{"id":206,"date":"2021-10-28T11:41:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T15:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/?p=206"},"modified":"2021-10-31T07:27:35","modified_gmt":"2021-10-31T11:27:35","slug":"proper-26-b-mark-12-28-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/2021\/10\/28\/proper-26-b-mark-12-28-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Proper 26 (B) – Mark 12: 28-34"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month of November, we\u2019re going to have a series of festival Sundays here at St Margaret\u2019s: Next Sunday will be All saints\u2019 Sunday, then we will celebrate St Margaret\u2019s on November 14th<\/sup>; the week after, November 21st<\/sup>, will be Christ the King which will finally lead us to the first Sunday in Advent on November 28th<\/sup>. After this Sunday, we will read from John\u2019s Gospel until we reach Advent when we will start a new liturgical year – Year C – reading through Luke\u2019s Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this Sunday is sort of an \u201cin between\u201d Sunday. This is actually the last time we hear from Mark\u2019s Gospel, and I find it very fitting that the last we hear is Jesus\u2019s summarizing all the Law with these commandments of loving God and loving neighbor. It\u2019s important to notice that it\u2019s not just a “memo” though, a flash card for good disciples before they take their exams \u2013 Jesus is in Jerusalem, living his last days on earth. Those words we hear today are actually Jesus\u2019s testimony, Jesus\u2019s last will. If you remember Jesus\u2019s farewell discourse in John\u2019s Gospel, well, this is where we are in the timeline. What takes John four chapters to present is here condensed in a few verses by Mark. We have studied in Chapter 10 how people came to Jesus asking \u201call the wrong questions\u201d until a blind man comes with the right disposition of heart. But you see, it\u2019s not over until it\u2019s over. After that, Jesus has many other encounters in Jerusalem with people asking him questions. But this time, in chapter 12, Mark puts a final dot. Our passage ends up with Mark concluding: \u201cAfter that, no one dared to ask him any question\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loving God and loving neighbor is a summary of all the Law, and that’s it! But of course commenting about that would take all the sermons in the world and we would not even have begun to cover it. So instead of trying to do that, I think it would be more helpful to focus on the way Mark specifically puts the saying into context, and then we can have a look on how the commandments are actually formulated in Jesus\u2019s mouth on that occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. First of all, what is specific about the context of this saying?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

– A scribe<\/em> comes to ask Jesus a question and in the end, Jesus praises him for his wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to notice because we can easily fall into caricatures about the scribes and the pharisees as the \u201cbad guys\u201d of the Gospel, and we don\u2019t want to adopt this kind of thinking that could lead us to antisemitism. The scribe is praised by Jesus for his wisdom, and he \u201cisn\u2019t far from the kingdom of God\u201d. We cannot reduce people in categories of bad and wrong \/ good and right in the Gospel. Jesus was tough with the Pharisees, but remember that Jesus had disciples among the pharisees (Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus). Some scholars believe that Jesus was himself a pharisee, and it makes sense because we are often tougher on our own people when we have moral expectations. For example, for us, our job would be to hold Episcopalians accountable to higher standards. It is okay because it\u2019s something we need to require of ourselves, because we are Episcopalians, it\u2019s not like we kept on saying that really Catholics should do a better job at being Christian! Jesus didn\u2019t see the Pharisees and the scribes as outsiders, they were his people and so he could ask them to give their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– In Mark\u2019s context, we also need to notice that it\u2019s okay to ask questions! Actually, I am in awe to realize how many people in this Gospel ask questions to Jesus. And yes, they ask the wrong questions, but little by little, some people show up with better questions. The questions are not \u201cwrong\u201d because of their content, but what we learned last week seeing how Bartimaeus made his request is that people who came before him had the wrong attitude rather than the wrong questions. They asked questions to trick Jesus, to make him contradict himself, or contradict the law. They used their questions to show off or to justify themselves and Jesus refused to play the game. But when they come up asking questions genuinely and expectantly, Jesus always answers and he even praises those people<\/strong>. So it is for us. Our faith is not to accept everything silently, part of our faith is to ask reverent and relevant questions and to come up each time with better, deeper questions that will bring us closer to the Kingdom of God.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 – Which leads us to the content of the saying = What is specific to Mark in the way it’s formulated?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am going to skip a bit the part about the love of neighbor – just because we had already said a lot about it when we studied James, but also because this is not in this part that stands out in Mark\u2019s rendering of Jesus\u2019s words. What I would notice though is that if Jesus insisted so much on love, and made it a commandment \u2013 it\u2019s because it\u2019s not easy! We have a tendency to put ourselves first, a natural tendency of self preservation that can turn into something sinful when we lose focus that our neighbors are as important as ourselves, and it\u2019s something we need to be reminded of constantly. We had a meeting this week at church and we discussed how this time of pandemic had increased in us our feelings of insecurity and defensiveness, and how we find ourselves in needing to learn to love each other again. It\u2019s okay! It\u2019s in the Gospel: We constantly have to work on being more loving. And we can always start again, start anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Now I would like to turn to what I think is really the specificity of Mark\u2019s Gospel today, and it\u2019s about the love of God. If you know a little about Hebrew Scriptures, you will notice that Jesus quotes the \u201cShema Israel\u201d the great prayer of the Jews from Deuteronomy 6. What is remarkable is that, as often, Jesus takes some liberties when quoting the Scriptures, and he actually adds a line! <\/strong>In Deuteronomy, the commandment is to love God with your \u201cwhole heart, whole soul and whole might\u201d whereas Jesus says \u201cto love God with your whole heart, whole soul, whole mind<\/strong>, and whole strength (or might)\u201d and then the scribe repeats what Jesus says \u201cyes, you have to love with all your understanding<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 I think this addition is amazing. It\u2019s amazing because this is what Mark encourages us to do, as noted earlier. Mark encourages believers to inquire, to ask questions, to seek understanding<\/strong>. Maybe you\u2019ve heard of John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal Bishop, who died recently. That\u2019s what Spong used to repeat all the time: \u201cWe have to do a better job at loving God with our mind and we need to seek understanding of our faith\u201d<\/strong>. He did that all his life and it certainly put him at odds with some of the teachings of the church, and we may not agree with some of his theology, but we can recognize in him the integrity of the scribe who instead of siding with his peers mindlessly, just repeating what he had heard, was able to think for himself and asked Jesus for clarification. Spong said that asking questions was \u201ctaking God seriously\u201d<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it should be okay to ask questions, God is a mystery but in Jesus God reveals himself and responds to us and make God known to us. Don\u2019t be surprised by the ending line of our passage. People “didn\u2019t dare to ask any more questions” to Jesus not because they felt silly or humiliated. They were in awe<\/strong> (=the meaning of the “fear of God” in the Bible). They stopped asking questions because they have had their answer to their deepest question: What is it, in the end, that matters the most \u2013 the scribe\u2019s question.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a conclusion, just notice that Jesus is asking us to be whole, to love God with all our being, as God is one, we should be one, all given to our quest for God \u2013 which is of more value than all the sacrifice, as the scribe notices \u2013 the giving of self in building our relationship with God.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month of November, we\u2019re going to have a series of festival Sundays here at St Margaret\u2019s: Next Sunday will be All saints\u2019 Sunday, then we will celebrate St Margaret\u2019s on November 14th; the week after, November 21st, will be Christ the King which will finally lead us to the first Sunday in Advent on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Proper 26 (B) – Mark 12: 28-34”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}