SERMON SERIES FOR LENT

Not Far From the Kingdom of God

Mark 12: 28-31

Pastor Robyn Hogue March 16, 2014 Skyline Presbyterian Church

I have permission to tell you about a couple I knew in my former church but only if I change their names. So, I’m going to tell you about a wonderful woman I will now call “Mary” and her husband whom I will now call “Mark.” Mary was 64 years old when the doctors diagnosed terminal cancer. She was in and out of the hospital several times receiving her treatments, and each time she seemed to be a little weaker than the time before.

Mary was married to one of the roughest Army veterans I have ever met. He was a big, burly man, and one look at him told you that in his younger days, he was the kind of fellow who didn’t step aside for anyone. However, around Mary, he was tender and gentle. Every time she was hospitalized, Mark practically camped out at the hospital. He would arrive early and stay late.

It was obvious that 42 years of marriage had created a bond, a palpable closeness between the two. Mary summed it up one day when she said, “Although we were not blessed with children, we were blessed with each other.”

As Mark put it, “Mary was the religious one in the family.” She had grown up going to church and when she wasn’t too weak or too nauseated from her treatments, she still asked Mark take her to church. Mark had never been much of a church-goer, but he was willing to take Mary when she felt up to attending. On one occasion, she said, “The only thing good to come out of my illness is that I’m finally getting Mark to church.”

Mark couldn’t understand why Mary, who had lived such a good life, had to suffer. But, little by little, his attitude began to change. One day he looked at me and said, “Robyn, there seems to be a lot of rules to follow and a lot of beliefs to comprehend. Can you make it simple? Can you give me a thumbnail sketch that will explain religion in a nutshell?”

How can you explain the beliefs and the doctrines of our faith concisely? Other than just making a long series of statements, how can anyone possibly deal with the complex and essential doctrines of following Jesus in brief? I could recite one of the creeds, like The Apostles’ Creed, and say this is what we believe. As a matter of fact, the early creeds came into existence because people were trying to give a short statement of what was important in religion.

However, as I remember it, I thought the creeds might be a little too much for Mark to digest and understand. So, I said, “Mark, you have asked a very good question. It is a question that people have asked for centuries. In fact, it was a question that was put to Jesus. So, the best response I could give to you is to tell you what Jesus said. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength ... and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Mark must have understood it because even after Mary’s passing he continued to go to church and when I bumped into him in a grocery aisle a few years ago, he told me that he got baptized soon after I came here to Skyline.

We live in a world that is complicated in many ways. But, the response Jesus gave to the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” is still clear and uncomplicated. For Jesus, religion in a nutshell was: Loving God with an undivided heart and proving it by looking out for others as much as you look out for yourself.

When Jesus was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment?” He quoted from a familiar Hebrew text Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. You shall love the Lord thy God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

This is the basic creed of the Jewish people. It is the first scripture that every Jewish child commits to memory. It is the first sentence with which a service of worship begins in every Jewish synagogue. It is the phrase which the devout Jew wore on a leather bracelet when going to prayer. When Jesus quoted this phrase as the greatest commandment, the Jews listening to Him were nodding their heads in agreement. They knew these words meant that we must give our total love to God.

When we’re trying to form a clear and concise explanation of our faith, this is where we start—with loving God. I wouldn’t know where else to begin. Belief in and love of God are the foundations in any religion, certainly in Christianity.

Frank Lloyd Wright is among the most innovative architects this county has produced. But his fame isn't limited to the United States. In the early 1900s Japan asked Wright to design a hotel for Tokyo that would be capable of surviving an earthquake. When the architect visited Japan to see where the Imperial Hotel was to be built, he was appalled to find that eight feet below the surface there was 60 feet of soft clay. A lesser architect probably would have given up right there, but not Frank Lloyd Wright. Since the hotel was going to rest on viscous ground, Wright decided to incorporate features that would allow the hotel to ride out the shock without damage. Supports were sunk into the soft mud, and sections of the foundation were cantilevered from the supports. The rooms were built in sections like a train and hinged together. Water pipes and electric lines, usually the first to shear off in an earthquake, were hung in vertical shafts where they could sway freely if necessary. Wright knew that the major cause of destruction after an earthquake was fire, because water lines are apt to be broken in the ground and there is no way to put the fire out. So he insisted on a large outdoor pool in the courtyard of his hotel, “just in case.”

On September 1, 1923, Tokyo had the greatest earthquake in its history. There were fires all over the city, and 140,000 people died. Back in the U.S., news reports were slow coming in. One newspaper wanted to print the story that the Imperial Hotel had been destroyed, as rumor had it. But when a reporter phoned Frank Lloyd Wright, he said that they could print the story if they wished, but they would only have to retract it later. He knew the hotel would not collapse.

Shortly afterward, Wright got a telegram from Japan. The Imperial Hotel had survived the earthquake. Not only that, it had provided a home for hundreds of people. And when fires that raged all around the hotel threatened to spread, bucket brigades kept the structure wetted down with water from the hotel’s pool.

Every structure is tested. The difference is not in the weather; it is in the foundation upon which the structure is anchored. Every life is tested. Christianity in a nutshell begins with a foundation that will help absorb some of the shocks of life. Belief in and love for God form the foundation which enables us to absorb life’s most dreadful shocks.

Christianity also affirms that we are to love our neighbor. After Jesus quoted the scripture as the greatest commandment, He said, The second most important commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these two.” (Mark 12:31)

This is also a quote from the Old Testament. It comes from Leviticus 19:18 and in its original context it had to do with other Jews. But, Jesus took the old law and widened its meaning to include all people, Jew and non-Jew alike.

This broader meaning was a revolutionary idea for Jesus to advocate. He was saying that our love for God must issue in love for others. After all, how can we love God unless we demonstrate it in the way we treat other people?

When I was at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey, I worked as a student pastor with Presbyterian pastor, Rev. Michael O’Brien. Michael had been raised Catholic and even while he was in seminary he preferred to wear the clerical collar that we typically associate with the priesthood.

While he was in school, he was also pastoring a church in the heart of Newark, New Jersey. If you want to visualize urban blight, poverty and hunger, all you have to do is to take a trip along the streets of Newark.

On one occasion, Michael heard that a family in the neighborhood was hungry. Because of a bureaucratic foul-up, a mother with five small children had no food and no hope of getting any until the end of the month.

Although the family was not part of his congregation, Michael O’Brien went to the grocery store and bought a supply of groceries. He went to the apartment building where the family lived. After carrying the groceries up four flights of stairs and walking down a long hall, he came to the apartment. He rang the doorbell, and a little boy about seven years old answered the door. He looked at Michael O’Brien’s clerical collar and the sacks of groceries, and then yelled to his mother: “Mama, Mama, come quick. Jesus brought us some food!”

In re-telling that incident, Michael said, “I will never forget that child’s comment. At that moment, I realized that I was the Christ for a hungry child.”

If we are to be the neighbors that God calls us to be, then we will need to show it. The opportunities are almost endless in every neighborhood…even yours. There are dozens and dozens of ways for us, if we are willing, to demonstrate that we look out for others as much as we look out for ourselves. Christianity in a nutshell means that we really are expected to be “Jesus” to our neighbors.

When Christopher Columbus saw leaves and branches floating on the sea during his perilous journey to what he would call “The New World,” he knew he was drawing close to another world. Likewise whenever we are able to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to show it in the way we love other people, then others will see that they are not far from the Kingdom of God.

Jesus makes it so very clear. The question is: What we will we do about it?