Good News for Us and the World- It’s All About Love!
Mark 12:28-31: Matthew 25:35-40; Luke 7:36-50
We continue our sermon series, “Tell Me Something Good”, looking for Good news that comes to us in scripture. Last week, we found that good news comes right at the beginning of both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. In addition, we found that God is involved in the daily details of life- no coincidences with God!
What good news is there for us this morning? We find it in three passages read this morning. Good news is all about love! Three passages focus on that love: the love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of self.
First, there is the passage from Mark’s Gospel, which outlines these three specific areas of love. Jesus is asked to boil down all of scripture, and he cites two verses from the Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy 6:4–5 and Leviticus 19:18, as the greatest. The passage from Deuteronomy is quite important, as the scribe knew when he heard it. It comes from a central teaching of Judaism, known as the Shema, which means “hear.”
In its entirety, the Shema consists of three paragraphs: Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41. Faithful Jewish people are called to recite the Shema once in the morning, once in the evening, and once before going to sleep. This set of scriptures is central to Jewish faith, and is even meant to be the last words spoken before death. When I was in Hebrew class in seminary, we recited the Shema in Hebrew every morning. It was by no means easy to do!
Jesus quotes the first part of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which states that God is one (not multiple gods) and that we are to love God with our whole selves. He adds a second passage from Leviticus 19:18, that “we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” Jesus tells the scribe that these two passages of scripture are the greatest of all.
So let us begin our Good News, that it is all about love, by looking at love for God and the passage from Luke’s Gospel.
The Gospel of Luke is concerned primarily with four themes
- Dining etiquette
- The role of women- often silent, but either patrons of Christ’s ministry or servants.
- Pharisees- may represent a challenge to Jesus and his message
- Repentance and forgiveness.
This morning’s story is found in all four Gospels, but with differing characters (See Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and John 12:1-8). However, they all share the same basic story. A woman anoints Jesus- either at his head or feet, someone complains about the anointing, and Jesus defends the woman and teaches.
In this morning’s passage from Luke, the scene is a dinner gathering at the home of a Pharisee. The focus for this story is on love for God, which comes as a result of forgiveness. Unlike the other three stories, Luke recasts the woman as a “sinner.” Most biblical commentators generally cast her as a prostitute. As Theologian Ben Witherington writes, “As if that is the only sin a woman is capable of committing.” After all, we don’t jump to the conclusion that Peter is a prostitute when he tells Jesus he's a sinful man. More likely, it is verse 39 that casts shade on her character. “If this man were a prophet, he would know ‘what kind of woman’ is touching him.”
We do not know what her sin was. We do know, however, that whatever the sin was, she knew who to go to. She has a sense of Jesus being the Messiah. She turned back towards God through Jesus, away from her sin, expressed her sorrow over it, and gave love and gratitude to Jesus for being the one who could forgive her sins.
She does this act of gratitude with an alabaster jar of myrrh. We do not know how she obtained the jar, and it was likely expensive.
As Jesus reclines on a couch, she stands behind him at his feet, weeping. She drenches his feet with her tears, then the perfume, then dries his feet with her hair. Then she kisses his feet, making those around this unfolding scene uncomfortable. The scene is unusual and borders on the sensual. 4th-century church bishop Asterius of Amasea saw the woman’s unbound hair as “symbolic of grieving.” Whatever sins she carried, which, according to Jesus, were many, they grieved her spirit greatly. In the Book, True to Our Native Land, author Stephanie Crowder notes that “The word used for 'forgiven' in Luke is aphess, aphess, the same word for 'release.” Later, as Christ tells her that her sins are forgiven, she is released from whatever burden of sin she had and left in peace.
Jesus also uses the moment to teach those at the dinner with a parable on the value of forgiveness. A denarius was a daily wage. The average annual salary in the U.S. is approximately $66,000, which, if divided by 365=$180.82 per day, times either 50 or 500, the two in debt owe either 9,000 or 90,000, not a small amount of debt! Human beings play the part of debtor in this story. Neither debtor can repay the debt. The lender, who represents God in the story, forgives the debt. In Greek, verse 42 reads, “to both he gave grace,” in the original Greek. Who will be more grateful? The one who was forgiven more. The woman demonstrates gratitude and great love in being forgiven more for what God has done through Jesus.
1 John 4:10 says, “This is love, not that we first loved God, but that God loved us and sent the Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This is where the woman’s love for Jesus originated. How might we demonstrate our love for God this week? In thanksgiving for freedom from sin, for the gift of grace, for the knowledge that, no matter what, God loves us completely? American Episcopal theologian William Countryman writes, “The person you are now, the person you have been, the person you will be-this person God has chosen as beloved.” I encourage you in the coming week to express love to God for the gift of grace and for your belovedness.
Next, we focus our love upon our neighbors, as expressed in Matthew 25:35-40. The scene is one of Christ’s return and a judgment upon all nations of the earth. The nations are judged on how they have treated the poor, the marginalized, the needy, and the vulnerable. Verses 35-39 name six human situations of misery that the vindicated have relieved: feeding the hungry, supplying drink for the thirsty, offering welcome to strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison.
Verse 40 is a foundational part of our mission of love for those in the world. The king/Son of Man declares that to show mercy and justice to these victims of imperial oppression and exploitation is to offer mercy and justice to Christ himself. He is present among the societally vulnerable and damaged. He is present among our neighbors, both rich and impoverished.
I remember interacting with a young houseless man on the back porch of my office a few years ago. Our congregation helped him with food and connected him to OHRA. Out of gratitude and the love shown to him through us, he presented me with this cup. I have it in my office and consider it to be a gift from Christ himself.
In her poem, “If God Lived Next Door,” Rev. Sarah Speed writes,
If God lived next door, I’d drop off a loaf of bread. I’d use my mom’s best recipe.
I’d wrap it in parchment and ribbon and place it on the front stoop.
If God lived next door, I’d leave a note with my phone number. Call anytime you need anything! I’m always happy to help!
If God lived next door, I’d keep sugar on the shelf, just in case God needed a cup. I’d put a picnic table in the front yard and begin taking my coffee there.
Whenever God passed by with their gaggle of rescue dogs, I could say, Want to sit for a moment? Want to rest your legs? I’d keep a jar of dog treats and water by the mailbox and change my doormat to one that says: All are welcome here.
I’d invite God over for dinner, who’d bring bread and juice. I’d host a block party so that everyone could meet God.
I’d start a community garden so that the kids could run between rows of squash and tomatoes while we adults put our hands in the dirt. We’d share stories while we weeded, and eat harvest meals at the end of the season. If God lived next door, I’d want to build something beautiful. Then again, who says God doesn’t?
God lives next door! God lives in those in need! How might we show love to our neighbors this week?
That brings us to the third focus of love this morning- love of ourselves. This may be the most difficult kind of love to express of the three. For example, last week, as I spent a Monday afternoon teaching music to the cast of “OLLI, OLLI, OXEN FREE,” I also had to work on a dance that I was cast in for the show. I had to watch myself dance in a video. Whoever that guy was who portrayed me in the movie I was watching, he was balding, old, slow, and had lousy posture! Yuck! Sigh. It was pretty embarrassing to watch. It isn’t easy to love ourselves.
In fact, as I researched this phrase from Mark, theologians loved to talk about loving God and neighbor, but when it came to loving the self, they were either silent or filled with self-loathing. A book of Christian quotations had the following quotes under “love for self.” “Self-love is cunning, it pushes and insinuates itself into everything…” St. Francis de Sales. Then there was, “The love of power is the love of ourselves,” William Hazlitt. There wasn’t one single quote affirming that we are to love ourselves. Yet it is in scripture and in Jesus’ mind, part of the greatest of the three kinds of love.
Last week, in her weekly posting I received via email, Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote about the love of self as she struggled to fall asleep. Playing over and over in her head was a looping blooper reel of mistakes and embarrassing moments.
She writes, “As someone with a 'big personality' who blurts things out and later regrets them—someone prone to a Ready-Fire-Aim approach to life—I am not unfamiliar with a solid 3 a.m. perseveration on my gaffes. But a few nights ago, something different happened.
I hesitate to say it was a nudging from The Spirit, because that always feels perilously close to spiritual self-flattery. And we all know how the “God told me” thing can go very sideways. But I say it may have been a God thing, mostly because… it did not feel like me.
Here’s what happened: Every time my brain tried to replay the embarrassing thing, instead of sitting down with a tub of popcorn and watching it again—nodding gravely and pricing out moving trucks—I said one word: “Love.” That’s it. When the scene tried to start again, I said, “Love.”
I sent myself love. I am love. I give love. I need love. I receive love….my tiny prayer-this little mantra, this visualization of surrounding my mortified self with love….worked. I even, and trust me when I say this is NOT NORMAL FOR ME – I even went back to sleep.
To have compassion for myself - to send love to myself the way I would to a struggling friend, or a dysregulated child … to haltingly place my hand on my own heart and say, “It’s okay, little sister”… that’s not about thinking I’m better than or worse than anyone. It’s about admitting I am simply a member of the class of people who stumble and are still worthy of love and compassion.”
Love of self is a part of the greatest of two commandments in scripture, according to Jesus. So, how will you show yourself love this week?
The good news for us is that life IS all about love! Love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self! If anything happens in our world that does not fit that rubric, it is outside of Jesus’ intent for the world in which we live. May we go from this place, following the way of Jesus, steeped in love, proclaiming it to a world at war. Amen.
