josephholubsermons


 

November 1, 2009
Mark 10:28-34 

INTERFACE

The computer age has brought an explosion of new vocabulary and redefinition of old vocabulary.  For example, not long ago if you had a "blue-tooth" you had better go see a dentist and quick because you likely had a real problem!  Of course, nowadays half the population has a blue-tooth, not in their mouths but hanging off one of their ears. 

"Windows" about a decade ago referred to those things we look through made of glass.  "Windows Vista" just three years ago would have meant the view we see when we look through our windows made of glass.  And "Windows 7" just a few months ago might have loosely referred to the number of banks large windows made of glass in this worship space that we look through and behold a great vista of mountain scenery (count and point 1-2-3-4-5-6-7).  But of course, all of that has changed as "windows" now refers to a series of barely functional operating systems than run millions of our computers. (Sorry about the editorial comment, but I spent the greater part of two days last week reinstalling my computer operating system, Windows Vista, that crashed!  I could say my "vista" was grossly obscured last week)

Another word that has taken on new meaning is the word "interface."  "Interface" is an old word that   has a new point of reference specifically referring to the wires, gadgets, gizmos and accompanying software than connect our all of our computer devices and contraptions.

I want to speak for a moment about "interface" but not in a technological sense but in a spiritual sense.  For what we have in this gospel this morning is an astounding example of "interface" that is far more profound than any modern technological example or definition of interface.  Interface can be both a noun and a verb.  In fact, one definition of "interface" reads: "a thing that connects different and sometime incompatible elements, systems, bodies, spaces, phases, or human beings." That is interface used as a noun, "a thing that connects."  As a verb it means: "to be the agent that brings together, connects or meshes."  

The word "interface," used both as a noun and a verb, is an appropriate word to describe today's gospel passage.  For what Jesus, as both noun and a verb, does in this passage and, for that matter, in the entirety of the gospel of Mark, is mesh together these two great tenets of his religion: loving God and loving neighbor.   And also, notice the intentional use of incorrect grammar that seals the deal:  "There is (singular) no other commandment (singular) greater than these (plural).  The two are described as  singular; the two are meshed into one!

In response to the scribe's question, Jesus forever meshed, fused, connected, intertwined, intermingled, interfaced loving God and loving neighbor. They are not mutually exclusive, but they are one reality - they are a shared experience - they both occupy the same space - they cannot be separated - one cannot be done without the other.  Loving neighbor is to love God; loving God is to love the neighbor.  And the space they occupy is the life of the person of Jesus. That, for me, is the essence of this thing we call Christianity.  Loving God and loving neighbor occupied the same space in Jesus' life.  He made no distinction between the two, that is what made his life so comprehensively remarkable - and Jesus mentors us in that experience and in that reality.  He mentors us so that loving God and loving neighbor might occupy the same space in your life and my life as we are mentored by Jesus into a deeper experience of what it means to be fully and most beautifully and profoundly human beings.  He mentors us in "interface!"

The question and the challenge that explodes out of this passage today is, "Will we allow our lives to be an interface?  Will we allow Jesus to mentor us in loving God and loving neighbor occupying the same space in our lives: in my life; in your life; and most importantly in our shared life, in the dynamics of our life together as a community?"  But before we can answer that we need to talk about what that experience might look like and be like; the shape it might take in real life.

Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself."  Actually this week, I threw a question out in several places: to the Wednesday morning Bible study group, to the Thursday evening Book Study Group and several other individuals who were fortunate or unfortunate enough (depending how you look at it) to cross my path this week, and the question was: "What does it look like to love neighbor as self?"  We had some great discussions!

The bottom line was that we can take "love your neighbor as yourself" and live it and  embody it in one of two ways - and they are not the same.  Does it mean, loving my neighbor as if my neighbor were like me?  OR - Does it mean, loving my neighbor as if I were like my neighbor?   Let me repeat that for the difference is subtle yet significant.  Do I love my neighbor as if my neighbor were like me?   OR - Do I love my neighbor as if I were like my neighbor?

If I love my neighbor the first way,  as if my neighbor were like me, that is very much a kind of conditional love - a restrictive love.  For it means that the more my neighbor resembles me, the more I will love my neighbor.  So, in that scenario, I go at my neighbor with an agenda, and my agenda is to love my neighbor, yes, but to make my neighbor look more like me - think more like me - behave more like me - shape their life to look more like mine - and the more they do, the more I will love my neighbor.  It's a conditional expression of love and certainly not a very risky kind of love.  For I am protecting myself in that scenario from really being affected or changed or transformed in any way by my neighbor.  The goal is to make my neighbor look and be as much like me as possible; not the other way around.

But if I love my neighbor as if I were like my neighbor, that is an altogether different thing.  That kind of love is unconditional.  That kind of love takes my neighbor seriously for who they are.  That expression of love meets my neighbor without an agenda.  That kind of love sees the intrinsic value of my neighbor's life.  That kind of love values my neighbor for who they are.  That kind of love causes me to climb into the skin and soul of my neighbor and get to know my neighbor, not from afar where I am safe and unaffected, but from the inside-out!  And when I love like that, I run the risk that my life may be as transformed and changed by the relationship as my neighbor's life might be. 

As I have entered into and lived into and invested myself into the life and the person of Jesus this year, the Jesus of Mark's gospel, it has been my experience that the latter is the kind of love of neighbor in which Jesus mentors us.  Jesus loved the neighbor as if he were like the neighbor. Jesus loved the neighbor knowing the neighbor from the inside-out.

Think of the journey we have taken through Mark' gospel this year, and how Jesus loved the neighbor.  Think of those who were the recipients of his love and the manner in which he loved them.

His love was radically and qualitatively and comprehensively different from the love that the most "religious" people of his time loved with.  The religious people, for the most part, loved with a very conditional and restrictive love.  They loved with the agenda to make the other look and be more like them; and not only that but they had a very narrow definition of who was even to be considered a neighbor. 

But not Jesus!  He loved lavishly and excessively and with abandon; with a love that saw the intrinsic value in the neighbor no matter who they were.  He radically broadened the functional definition of neighbor by loving those that the religious folks didn't even acknowledge as neighbors and hence not deserving of their love. 

Jesus loved the neighbor with an EMPOWERING LOVE: that is he loved those who were being crushed under the weight of the political and religious hierarchy and the systems of domination that they fostered and cultivated and advanced. He loved and lifted up those who were subjugated by the powers that be: the poor, woman, children, Gentiles, marginal peoples of all kinds; people not even acknowledged as fully human by the powerful.

Jesus loved the neighbor with a LOVE THAT CONFERRED DIGNITY AND VALIDATION: those deemed religiously unclean and cut off from the community; those considered as morally inferior: tax collectors, prostitutes and outcast of all kinds.  He saw things in those people that the religious were blind to.  He came at people with agenda-less love, which is unconditional love - and as a result people's lives were transformed, not because Jesus had an agenda he forced on them, but because of his love that empowered, conferred dignity and validated their humanity.

That's what loving God with all of one's heart, soul, mind and strength looks like interfaced with loving neighbor as oneself.

Last Monday evening we watched a movie that came out earlier this year entitled, "The Soloist."  It's based on the true story of Nathanial Ayers, a cello prodigy with extraordinary talent and skill whose severe schizophrenia landed him on the skid row streets of Los Angeles after two years at Julliard.  Steve Lopez is a disenchanted journalist for the Los Angeles Times desperately looking for a story.  By accident, Lopez discovers Ayers on the street playing beautifully a violin that had only two strings. 

Lopez becomes captivated by Ayers and writes a series of articles that won Lopez acclaim and gained Ayers and the plight of the homeless in Los Angeles considerable attention.  Over time the two men formed a relationship that reached a point of great strain and conflict when Lopez took it upon himself to try to fix the mentally ill Ayers and improve his life according to his agenda.   It wasn't until Lopez let go of his personal agenda for the schizophrenic Ayers to make Ayers into something he could not be, and simply became his friend in unconditional love that he finally saw the true humanity of Nathanial Ayers and both of the men underwent what could be called a degree of personal transformation.

For me, that story captured some of what Jesus meant by "love your neighbor as yourself."  

Somebody asked me this week, "Why are you a Christian?"  I think the asker expected me to respond with some kind of an absolutist, exclusivist answer along the lines of "because it is the only way to salvation" or some such narrow thing as that.  

But I do not subscribe to the parochial concept that the God of the universe can only be known in one religious expression; or that the world is simplistically divided up between the saved and the unsaved; those in and those left-behind; those who have-God and those who do-not-have-God; that God can only be known in a little God-box of doctrines and beliefs. 

Rather, if by Christian the asker meant follower of Jesus, then I am because it has been my experience and ever-growing-conviction that in opening up my life to being mentored by Jesus who interfaces the love of God and love of neighbor, I am led along a path into unexpected experiences, places and people where God already is, and that in loving my neighbor as myself we both, neighbor and myself, run the glorious risk of being transformed and made more whole and more beautifully human by the unconditional love God interfaced in the life of Jesus: my Mentor, my Counselor, my Guide. Amen.