November 2, 2003 - All Saints-All Souls Sunday
Ruth 1:1-18
NRSVKJV
Mark12: 28-34
“Never Far From the Kingdom”
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
I suppose if we were to take a poll most of us would say that we believe that we’re close to God’s kingdom. Answering in that fashion would place us in line with just about everyone else in the United States. According to a number of Gallup polls, the United States is among the most religious nations on the face of the earth. Almost 90 per cent of the American people say that they have a belief in God and average church attendance is supposed to be around 30 per cent of the nation’s population on any given Sunday – give or take a sporting event or two. What the pollsters have discovered goes along with what Sidney Mead, the eminent scholar of American religion said, “America is the nation with the soul a church.” I suppose I could go off on that point, but suffice it to say that as a people we believe that we are never far from the kingdom. However, the goal isn’t to be close to it, the goal is to be in the kingdom.
When the scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is first of all?” I’m not so sure he knew exactly what he was getting himself into. Jesus had been debating with the temple authorities and this scribe gets himself right into the middle of it. Interestingly enough, this is the only place in the Gospels where the interaction between Jesus and a scribe is positive. Jesus answers his question and then adds to it, he gives him far more information that he asked – now you know were I get it, I’ve just been imitation Jesus. Jesus not only tells him the greatest commandment, beginning with the Shema, “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart; with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” he adds to it. Internally, he adds “with all your mind,” a concept that has been an important part of the Congregational Way from its inception. It’s important to us that we be a thinking people, as well as a believing people. Remember the old saying about why the doors of Congregational meeting houses were built so tall? They were made that way to remind us that we could bring our heads in along with our hearts. Then Jesus adds the second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The answers Jesus gives aren’t really new, but combining them into a single moral precept appears, according to scholars, to be original with Jesus. So the scribe wants a summary of the Law and he gets it, and in a challenging way.
Mark then shows us that the scribe wants to continue the conversation – Jesus is a worthy dialogue partner. So he adds some commentary to what Jesus said and Jesus appreciates his wisdom. I can just imagine Jesus thinking to himself, “Finally, someone gets it!” In fact, he gets it so well that the scribe undercuts the sacrificial system when he says, “this is much more important that all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” What is important is relationship. That was the whole point that brought Israel together – God had entered into covenant with this people. Ritual exists only to remind and to refresh the relationship, what drives it, however, is the faithful adherence to God’s will – which is to live in loving relationship.
At root, God’s will has to do with our relationships to God and to one another. You can’t separate these relationships – to love God means to love that which has been created in God’s image. The dynamics of human existence and everyday, ordinary activities that build our relationships with one another are tied in with how we relate to God. Someone has said, and I agree, “Right ritual can never take the place of loving relationships.” You can go through all the motion of worship, but if it isn’t lived out in the way we care for God’s people then it is empty.
Augustine would summarize Jesus’ summary of the Law in this way – “Love and do what you will.” The essence of what he says is in the first word – love. If we love as God has shown love for us in Christ, the “do what you will” will only be for the good of others. Jesus didn’t just talk about loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength, nor did he just talk about loving our neighbors as ourselves. No, he put flesh on his words and lived them out in the course of his own life. Mark’s Gospel, especially the events leading up to and then through the Passion, shows us what it means to love God and to love our neighbor with all that we are. Jesus’ teachings and the way in which he lives his life present the central tenets of true religion – being in relationship with God and with one another. Jesus shows us that true faith, true religion, is more than mere ‘belief’ or intellectual assent to a series of propositions. In his own person Jesus combines knowledge and life-style to demonstrate to us what one commentator has called “divine facts and acts” in proper combination.
Jesus had an ancestor who modeled that same level of commitment to loving God and loving neighbor; her name was Ruth. As we heard this morning, Ruth was from Moab. She wasn’t a Jew; she’d married into the religion. When her mother-in-law was heading back to Judah, she could have stayed among her own people and returned to her own faith – she didn’t. She was committed to her mother-in-law and even though she had nothing to gain and everything to lose, she went with her. There’s a reason why Ruth is held up by both Jews and Christians as a model of faith, she entered into a relationship and was going to honor it whatever the cost.
Ruth’s words to Naomi are, almost ironically, popular at weddings. They are appropriate for a man and a woman, but they are also equally appropriate for a community of faith. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried.” Her declaration and subsequent oath, “May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you,” turns the rumor of God’s activity into a reality. God’s love in Ruth leads her to a new land and through her would come David and from David’s house would come the Messiah. Ruth does what she does not from duty, but from love and all true religious commitment must have the same source. Ruth’s willingness to love brought her into God’s kingdom and through her it was brought close to us all.
On this Sunday we commemorate All Saints and All Souls it is appropriate to give thought to what brings the kingdom near and the commitment that leads us into it. Jaroslav Pelikan, one of my scholarly heroes, has said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” What I hope we celebrate and model here at First Church is the former and not the latter. We stand in a rich lineage, we have a wonderful tradition, but it is only wonderful, only rich if it is passed on, if it is lived out, and if it makes a difference in our community.
The scribe answered well, wisely even, and Jesus admired him. We don’t know, however, if his words ever became actions. The end of Ruth’s story is known to us and we know, too, that her words turned into deeds; her faith became action. What will it be for us? Answers to a poll hardly suffice, do they? “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” but are you ready to enter it?
We are never far from the kingdom if we realize that the kingdom of God is not a place, but a person; not a what, but a who. To be in the kingdom is to be in relationship with the living God through the living Christ and then to simply live that relationship. Those of us who have entered into covenant relationship with this church have said that we commit ourselves to the worship and service of God, to growth in the knowledge and expression of our faith, to treat each other with love and understanding, to reach out with compassion to those in need, and to return to God a portion of God’s gifts. There is the roadmap, the plan of action that won’t just take us close to the kingdom; it will take us into it – if we move from words to deeds. “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Now, go on and enter it.