"What if we completely trusted God?" (Final sermon of "What if...?" Series at FBCW)

Mark 12:28-34

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" 29 Jesus answered, "The first is, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 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.' 31 The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." 32 Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that "he is one, and besides him there is no other'; 33 and "to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and "to love one's neighbor as oneself,'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

            I can remember being fifteen years old, looking forward to turning sixteen. I can remember daydreaming about driving, alone, on some endless highway that led to anywhere but where I was. I remember believing that once I received my driver’s license I’d be a free man, able to go and do whatever I pleased, able to get away, and there was even a thought residing somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind that I’d be able to run away, leave it all behind me if I felt like I’d had enough. I distinctly remember that feeling when I was fifteen…then I turned sixteen.

            Unlike most kids, I wasn’t checked out of school on my birthday, taken down to the driver’s license office in New Brockton, Alabama, given the on-road driving test, and (hopefully) my license. No, it was a couple of months after my birthday, whenever there was the time and the few extra dollars for me to take the test. I remember, after getting my license—after driving on my own for a few days, weeks, and months—I remember this feeling of almost being let down. After all, the world kept on spinning; I kept on going to school; life trudged right on virtually unchanged. So I went from looking forward to turning sixteen, to looking forward to turning eighteen and graduating high school.

            Of course, I had a similar experience when I graduated from high school. You see, no one told me that everyone else just carried right on with life as if the world wasn’t all that different. No one bothered to tell me that “the real world” was pretty boring, that the cyclical ebb and flow of work-pay bills-work was monotonous and potentially draining. So when I decided to go to college after working for a year and a half, I started dreaming about the day I graduated from college…then it was the day I got married…the day we’d move to Texas…the day I’d graduate from seminary…the day I’d get a full-time pastorate…the day we’d buy a house…the day we’d have a child…the day we’d pay off student loans...these days I catch myself dreaming at times about the day I’ll (hopefully) retire! I can look back over my thirty-three years and see places where I was certain that, once I had reached such a milestone, life would really begin; that is, my dreams and visions about what life would be like would start to come true.

The truth, however, is that once I had reached whatever age, goal, or accomplishment nothing really seemed to dramatically change. Life as a “college graduate” wasn’t too terribly different from being a “college student.” Life as a “homeowner” wasn’t all that different from being a “home-renter.” The sun had not changed its course across the sky nor had the grass ceased to grow; life continued on.

Now, when I first realized this, I have to tell you, it depressed me a bit: to think that my dreams and visions of what I wanted for my life didn’t come instantly or even quickly true with the achievement of goals and coming of age. It bothered me to think that life was like a bad, used-car deal, promising me the price on the windshield, but once I committed and started to sign the paperwork I was going to have to pay a lot more for a lot longer and likely wind up with a lot less than I had hoped. At first, it troubled me, led me to the brink of nihilism, believing that life was nearly meaningless, without purpose, only a repetitious rhythm of hopes and dreams followed by their dull fulfilment that only left another hope or dream in its wake. But then, something within me (or maybe outside of me, around me, within everything) began to change…

Now, I imagine there are a number of folks (perhaps you) who have had these sort of “build-up/let-down” experiences when it comes to a life of faith. Maybe you’ve decided to dig yourself out of a rut, to get yourself together, to make a few changes in your life, and you’ve decided it’ll start by “getting right with the Lord.” Ok, great! So what does that look like? Well, I imagine you might start by trying to “get back in church” as they say, so you come to church for a few Sundays, maybe you find yourself enjoying the company, the music, the chance to be with other folks, but after a while you notice that you don’t feel like you’ve reached that spiritual place that Oprah may have told you about, so you decide that you need to take another step—you’ll go to Sunday school, but that doesn’t quite scratch your itch. You go to mid-week prayer meeting and Bible study, but that doesn’t quite get you where you thought you’d be either, so you commit to praying every morning, reading your bible before bed, only listening to Christian music, and finally (and it’s almost always towards the end) you decide to regularly give your money to a church or a religious non-profit, but even then you still feel like you’ve been unwrapped a gift only to find another wrapped gift inside—I mean, it’s nice, but not what you had hoped for or expected. For some (maybe you), a life of faith can start to have that feeling of a repetitious rhythm of hopes and dreams followed by their dull fulfilment that only leaves another hope or dream in its wake.
            I’d like to think that sort of feeling may have been what drove some of these folks who are always questioning Jesus in the gospels, folks like this scribe we’ve met in Mark’s gospel this morning. Maybe they were always seeking to catch Jesus in a moment of theological contradiction; maybe they were always seeking to catch him off guard, seeking to trip him up so he’d say something to get him in trouble with the feds; maybe they were seeking to trap him in a confession of heresy, or—maybe—they were just seeking, trying (as we all do) to understand life, God, and our place in all of this. Maybe they had lived their lives from one expectation to the next: first it was celebrating feasts and holy days, then regular temple worship, sacrifices, and Torah reading, then more serious vows, vocational commitments as scribes. And with each next “step,” with each new expectation replacing the one before it, they had come to a place where life seemed little more than a list of what to do and not to do, a list of goals, boxes to check on the way towards old age and whatever reward was waiting on the other side of the grave. Why, I can almost hear a tone of exasperation in this scribe’s voice when he asks Jesus, "Which commandment is the first of all?"

I suppose he was looking for a final answer, some ultimate bullet point on his list of dos and don’ts. Perhaps he was hoping Jesus would give some clarification, but Jesus (as Jesus tends to do) gives him an answer that cannot be boiled down to a few mechanical actions, a few items on a checklist: "The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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.' The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." This is really “old hat” for Jesus, not a surprising answer from him for anyone who’s read the gospels or the whole of the Scriptures, really. “Love God…and your neighbor as yourself: that’s it,” Jesus says. But let me ask you something: how do you know when you’ve loved God or your neighbor? Now, I don’t mean how can you show love to God or your neighbor—that’s not the same question. What I mean is, how do you know when you’ve arrived at the point where you’ve fully, completely loved God and your neighbor?

Let me ask a different question. How do you know when you’ve loved your spouse, your parent, or your child? Do you wake up one morning and declare: “Husband of mine, it has become clear that I love you, so from here on out, I’m moving on to other things while you bask in the knowledge of my love. Tootles.” Do you hug your daughter’s neck at her wedding and say to her, “You know I love you, so now you’re on your own with him!”? Do you kiss your mother or father on the forehead as you walk out of the door to their room in the nursing home and say, “I love you, so I’ll see you when we get to heaven!”? Of course not! Love isn’t an accomplishment, an achievement that is won one day forever and always. In fact, I find it grammatically abhorrent that we ever use the word “love” as a noun, as if it can be something grasped, held on to, fully defined and mastered—love is a verb, a word we use to desperately describe this eternally magnificent power. Love isn’t something we can tie up in a nice little bow, define with clear boundaries, or draw a circle around to show what is and what isn’t love.

Love is this ever-onward call from God—perhaps the very essence of God—that draws us deeper into the eternal mystery that is God, a call that draws us always closer to one another. It’s one thing today and something completely different the next. Don’t believe me? Then why is it the thing that drives me mad, make me crazy, leads me to pulling my hair out today, can be the very same thing Kohl does tomorrow that makes me stop and laugh and get caught up in the pure joy of his presence? Why is that one day the best thing I can do for someone I love is to not pick up the phone, to let them learn their lesson, fall one more time, yet the next day, the most loving thing I can do is pick up the phone and let them lie to me about how this will be the last time? Love isn’t an accomplishment; it isn’t a clearly defined action; love isn’t something that I can do fully, and that is why it is always calling me on.
            Did you notice the way Jesus ends this conversation with the scribe? "You are not far from the kingdom of God." “Not far?” What does that mean? You know, I used to think Jesus meant that this guy still had some things to learn, some skills to master, some confession to make, and then—then he’d be “in,” then he wouldn’t be “not far,” but all up in it. But the scribe tells Jesus, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and ‘to love one's neighbor as oneself,'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” This scribe agrees with Jesus! He believes the right things. So why is he “not far from the kingdom of God” rather than in it? Well, is there anything more we can hope for (on this side of eternity at least) than to be “not far from the kingdom of God?” I mean, is there anyone who’s done it, anyone still walking this earth who has managed to get the all-access pass to come and go in the fullness of God’s kingdom? Or are we all, people of faith, hoping to be closer—a little less “not far”—today than we were yesterday?

Can I tell you something friends? This, I believe, is what it means to trust God. It’s not about crossing our fingers and hoping the odds are in our favor. It isn’t about praying for rain and hoping the clouds come. It’s about giving of ourselves to God and one another knowing that the sun will come up tomorrow and we’ll be called to do it again. It’s about the unending, eternal call to love, to love God and our neighbor. It’s about trusting that so long as we are pursuing love, so long as our actions are brought forth from a deep conviction of love, that God is with us. It’s about trusting God enough to love someone, especially when we think they’re wrong; it’s about trusting God enough to love someone even when they may not love us back; it’s about trusting God enough to know that we are “not far from the kingdom of God” today, and as long as we pursue God’s call to love, we’ll be a little closer tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that…

As a church, we trust God as we pursue a life lived in the fullness of love for God and each other, as we pursue an unseen future, trusting that, as long as we give more of ourselves each day, as long as we give more of ourselves out of love for God and our neighbors, as long as we give more of who we are so that God may show us and the rest of the world more of who God is. That’s what I believe it means to trust God, to seek a life lived in selfless love for God and others, without ever coming to a place where I believe I’ve got it made, figured out, without ever succumbing to the self-righteous notion that I have it all figured out. That’s what it means to trust God, to recklessly pursue God’s kingdom as one who is “not far from [it].” So, church, what if…we fully trusted God? Amen.