SCRIPTURE: Mark 12:28 (TM) – larger reading Mark 12:28-34
One of the religion
scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and
seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which
is most important of all the commandments?"
STORY:
When
Irving S. Olds was chairman of the U.S. Steel Corporation, he arrived for a
stockholders' meeting and was confronted by a woman who asked, "Exactly
who are you and what do you do?" Without batting an eye, Olds replied,
"I am your chairman. Of course, you know the duties of a chairman--that's
someone who is roughly the equivalent of parsley on a platter of fish."
OBSERVATION:
When this section from Mark’s
gospel is dealt with we normally concentrate on the love stuff – love God and
love your neighbor. What caused me to pause this time around wasn’t the love
stuff or the emphasis on “commandments”, but those two simple words – “most
important”.
What is “most important” in
our life? What drives our agendas? What demands attention moment by moment?
What sets our priorities? What are the things that we are willing to die for?
“Most important” questions have the tendency for us to dig deeper and struggle
longer… or at least they should.
Our answer are normally the
expected religious responses until… There are things that can happen to us that
will cause us to stop what we are doing and reevaluate the “most important”
things in our life. Here we are trucking down the road thinking that we know
exactly what God wants us to do and BAM! brick wall… the answer is NO!... the
sand shifts beneath our feet… our world starts coming a part at the seams…
What is going on? We know
that God has called us to this particular junction in our life. We feel the
call. We sense the assurance. And then that old “brick wall” and it hurts
hitting it, especially when we didn’t see it and didn’t slow down before
hitting at full speed.
It is at this point we begin
to truly hear God asking … What is most important? We thought we had the
answers, but now we are only confused. Our spirit becomes disturbed. How could
the answer be “NO” when the call was so clear? Only as we sift through the
“most important” issues in our relationship with God that we can begin to
understand more completely the love issues in our relationship with God and
others.
And by the way the God/others
is not a “chicken/egg” problem – the more we love God the more we will love
others and the more we love others the more we will love God. This love stuff
happens at the same time. A good place to start with the “most important” issue
is listing out the individual(s) and groups of people that we really have
problems with. Until we clear those hurtles we are just kidding ourselves about
the religious love stuff.
These moments are
clarification moments. These moments are shaping moments. And, we actually
begin to hear God more clearly. In the realm of communication it is called
“feedback”. Okay, this is what I am hearing. Is that correct? This allows the
other person to clarify and/or sharpen the message so that we can hear it
better.
So as we struggle with the
“most important” issues of our God-relationship we are brought to a better
understanding about what it means to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind
and strength as well as loving others as we love ourselves.
And, by the way, the place to
start is to clarify the relationship we have with ourselves. Therein lies the
resurrection for us. Until we become healthy and accept responsibility for
ourselves nothing else matters, no matter how hard we work at clarifying the
most important issues in our life.
PRAYER:
God of grace and God of mercy
help us grow, help us clarify, help us work on our priorities and may we start
with ourselves until we sing the resurrection song!
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