Love God and Love your Neighbor

One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?”

Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”

Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, teacher. You have correctly said that he is one, and there is no one else except him. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question him any longer. Mark 12:28-34 (CSB)

There are over thirty thousand Christian denominations. Thirty thousand! Once we started to split, we just didn’t stop. What started as major theological differences, quickly escalated into preferences about music, children’s program, and preaching styles. The one major prayer Jesus had about the church was not that we get him right, but that we stay one (John 17:17-26) and it’s the one thing we did with utter abandon. 

The various denominations and churches look at each other with incredible skepticism. I had a person call me to ask me if he could rent out our space to start a church once. I asked him, “why don’t you just come join us instead of starting another?” I told him we already had three (then four) churches on the same block. His response amounted to the fact that they were the faithful remnant, and all other churches had gone astray. I politely declined his generous offer.

 A friend of mine reminded me that all Protestants need to be continually rechecking their protestations and asking themselves, are we done protesting yet? Someday, we’re going to have to tell the Lord why we were so willing to divide his body, something that should have been done only under unbelievable duress (if at all). 

The difficulty with the divisions are, of course, churches now reflect consumer choice, and there are churches that accommodate and appeal to literally any theological or spiritual desire. And so, while I have adopted a relative Generous Orthodoxy (following the Book by the same name by Brian McLaren), there are some bodies that no longer resemble churches at all, but lean more towards political organizations, rock concerts, and/or the United way with vestiges of prayer. 

In the ancient world, when Christians were trying to find each other (as Christians are obligated to gather with each other – Hebrews 10:25) they would use symbols to identify whether or not they could trust one another. In deep persecution they needed to make sure they knew who the other was. This is where our fish symbol emerged, as an undeground symbol for gathering. 

I have a few markers that I need to recognize in another to know if I can fully trust, some essential, and then progressively less important. Firstly, and most importantly, I need a church to obviously recognize that Jesus was God incarnate and that he died and bodily rose from the grave. You’d be surprised how many churches (and clergy) even within our own denomination this immediately cancels out. In effect, they have to subscribe to the Nicene Creed, or the last major agreement of the church before the divisions, without crossing their fingers. Although less firm, I also need them to be sacramental as both the early church, and the New Testament were devoutly so. You cannot read the Gospel of John (or really most of the Epistles) and not realize that Jesus was calling the church into a sacramental reality. Church without communion is better properly attested to as a bible study, and while there is a time and a place for a bible study, it’s not what the early Christians risked their lives to do with each other (Acts 2:42).

There’s room for ecumencial relationships beyond this, but these are a few of my core essentials. I’ll obviously disagree with others at this level, including about scriptural interpretation and authority, but these are my bare essentials for deep cooperation. 

Even with this, it’s possible to agree on all of this, and not come to agreement about what our ends or the purpose of what Jesus came to accomplish are. It’s a little like operating within the Temple. You might agree across the board on appropriate means of sacrifice, clothing, timing, and authority, but in the end, you lose sight of the goal. Jesus chided many scribes and Pharisees for this loss of vision, essentially using the temple system as an end in and of itself. The same could be a warning for us. We can get church and our theology perfectly. We can be absolutely attuned to everything we are supposed to do, but miss the greater point of what it is doing for us, both now, and ultimately later — to make us loving creatures who are more attuned to God, and our neighbor. The rest is useless if love  is not the goal (Just look at 1 Corinthians 13 as a warning). 

Here is a man who gets it within the system. He is able to see beyond the trappings of the temple, and his heart is attuned to what God is doing, and Jesus is deeply pleased. Many such scribes and Pharisees will become wonderful followers of Jesus in the coming months. The system isn’t all bad. May the same be true about us. May we not get lost in the trappings of theology, or church, or scriptural interpretation so much that we lose vision on God’s goal in our life, through the Holy Spirit, and ultimately into eternity: To show us, and make us into creatures of love.