Missionary Renegade: The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Monday, 25 July 2016

Monday, July 25, 2016

The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Monday, 25 July 2016 - "Jesus' central commands"

The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Monday, 25 July 2016 - "Jesus' central commands"

Daily Scripture: Matthew 22:35 and one of them who was a Torah expert asked a sh’eilah to trap him: 36 “Rabbi, which of the mitzvot in the Torah is the most important?” 37 He told him, “‘You are to love Adonai your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’[Matthew 22:37 Deuteronomy 6:5] 38 This is the greatest and most important mitzvah. 39 And a second is similar to it, ‘You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’[Matthew 22:39 Leviticus 19:18] 40 All of the Torah and the Prophets are dependent on these two mitzvot.”

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Reflection Questions:
When asked what was the greatest commandment (which was a lively debate among Jewish rabbis of his day), Jesus chose not one but two. The first was from Deuteronomy 6:4: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.” The second came from Leviticus 19:18: “You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Jesus said all other truths or orthodoxies have ultimate value only as they lead us to more fully love God and neighbor.

Jesus said that every key principle the Bible teaches, all the truths we know about what God wants, “depend” on the two commands he quoted. What do you believe made these two commands as essential as Jesus said they were? Can you recall any time when a belief you held led you to be unloving, maybe even without realizing it?
Long before many of our modern psychological insights developed, Leviticus called God’s people to “love your neighbor as yourself.” That command implicitly asked: how well can you love your neighbor if you don’t have healthy ways of loving and caring for yourself? How well have you learned to nurture and value yourself, outwardly and, even more importantly, inwardly? (If you find this hard, Mindy Caliguire’s book Soul Care, available through The Well, may help.)

Today’s Prayer:
Lord Jesus, help me to love God with all that is in me—knowing that still falls short of how God loves me. Help me to love my neighbor in the profound ways you call me to. Amen.
-------Insights from Melanie Hill

Melanie Hill is the Guest Connections Program Director at Resurrection.
Do you ever feel like you make life too complicated? I do. I complicate it by worrying too much about what others think of me. I complicate it by trying to do too much or not enough and obsessing about each. I don’t know about you, but lately I listen to what is happening in our world and I think it’s overwhelming and complicated. How do we stop the violence happening in our world right now? The distrust? It’s complicated. Right?
I love the passage of scripture for today’s GPS. While I love the way Jesus used stories to illustrate a point, I also love that he just lays it right out there for us.
What’s most important in this life? Love God. Love people.
That doesn’t sound complicated. Don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean that we don’t work really hard to complicate it. Over the years I’ve heard lots of sermons on who our neighbors really are, ranging from our actual neighbors to the people we work with to everyone in the world. There’s probably a case to be made for all of them, but I wonder if Jesus didn’t really just mean your neighbor. I’m blessed to have some really great neighbors; people I really like. People we celebrate holidays with and have block parties with. People who gather in the cul-de-sac just to catch up while we watch our kids ride bikes. People who share a cup of sugar as easily as they share their struggles and celebrations. People who have been there for my family to celebrate the birth of a child by stopping by with a gift and a meal or an offer to babysit so we could have a much needed date night out. Our neighbors have become our family, and I love them.
Well–at least the ones that have been easy to love. Maybe I haven’t been loving all my neighbors like I should be. There is that neighbor who really never hangs out because they are always leaving to take one of their kids somewhere. We haven’t really gotten to know them. Then there are the always new neighbors who live in the rental house that seems to be a revolving door every 9 months. After about the third family that lived there we kinda stopped making the effort. But after all, Jesus didn’t say love the neighbors who are outgoing and easy to talk to. Or the ones that look like you, or believe like you.
Maybe stopping the violence and distrust we see in our world really does start by loving our neighbors–all of our neighbors. Didn’t Jesus also tell us in John 13:35, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples”? In a world that seems so broken right now and so in need of love, let us start by being good neighbors, to all our neighbors. Let us drive out darkness from our homes and in our driveways and on our streets. Let us be known as a people of love by the people who live closest to us. Let’s not over-complicate it.