Sermon delivered October 3, 2010
Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Mark 12:29-31
The Shema, the best known scripture passage in all Judaism, says that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and might. When we study the range of meaning for each of the three Hebrew words translated heart, soul, and might, we discover that we could make the case that “mind” is included under each of the three words. It is clear that Moses, speaking for God, intended that this command engage the mind for he commanded that his readers/hearers teach these words to their children and that they talk of them at home and in the street, when they go to bed, and when they rise—and further that they should wear the words on their hands and foreheads and post them by their gates and doors. These words were to be the subject of a great deal of mental activity.
Even so, when Jesus reports these words, he expands them by inserting the phrase, “and with all your mind.” Jesus did not want us to miss what was already implied, that we are to focus our minds on loving God.
Why was Jesus so insistent on our loving God with our minds that he inserted the phrase, “and with all your mind” in the best known passage in Judaism?
Jesus is calling us to take our places in the great story, the story of God’s redeeming love for the children of this world, and he knew that we cannot take our places in that story and keep our faith through the tough times unless we understand the story. Loving God with all our minds means taking time to understand the great story. It is a mental activity that runs counter to all our day-to-day instincts and yet points to the fulfillment of our very deepest and best instincts. If we do not fully engage our minds with the great story, we will not get in the right story, we will not stick with the story to the victorious end, and we will not have the joy of becoming more than we can make of ourselves, becoming what only God can make of us as we live out our part in the story.
If being part of Christ’s church means to us that we are simply maintaining a small town institution where we see our friends and relatives, where we organize to do some good deeds, where we sing familiar songs and enjoy the comfort of familiar rituals, we will probably never discover what it is to become part of the great story, even though the songs and rituals are precisely about that great story.
Jesus wants more for us, far more for us than that. He wants us to find our place in the great story of redeeming love. He knows that we will not do that unless we engage our minds in the study of the Bible, unless we learn to see the threads that run from beginning to end of the Bible setting forth our calling.
That is why, in the forty days between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus devoted significant time to teaching the disciples to see his story and their story in all the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the prophets.
We need to be obsessed with that story, not as an end in itself, but as providing us with what we need to find our way and to stay on our way.
An important part of what loving God with all our minds means is taking time and energy to know the great story.
We need to know that we are called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy people, that we are baptized/immersed in Christ to follow Jesus the Royal Son of God, the Suffering Servant, the Ultimate Victor, to be ourselves royal children being restored to God’s image, self-giving servants showing Jesus’ costly live, connected even now to his ultimate victory, to form ourselves together as portable living temples of the Holy Spirit through which all kinds of people can encounter that living God, discover his power to answer prayer, and be covered by his gracious forgiveness, to accept our mission of bringing a new, creative Christian jubilee to our neighbors, a restoring of their hope that life can be better. The threads of our calling run all through the Bible. We need to know those threads and other major threads so that we can energetically and purposefully pursue them with discipline and focus.
I believe that loving God with all our minds means that we stop being so mentally lazy and start taking Bible study much more seriously.
Some of my favorite fiction was written by J. R. R. Tolkien, who by the way was a Christian and a Bible scholar as well as a fantasy writer. Tolkien’s story The Hobbit is a favorite with children, but the lengthy Lord of the Rings trilogy that follows, aimed at a bit more mature audience, is the greater work by far. Many of you who have not read the books have seen the movies, but it is far easier to miss the Christian themes in the movies; I doubt that the director understood them. To make matters short, all that is good in the Third Age of Middle Earth is threatened by the rise of the tyrant Sauron, Lord of the evil realm of Mordor. A more-or-less good hobbit named Bilbo Baggins had acquired a magic ring from a perverted hobbit, decadent beyond recognition as a hobbit, named Gollum, and had passed the ring on to his nephew Frodo Baggins. It turned out that the ring was a ring of power that tended to corrupt its owner, but that must be kept at all costs out of the hands of the evil Sauron. The only hope for the world was for the ring to be destroyed, but that could only be done by carrying the ring back into Sauron’s dark and threatening realm and casting it into the Cracks of Doom. The job fell to Frodo and his gardener Samwise Gamgee, two little halflings against the evil ruler about to conquer the world. Have you ever been there? At a seeming dead end in a dark and lonely place with no apparent light of hope? If you know the big story, you know that when things are dark for the faithful, the last word has not yet been spoken.
As we now join them a bit past midway through the story, they are entering evil and dangerous Mordor, something like marching into hell, in the company of their crafty guide Gollum. Don’t worry if you don’t catch all the references. I still don’t, and I read the whole thing through every five to ten years.
In a dark crevice between two great piers of rock they sat down: Frodo and Sam a little way within, and Gollum crouched on the ground near the opening. There the hobbits took what they expected would be their last meal before they went down into the Nameless Land, maybe the last meal they would ever eat together. After discussing the problem of lack of water in that realm,
Frodo: “I don’t like anything here at all, step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air, and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”
Sam: “Yes, that’s so. And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually--their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on--and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it would call a good end. You know, a good end like coming home and finding things all right, though not quite the same--like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”
Frodo: “I wonder, but I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any tale that you’re fond of. You may know or guess what kind of tale it is, happy ending or sad ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”
Sam: “No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a darker danger than ours. But that’s a long tale of course, and goes on beyond happiness into grief and beyond it--and the Silmaril went on and came to Earindil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We’ve got--you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady Galadriel gave you! Why to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! We’re in the same tale still! It’s still going on. Don’t the great tales never end?”
Frodo: “No! They never end as tales, but the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later--or sooner.”
Sam: “And then we shall have some rest and some sleep [laughing grimly]. And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning’s work in the garden. I’m afraid that’s all I’m hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!’ And they’ll say: ‘Yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he, Dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.’”
Frodo: “It’s saying a lot too much.” [He laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again.] “Why, Sam, to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. ‘I want to hear more about Sam, Dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, Dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, Dad?’”
Sam: “Now, Mr. Frodo, you shouldn’t make fun. I was serious.”
Frodo: “So was I, Sam, and so I am. We’re going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point, ‘Shut the book now, Dad; we don’t want to read anymore.’”
Sam: “Maybe, but I wouldn’t be one to say that. Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he think’s he’s the hero or the villain. [then calling] “Gollum! Would you like to be the hero—[muttering] now where’s he got to again?”
How about you? Would you like to be the hero? Don’t go running away. Run right into the story, not Tolkien’s story, but God’s story, the story that goes from Genesis to Revelation. If you want to be part of that story, you start by loving the Lord with all your mind, and then immersing yourself in the story. You will never be the same again, but you’ll be glad beyond the telling of it…in the end.
Lord’s Supper meditation: Here at this table, as we receive the bread and the cup, as we remember Jesus, we can say with Sam, “Why to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! We’re in the same tale still! It’s still going on. Don’t the great tales never end?” No, they don’t, Sam, no, they don’t. Certainly not if we become immersed in Jesus and he becomes part of us! That’s why we were baptized once. That’s why we come to this table week by week…to connect ourselves to the great story that still goes on and that has a grand ending beyond our present darkness.
Children's Garden at Stark's Garden, Orange, Texas
Mr. McGregor's Garden
