It’s great to be back with you again after being on vacation for two weeks. I was so thankful to have such great people in our community to share to their gifts with our congregation. I had a very pleasurable evening this week sitting in Starbucks (now that’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?!) with my headphones on, listening to Jeff Van Duzer’s and Tim Dearborn’s sermons. Really wonderful.

You probably don’t know what happens to me when I go on vacation for two weeks to Whidbey Island. First, I tend to exhaust myself just getting out of town. Inevitably, all sorts of unusual things come up that last week, and I’m returning calls and sorting things out until the very last minute. Particularly this year.

I get to Whidbey, and sit on the beach and spend the first couple of days a little numb and dazed. I seem a little out of touch with God.

Then, I get some sleep and exercise and sun, and my brain starts to work again, and I start coming up with thoughts about the things going on here at Bethany, things that need attention. I start coming up with lists of things I should do. In fact, I start coming up with lists of things some of you should be doing here!

Then I get more sleep and exercise and sun…and I start to relax. I take long bike rides down little country roads. The to-do lists start to drop away. I do some reading. God seems much nearer. I find myself noticing how beautiful God’s creation is. I start pondering whether South Whidbey needs a Presbyterian Church! I see the way the Big Dipper suddenly appears in the night sky. I love to see the silhouette of trees on the bluff at sunset. I notice the birds. Bald eagles swooping across the sky, red-winged blackbirds chirping in the wetlands.

And the osprey. An osprey is a beautiful, large bird of prey that at first looks like an eagle until they fly right over you, and you notice the spotted underbelly and smaller body. They come down to fish at the beach, soaring majestically along the surf. I could watch them for hours.

I’m going to come back to the osprey in a few minutes. But I first want to give you the context for this passage we just read. In the gospel of Mark, when Jesus comes into Jerusalem on what we think of as Palm Sunday, the first thing he does is forcefully clear the temple, chasing out the moneychangers and dove-sellers and others who would impede the honest worship of people. This, of course, wins Jesus no points at all with the priests or the teachers of the law. And so they begin to look for ways to trap Jesus.

They ask him four important questions, questions which in fact we still wrestle with today. They might be broken down like this:

• a question about the identity and authority of Jesus…who is he to do such things?
• a sociopolitical question: should the people pay taxes to Rome, the occupying power?
• a question about the details of life after death…how much can be known?
• a scriptural question…which is the greatest commandment?

This final one seems to be the only one asked by someone who sincerely wants to dialogue with Jesus. It is a question hotly debated by the scholars of Jesus’ day. It’s been noted many times that by Jesus’ time scholars had counted 613 commandments in the Law: 248 positive, 365 negative. An overwhelming amount of do’s and don’ts.

Which should be emphasized?

Was there some lens through which to look at these that would help a person avoid being totally overwhelmed by things to do? It’s not a dead issue, by the way. Are we not besieged, not perhaps by laws, but by opportunities and causes and demands on our time that often have us living like gerbils running and running around the wheel but getting nowhere? Is there some lens that could help us focus?

Jesus doesn’t hesitate.

“The most important one, is 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 mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

What Jesus does here is quote what is known as “The Shema” from the book of Deuteronomy. In Hebrew, Shema means “Hear,” and so where it says, “Hear O Israel…,” it has become known as simply The Shema.

“Hear O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God…”

An observant Jewish person over all these centuries and today… would pray these words every morning and every evening.

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 mind and with all your strength.

Can you imagine what would happen if you were reminded of this every morning and every evening?

Jesus, of course, cheats here by giving not one commandment, but two.

“The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself,”

which comes from the book of Leviticus. He was asked for one; he refuses to give the first without the second.

Now, personally I find this to be one of the most profound passages in all of the gospel. And we could spend a long time talking about it. A long time. We could think about why so very, very many places in the New Testament talk about God loving people…and why only a couple talk about people loving God. The message of the New Testament is God’s love for us…the natural response back is for us to love God.

We could talk about the different pieces of loving God:

• the heart (emotions),
• the soul (spirit),
• the mind (intelligence),
• the strength (our will).

We could talk about how important Jesus’ answer really is. If we could raise our children with a simple philosophy, you could do far worse than striving for them to love God and love the people around them. I have prayed that for our kids since before they were born, and I pray it for the children of this community as they come for baptism.

We could talk about how Jesus refuses to unhook loving God from loving people. Christians have fought bitterly for centuries over just such a division…do we love God by evangelizing others, meeting spiritual need, or do we love God and people by working for social justice, meeting physical needs. Are we an evangelical church or a social action church? Which is better? Jesus refuses to unhook them.

We could talk about why the first commandment listed is to love God, and how loving people follows as the second. I think that it is only as we respond in love to the patience and forgiveness God has for us…that we are able to love others.

But as I sat on the beach at Whidbey and biked those little roads and watched those osprey, what the Lord stuck on my mind that I haven’t been able to get out for a couple of weeks now was something different. It’s just this little word all.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

All means whole, complete, entirely, altogether.

Love the Lord with everything you have. Hold nothing back. And if the God revealed in Jesus Christ that you have come to know, if the Jesus Christ whom you know forgives you and loves you and wants the best for you stood before you here and now and said to you: Are you loving me with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength? What would you say?

What would you say? I’ll tell you what I said. I said…no. No, I’m not.

I asked 10-12 people this week who I know love Jesus, whose faith I admire, who have walked with God for some time. I said, “Are you loving God with everything you have, holding nothing back?” And to a person, without any hesitation they all said “No.” And then they would begin to talk about a number of different things.

Some said, “You know, I just don’t get it. I make time for so many things in my life. I get my exercise, we see friends, I can surf the Internet for hours, we drive the kids all over to soccer… but I can’t seem to find time to pursue God. I don’t read my Bible. I don’t really pray.”

Some said, “You know, it’s not like I don’t still believe or something…but you know, work is busy and just really consumes me right now.”

Some thought of an area of their life that was clearly being held back from God, like their thought life or finances. Some said, “I’m looking for balance in my life and I can’t find it.”

When I heard God’s voice to me, Are you loving me with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength? I had to say no. I had to say no because I so often hold back. I’m too cautious. If I’m not sure God will answer the cry of my heart, I ask for less. When things are difficult, I first try to just fix them all and then look for God later. I try to lead this very balanced life when in fact it seems that Jesus talks far more about living and loving with abandon, with unbalance.

I usually give out of my excess, not out of sacrifice or joyful obedience. I’m busy just putting my toe in the water, checking it out and as I sat there on the beach it felt like God said, “When are you going to jump in? Full body?”

Brennan Manning once wrote:

“My Jesus will never say to me, ‘You asked too much, you trusted me too far, you loved beyond all reasonable limits.’ No, my Jesus would never say that.”

Those osprey…they are amazing to watch. They glide about forty or fifty feet up in the air above the water, and they watch…razor-sharp eyes. They circle and look, circle and look, checking it out. And then all of the sudden, they pump their wings a couple times, fold them in tight to their body and do an absolute kamikaze nose-dive. The Olympic diving champions you have been watching cannot hold a candle to these osprey.

They go straight down, 40-50 feet, falling like a rock, and they hit the water like a kid doing a cannonball off the high dive, and they go all the way under the water, you hear them hit and then you can’t seem them, they are totally submerged, trying to grab their lunch selection as it swims by. Hold nothing back.

Are you loving me with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength? I’m not bringing this up so that you or I feel guilty. I’m bringing it up because it’s the question the Lord won’t let me leave alone with. I’m bringing it up to remind you…of who you are. Of who you want to be.

I did a memorial service this week, Susan Allington’s mother…dear Christian lady who knew Jesus well. But I’m always reminded in gathering around a grave with a family: Our time is short. It really is. We just don’t know. What do I really want to be about?

Love the Lord your God…

So what to do? How does someone cultivate a love for God? Time, prayer, worship, confession, scripture. Of course all the spiritual disciplines are helpful if they cultivate a love for God…rather than a guilty conscience. But I wasn’t thinking so much of a “how to” list. What will help us love God with all we have? Two things:

1. Get around others who want the same thing. In my conversations this week with people, as I shared this question that I think Jesus is asking us, I couldn’t help but notice. Just putting the question out there and starting the conversation, in every case…something happened. Something was different.

Suddenly we weren’t talking about the weather, or the news or the house or the kids. We were talking about this fundamental question of who we are…and maybe in wrestling with how to answer it, sweeping some dirt and cobwebs away from something that used to be pretty clear. And being reminded that we belong to God, first and foremost. Being reminded that at some point in our life, we responded and said, “Jesus, I’ll do anything for you.” We have to be around others who will hold us to this question.

2. Be reminded of God’s love for you. That can happen in the reading of scripture, in worship, in prayer, in conversation. It is the gospel, friends. God’s coming in Jesus Christ had you as a target, and his promise to never leave or forsake us applies to you.

Christ’s crucifixion, death and resurrection show the evidence of a forgiveness and a power to live in ways that are utterly foreign to us. And every time we catch a glimpse of it, it calls forth our response, our love for God, it knocks us over…and sends us out more able to love the wonderful, needy, unique, stubborn people who are all around us. When we are turned towards God, we are more able to

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

When Jesus listened to the teacher of the Law say that the double commandment to love was more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices, he was pleased with him. And Jesus said to him,

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Now wait a minute. Who was talking about the kingdom of God? Actually, Jesus was. And he still is. Are you loving the Lord your God…with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your strength?

Let’s pray.