Hebrews 9:11-14 Mark 12:28-34
I stand before you as a frustrated and failed mathematician. Saying that feels akin to being in a group therapy session, and I thank you for enabling me to feel safe to do so. My whole formal education to the age of nineteen was shaping me to be a mathematician, but I realised in the first term of my university degree that this was beyond my ability. One of the lessons I learnt in that journey is that a driving force behind mathematics is simplicity. Simple equations that explain situations or solve problems.
I stand before you as a frustrated and mediocre artist. Inspired by the peace doves that descended in this space, where next Saturday red poppies for remembrance will fall; I went to Malaga this summer to look at Picasso’s doves. His iconic depictions of doves, used so much in campaigns for peace, are formed from a simple brush stroke. In a similar way the Matisse cut-outs on display at Ushaw College at this time, reveal in simplicity of form a beauty. My attempts feel like scribbles scrabbling to find the essence.
I could continue indulging in celebrating my weaknesses, and no doubt others could join in. However, what both maths and art remind me is that simplicity gives structure and meaning.
Jesus’ summary of the law can be so familiar to us that we fail at the very first words. “Hear O Israel.” We sadly fail to hear. When we learn key passages by heart, because of their importance, all too often they become a package whose contents with which we no longer engage. And whilst it is tempting to explore the concept of the Shema and the Takbir in Judaism and Islam that is once more potentially to seek comfort in complexity.
The summary of the law given by Jesus gives us a three-fold dynamic to life. It reminds us of who God is. Of how we should respond to God and then to others. In the course of that we are also reminded of who we are. So, let us “hear”.
Firstly, we listen as a community identified with a struggle. We are not simply individuals in isolation, but it is Israel, those who identify as being from the wrestling Jacob, who wrestled his brother and then wrestled with God and was renamed. We are to hear, not just at the personal level, but also at a defining communitarian level.
Secondly, the oneness of God is not abstract. We are not engaging in a philosophical reflection on the nature of supremacy of existence and the like. (Much though as a student I rejoiced in Anselm’s ontological reflections and prayers.) The oneness of God is rooted in God being our God. The commandment given to Moses places God within the interaction between people and the divine. The Lord our God is one God has is no distancing by avoiding the possessive. Equally this is not simply a tribal relationship or entity with an interest in one group as distinct to another. There is a totality of identity which then requires the same from us.
Our response to “Our God who is one”, must reflect this reality of God’s totality. So, there is no separation in terms of who we are. Heart, soul, mind and strength being listed as that with which we must love God. There is no area of who we are that is excluded from how we respond to God. Jesus demonstrates this vividly in his life: in his temptations, and later his experience on the cross. These show to us the various challenges, whether it be, stones and bread, the kingdoms of the earth, or the temple and the fall or the cry of I thirst, the ridicule of the crowds and those saying “you call yourself the son of God save yourself and us.” There is of course a simplicity here. If God is the one who made everything, and is engaged with all of life, then we must in all areas of our life and identity, recognise and respond to this.
Our response is not one of inheritance or one of submission, nor is it one of duty or obligation, but of love. A total interaction which requires no limit on its engagement. Whilst we can like something to different levels, love does not have such gradations. We either love something or we do not. And we either then live according to this interaction or we find ourselves in complex constructions and structures to try and navigate life.
The first commandment, as we listen as a community to our God who is one, is to love God in all dynamics of who we are.
The second is to live that out!
Love is a reciprocated action. For it to be true love there is a two-way process of engagement and shaping. Unrequited love is a painful experience and one that can lead to disconnection. Love of inanimate objects can easily become idolatrous as they cannot give anything back beyond a reflection of the person’s own projections onto it. For us to love God in all areas of our life, is for us to then be shaped by God, to be like God, in all areas of our life.
Hence to love our neighbours as ourselves. This is to live out the identity of God which is for the whole of God’s creation from God’s oneness, and to realise that the dynamic of love shared with our God, is a dynamic of love that God shows and shares with those who are our neighbours and therefore we are bound to love our neighbours.
Whilst my neighbours here are delightful and lovely. I have not always experienced such easy to love neighbours. At a domestic level I have had neighbours who have put razor wire over the entrance to my home and had petitions against members of the clergy moving into the area, or neighbours who tried to poison our dog, or neighbours who have brought people into my garden as I have struggled for life to criticise my failure to cut a hedge. Loving neighbours can be difficult at a personal level, let alone when neighbouring nations or communities find themselves in conflict.
The simplicity of life that Jesus’ summary gives us whilst simple is not easy. But if we aspire to it and engage with it, then as the scribe was told we are not far from the Kingdom of God.
When I was in the sixth form I taught maths to lower students who found it difficult. They often had very complicated and complex ways of seeking to solve multiplication problems which always sadly gave them wrong answers. I tried to share with them simple methods, simple ways that would give them right answers. All too often I feel that I and the world take a similar approach to life. We produce complexities to the problems of life, and in those complexities, we lose our way and ultimately find ourselves arriving at wrong answers. Jesus gives us a simple way in this summary that gives a right answer Do we have the courage, the humility, the wisdom, and the spirit to do likewise!
Are we prepared to respond to, “’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 neighbour as yourself?’” Amen