Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 29 July 2014 "The two most important commandments"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 29 July 2014 "The two most important commandments"
Daily Scripture: Mark 12: The Most Important Commandment
28 One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”
29-31 Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”
32-33 The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!”
34 When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, “You’re almost there, right on the border of God’s kingdom.”
After that, no one else dared ask a question.
Reflection Questions:
Scholar William Barclay noted that there were two schools of thought among rabbis. Some believed “there were lighter and weightier matters of the law…great principles which were all-important to grasp.” Others “held that every smallest principle was equally binding.” Like Jesus, the scribe in this passage saw some principles as central, more vital to live out than others. Loving God and loving your neighbor, both agreed, are the greatest commandments.
The words Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6 were sweeping: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus said that was the foundation for loving your neighbor. Which “neighbor(s)” right now do you need God’s grace most to love as you love yourself? A family member? A friend? A co-worker? A fellow church member?
Jesus quoted the first great commandment from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and the second from Leviticus 19:18. Barclay said no previous rabbi had combined those two scriptures the way Jesus did. When has a steady discipline of daily Bible study brought you insight into how you live your life? How has God’s Spirit increased your capacity to both receive and give love as you focus on God and the Bible’s core message?
Today's Prayer:
Lord God, teach me what it means to love you with all my heart and my neighbor as myself. Remind me to focus on you and not me. Reach out and touch others through me, as I share your love for me with them. Amen
Insight from Rev. Glen Shoup
Rev. Glen Shoup is the Executive Pastor of Worship and a Congregational Care Pastor.
Love is not ultimately a feeling.  Oh to be sure, there are feelings that accompany love, but the feelings of love are like the ocean’s tide—they come in and they go out.  The feelings of love are real; the feelings of love are legitimate; but the feelings of love are not the essence of love.  At its core—at its foundation—love is a choice.  But it is not just any choice; rather, love—very specifically is choosing to keep on choosing the other person’s best interest over your own selfish interest…whether you feel like it or not.  This very particular, specific and (one might say) peculiar choice is the essence of love.
And this truth about what love essentially is, isn’t just true of romantic love—it is true of all love everywhere.  This truth about love’s essence is true of parental and familial love. Choosing to keep on choosing the other’s best interest over our own selfish interest is the essence of love in friendship.  And this particular and peculiar choice is what it means for God to love us.  God has forever chosen our best interest, no matter what it costs God—that’s why there’s a Bethlehem, a desert of temptation and a hill called Golgotha—for the ultimate definition of love comes in God forever choosing our best interest no matter what it costs God.  The most powerful icon I know of capturing this is seen in the crucifix.  Choosing the other’s best interest over our own self-interest is what Love is because that’s Who God is—as narrated with eternal clarity by the apostle John—God is love.  God is forever choosing our best interest, no matter what it costs God.
So when Jesus comes along in our reading today and responds to the inquiry of a lawyer as to what the greatest commandment is and Jesus answers by pulling from Deuteronomy and giving what we have come call the Great Commandment (vss 29-31 of today’s reading), what Jesus is saying is that choosing God’s interests and God’s agenda over your own and thereby choosing your neighbors best interest over your own selfish interests is what the whole deal boils down to.
And when we began to understand more accurately what loving really means; when we began to understand that to love is grounded in what we choose—well then we begin to understand that loving God, loving our neighbors…let along loving our enemy hasn’t a blessed thing to do with how we feel.  It has everything to do with what we choose—regardless your feelings.  This peculiar truth is profoundly illustrated in a donkey’s feeding trough doubling as a baby’s crib in a barn on the outskirts of Bethlehem.  This peculiar truth is why the One Who is Love insisted on coming to us so that in His living and loving we might catch our first unobstructed glimpse of what real living and loving looks like and in the process be saved, freed and transformed from ourselves so that we too can…love.   This peculiar truth is powerfully witnessed on a Cross outside Jerusalem and this peculiar truth transforms the entire human story when the stone enclosure to a garden tomb is eternally turned to rubble by Resurrection’s power—this peculiar truth is Love!
Living fully human happens because of Love.  Salvation happens because of Love.  Death is overcome by Life because of Love.  Your life finds transformation because of Love.
Jesus replied,“The most important one is Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”  (Mark 12:29-31)
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