not a god who can’t be known. It’s no mistake that John describes Jesus as the “word” or logos, the “logic” of God. Faith in Jesus makes sense. So we seek to learn, to grow in our knowledge of God, and we do that through study, primarily of the Bible, God’s written word to us. If you’re not studying the Bible first, you’re only getting secondhand information at best. We try to offer a wide variety of study groups here at this church. We have Life Groups, and though some are taking a break for the summer, others have continued on and we’ll be doing a big push this fall to invite you to be a part of a Life group if you’re not already. There will also be Wednesday night BOOST classes this fall, along with our usual offering of Sunday School classes and other small groups for all ages. Each of them center in different ways around growing our love of God with our minds, studying the Scriptures and seeking to know them first. Again, hear the passion of our tradition through the words of John Wesley. In the introduction to his published sermons, Wesley said this: “I want to know one thing,—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be” a man of one book. Now, Wesley was widely read; he was rarely without a book to read. And yet, above all else, he wanted to know the Scriptures. How will you love God with your mind? If you’re not in a small group of some sort, if you’re not in a place where you can learn the Scriptures—more than just during Sunday morning worship—then how will you grow and how will you worship? Have you loved God with your mind?

Jesus says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. Taken together, heart, soul, strength and mind make up the whole of a person. Jesus says that, when we set out to love God, every part of our being is involved. There is no halfway love of God. There is no halfway worship. There is no “almost” growth. If we’re serious about being a church centered on worship and growth, we will be people who love God with everything we are. That is the primary thing that will set us apart from the rest of the world—we will be people who love God first and foremost, with everything that is within us. That’s why worship is so important to who we are. When we worship, we give our lives to God, putting him in first place in our lives—that’s heart. When we worship, we pray to be freed from sin and temptation—that’s soul. When we worship, we do physical things like singing, baptism, taking communion—that’s strength. And when we worship, we study God’s Scripture, hopefully learning a little something and growing a little bit each week—that’s mind. Heart, soul, strength and mind. Do you love God all the way? How will you continue to grow in your love of God?

This morning, as we come to the end of our time together, I want to ask you to, if you haven’t already, pull out the sermon study guide that’s in your bulletin. On the back side, there is a grid with four boxes labeled, “Heart, Soul, Strength, Mind.” And as we head toward prayer, I want to encourage you to pick one area in your life where you need to see your love for God increase. Mark that particular square, then, take a few moments and write a short prayer, asking God to increase your love for him in that area. Then I want to encourage you to take that prayer with you today as you leave and pray it each day this week. There’s nothing magical about it; the only thing that happens is it focuses you and reminds you of this needed area of growth in your life. And it will begin to open you up to God working in that area of your life. Writing about it in this moment means you won’t just forget about it when you walk out the doors this morning. So, we’re going to have some quiet music playing as you prayerfully consider where God is calling you to grow in your love for him this week. How will you love God more this week than last? Let’s spend some time in quiet and then, after a few moments, I’ll pray for all of us.