The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for November 5, 2006

Texts: Ruth 1:1-18/Mark 12:28-34

Sermon Title: “First Things First”

              Has there ever been a time in your life when you have felt you have given one hundred percent to some activity or project into which you entered?  It may have been a course you took in high school or college.  It may have been a project at work, or some project around the house.  I met a man who spent almost a year designing and constructing a pulpit, communion table, and baptismal font for his church. I have to believe that the man committed nothing less that a one hundred percent effort in what he did. 

              You may well feel that you are giving a one hundred percent effort to your marriage, and rearing your children.  Some no doubt feel they are giving their one hundred percent effort to the care of an elderly parent who is no longer able to handle his or her affairs. That big project at work demanded and got your best, perhaps even one hundred percent.

              However you cut it, a one hundred percent effort is a lot, isn’t it? But how do any of us really know, if, in fact, we have given a one hundred percent effort? It’s really a judgment call, a subjective assessment. Do any of us really know what a truly one hundred percent effort might look like when applied to that course we took in school or that project we completed at work? The hours of diligent commitment we applied, the sleep and recreation we sacrificed, and the social life we surrendered, are valid measures of effort expended, but can we place a value on all that and say, “yep, I gave it one hundred percent.”

              I have some friends who could make a pretty sound claim that they gave one hundred percent. These friends of mine completed an Iron Man race in Florida yesterday. The Iron Man event is a 2.4 mile swim, followed by 112 miles on the bike, concluding with a 26.2 mile run. The better conditioned amateur athlete can complete the course in ten and one half to twelve hours.  Anyone crossing the finish line after that level of exertion could make a strong claim to having given one hundred percent. Yet, yet, how is the athlete, amateur or pro, to really judge the level of exertion he or she committed?               

              More than one athlete has fallen in a heap after completing an event like a marathon or an Iron Man, but even in that depleted condition, does that athlete really know that his or her tank is truly empty. Perhaps the mind, and the mind is always sending data, a lot of it negative, during a race, [perhaps the mind] convinced the body that it had enough, while even five, ten, maybe even twenty percent, of its reserves, had gone unutilized. 

              Best to be a little skeptical when someone comes up to you and says, “I gave it my hundred percent.”  Perhaps a little personal honesty would be prudent before you make that declaration yourself.

              A none-too-prudent fellow approached Jesus one time. He was a rich man, but he had a lot of other things going for him as well, as he was all too willing to demonstrate. “Teacher [he asked] what must I do to inherit eternal life?...You know the commandments [Jesus responded]: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.”  “Got all those things covered,” he responded, or words to that effect, “I have given my hundred percent since my youth. Check out my resume.” 

              “Hundred percent?” Jesus asked.  “Really?  You’re sure?  Perhaps you have miscalculated.  Recalculate, but first ‘sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor.’” The rich man, unwilling to part with his wealth, went away sad, regretting perhaps that he had come to Jesus in the first place.

              If you read scripture a while you know that Israel, God’s chosen, possessed great confidence when it came to the resumes they were building. “Lord, we are giving our hundred percent.  Worship is the centerpiece of our lives. We are zealous in observing the commandments.  We fast.  We make sacrifices in your name. We raise our children to honor you. What more do you require, Lord?”     

              Best not to ask God what more he requires. Invariably the Israelites got an answer they didn’t want to hear.  “Hundred percent? I don’t think so.” 

              Addressing the Israelites, Micah, the prophet, acknowledged all of the good things the Israelites were doing in God’s name.  To the people’s assertion they were giving one hundred percent, the good prophet responded with an unexpected challenge. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” 

              “I have given my hundred percent, what more can the Lord ask of me.”  Always seems to be a gap between my hundred percent and God’s hundred percent.  Just about the time I feel I am clearing the bar with ease, God shows me that the bar is higher. How demoralizing is that?

              Jesus arrived on the scene, and people took note that he was a pretty unique guy, so unique that Mark, the gospel from which our second lesson comes, repeatedly reports that large crowds assembled wherever Jesus happened to be. Building a resume on preaching, teaching, and healing, a consensus formed that this Jesus knew what he was talking about. People began to address him as “teacher.”

              Our lesson is one of three instances in chapter 12 in which Jesus is appealed to as such.  In the first, a collection of Pharisees and others came to Jesus seeking his counsel on the subject of taxes.  “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” Those hundred percenters, worried about a possible illegality thought might mar their resume, wanted Jesus to validate them.

              In the second instance, Jesus was asked to resolve a conflict between some Sadducees and Pharisees on the matter of resurrection.  Which group was right? Each sought vindication, assurance that they were on God’s side in matters of doctrine.  To be wrong was not an option, a sign of weakness, a sign that the group was not giving one hundred percent.

              “Jesus, teacher, help us out.”  The third request for help came from “one of the scribes” [the lesson before us]. It should be stated that a scribe was more than merely a recorder who copied someone else’s work; a scribe was qualified to issue his own learned opinions on religious matters.

              The scribe, a devout hundred percent man, a man who knew where he stood with the Lord, came to Jesus with an important question, perhaps the most important question that the teacher could be asked, “Which commandment is first of all?”  Now in the Jewish law there were over six hundred commandments. How would Jesus answer with so many choices from which to choose?

              But answer he did. A young man with a good Jewish upbringing, Jesus quoted verbatim out of the Torah, the law God gave to Moses. In our Bible the command appears at Deuteronomy 6:4-5.  “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  No, this was no new teaching from Jesus, however Jesus was quick to add a second part to the first, also quoting from the law God gave to Moses, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

              First things first, so said Jesus.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, AND love your neighbor as yourself.

              What does one hundred percent look like?  You shall love your God with all, with everything, and your neighbor with the all the love you might commit to yourself.              God, Jesus declared, doesn’t deal in fractions.  That one hundred percent of his love God commits to us, God expects from us in return. Love your God with everything you’ve got, so said Jesus.

              “Everything we’ve got” is not difficult to define so long as we happen to do the defining. “I’m satisfied, Lord, that I have given my all, one hundred percent.  I have observed all the commands from my youth, I have been the president of the synagogue, and presided over the biggest stewardship campaign in the synagogue’s history. I am fully satisfied with my standing in God’s house.  I earned it!”

              “I earned it.  I gave my hundred percent.”  Predictably Jesus always pulled the rug out when he met up with one of those hundred percenters.  His challenge to the hundred percenters?  “Put first things first.  You care more for your personal reputation than the God you claim to love.”

              God who is sovereign of all creation chose to enter into a covenant with us, a covenant in which he committed himself to love us unconditionally.  He sent Jesus to redeem us.  He sent the Holy Spirit to intercede for us. “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, it’s the right, and only thing to do,” so says Jesus.

                Now Jesus was not naïve, he knew that the likes of us are incapable of giving God one hundred percent. His daily experience with the twelve he chose to join his ministry was sufficient to demonstrate that fact.

                Mortal, sin scarred beings that we are, we fall short of loving God as God has loved us.  It’s simply a fact, a fact that Jesus readily acknowledged.  Where the likes of us run into trouble is in attempting to justify ourselves by our own efforts, by attempting to convince ourselves and our neighbor that we are giving a hundred percent when we are really not. 

                God in Christ makes allowances for the fact that we are sinners, he makes no allowances for our self-serving efforts to promote ourselves as righteous when we’re not.

                “Put first things first.  Give God your hundred percent.”  So says Jesus.  “But Jesus, that’s a very tall order.”  So we say.

              “Tall order,” we say.  “Every time I make a stab at giving God my hundred percent, or what I “call” my hundred percent, I fall short.”

              “Fall short, [Jesus says], of course, you fall short. You don’t have it in to do anything but fall short, except, except, [says Jesus], if by faith in God you trust God’s grace to complete in you what you can’t complete yourself.”

              We are several percentage points away from offering God the one hundred percent that he commands. The first major step any of us shall ever make on the road to Christian maturity is to acknowledge that fact.  The second major step is to put first things first. A wise person once wrote, “When we give to God a mere fraction of ourselves, God himself becomes a mere fraction of what he might be to us.” 

              First things first.  Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. God doesn’t deal in fractions. Nor are we to deal in fractions. First things first. Yet we succumb to all kinds of diversions, we are captivated by other love interests. God is not our first thought in the morning, or last thought when we close our eyes.

              Yet because we DO occupy a place of privilege in God’s heart as God’s covenant partners, God suspends the judgment we deserve in favor of the grace our works, our hundred percent effort, would never accomplish on their own.

              A life in harmony with God is not a product of our perfected love, rather our life in harmony with God is a product of our faith that God working through Christ, can complete what our personal efforts at righteousness will never complete on their own. 

              First things first, first in the eyes of God who created us, first in the eyes of our brother Jesus Christ who redeemed us, we too can make first things first, no, not by own efforts, but solely through the redeeming grace of Christ that alone can make us whole. Our exertions may never add up to one hundred percent, but our exertions mean far less to God than our faith that God can complete what our efforts apart from God shall never complete. 

AMEN.

PRAYER

              “First things first,” so said Jesus.  “But Lord, [we say], we have got our own first things to consider.  Don’t you see how harried we are?  We are stretched all over the map. We can’t deal with another obligation.”  Our hundred percent is already spoken for.

              Lord, in you we seek our rest, an ear to listen to the pleadings of our heart, an arm to brace us lest we fall, a companion to sit with us as the storms rage.  Lord, to you we come stretched, harried, undone as we may be, confident that even from the depths of our despair, mired in confusion, you are a source of empowerment and hope.  Brace us, we pray, O Lord, with a more sturdy faith that we may see the world and our circumstances in it with greater clarity, and then be moved to act with greater decisiveness.

              O God, we pray for vision to see more clearly the mission you have given us as a church.  Consumed by details about the future, what our physical plant will look like, what our neighborhood will look like, what the city as a whole will look like, we likewise see a mission field spread before us. Numerous gifts and resources at our disposal, we feel called to act, but clarity about how best to deploy our resources has yet to come. Be with us, O God, as we work to establish our vision, and as the vision takes shape, grant that we may have the will and the fortitude required to execute it.                         

              As the American role in the future of Iraq continues to be debated, we continue to mourn the loss of life of our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. Each day brings new details of a war whose complexities have only increased as the investment of our personnel and materiels have increased. We pray that those who are conducting the war effort, O God, may do so wisely, and that the day may so arise when this chapter in our history is closed.  Our prayers are with the indigenous population of Iraq who are forced to suffer the unrelenting terror of war.

              Living God, abide with our nation as we prepare to elect new representatives to lead us.  A hard fought campaign season concluding, with many accusations traded, we know that the campaigns have only served to strengthen pre-existing partisan commitments. We pray, O Lord, that our lawmakers will commit to political agendas that promote the common good, rather than agendas that breed hard feelings and vendettas. May whomever is elected strive to serve with the intelligence, integrity and diligence that the times demand.

              O Christ, our Savior, we continue to pray your blessing on your church.  May our work and witness ever be consistent with the agendas you have set.  Chasten us when we are lax or unfaithful, and let us not be self-deceived, convincing ourselves that we have given a hundred percent so long as injustice and discrimination continue to keep your people in chains.

              For this day, for the community of faith, for visiting friends from Monroe, and all good gifts, O Christ, we give thee thanks. In your holy name we pray