In Mark 12:28-44 we discover what Jesus says about being a part of God’s Kingdom of Light: a Kingdom of justice, mercy, peace, and joy as we ask how to live each day in the realities of our nation, city, and neighborhoods.
Read: Mark 12:28-44
What catches your attention? What do you learn about the Heart of God?
This passage is also recorded in Luke and Matthew. It is important.
Here’s some background on Scribes:
Scribes were Legal experts, a trained class of writers who drew up contracts for business, marriage, estates, and wills. Some Scribes were Pharisees. Around 150 BC Pharisees began as a party of the people, a grass movement to not succumb to the Greek culture around them and to uphold the law of Moses. To know God was to obey the law – so they put their energy into preserving the law. As can happen – the rules of the law became more important than the heart of the law.
In these three different engagements with Jesus, what does Jesus’ show us about the Heart of God:
1) Love is at the center of God’s Kingdom
Often Jesus is questioned and challenged by the Scribes and Pharisees because he threatens them. This Scribe seems earnest with a real question. To Jesus he says: you seem to know our holy writings. Which commandment is most important?
Now, we might think it is obvious what Jesus will say --- but this is because we’ve learned his answer. Keep in mind that these scribes and pharisees are trying to faithfully obey 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scripture (248 postive; 365 prohibitive).
It seems this man is saying to Jesus: I want to take these seriously, how do I rank them? What is most important? (And, perhaps he is saying: I am exhausted in trying to KEEP ALL these Laws).
Jesus responds with the Shema, the morning prayer that all Jewish people prayed from Deut. 6:4-5: Love the Lord Your God with all of your being? Jesus combines with a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18: Love your neighbor as yourself
And, then Jesus describes these singularly – no other is greater than this.
Love of God flows into love of neighbor as oneself.
Love of neighbor as oneself flows into love of God. They are woven together.
Jesus, our Living WORD, answers OUR questions today as well, for we ask the same one: What is most important for me to do right now? Where do I focus?
Jesus, word of God, says to us:
Begin each day with LOVE toward God who created your mind, heart, and soul and allow this love to flow into love for yourself that flows into love for your neighbor.
What is also wonderful in God’s Kingdom is that God trusts you to be a neighbor!
GK Chesterton wrote: We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
Neighbor means near. Jesus loves to ask this question Who is “near” you that you can love with the love I show you?
Jesus also shows us that:
2) Abuse is never a part of God’s Kingdom
Jesus, who is nearing his time to go to the cross for all he came to LOVE, provides a very necessary warning that is for all ages:
Beware the abuser – they often come clothed as religious and political people who are supposed to care for the needs of people. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. Instead they devour.
Jesus’ words about these other scribes are not soft. They are claiming to be represenstatives of God’s character and they are hypocrites, unjustly using position & prestige for own gain. These scribes had been given authority to be guardians of women after their husband died -- make sure they have enough to live on. People often left their whole fortune to the temple, and the scribe were supposed to manage. Instead they have shamelessly cheated these widows out of their property and taken it for themselves. Then they pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public in long flowing robes.
Jesus’ communicates what God has declared throughout all of the Old Testament
Exodus 22:22: “You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry?”
For Scribes who sought to obey the law – they sure missed God’s heart because they didn’t take seriously love God and love neighbor!
Jesus also shows us that:
3) Abundance is to be shared in God’s Kingdom
After Jesus’ harsh warning about abuse he stays in the Temple and watches the crowd put money into the Treasury for the Temple, We are told that many people put in large sums.And, then a poor widow put in two coins – barely worth a penny.
This becomes a radical teaching moment of Jesus for the disciples and us.
In how this story has been told and preached in isolation, we may take this story out of context and miss what Jesus is really revealing to us about being a part of God’s Kingdom of Justice and Mercy.
What do you make of this story in light of what Jesus has just said?
Here Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
Last week, James B reminded us that our faith is to be a public faith not a privatized faith (just me and Jesus). When we only live with a privatized faith, we can turn this story into a sweet message about a poor widow who trusted God so much that she gave all that she had. While this is true that she gave in faith and teaches about trusting everything to GOd who is her only provider.
There is a BIGGER TRUTH revealed when we look at the whole story and we begin to ask questions:
Why is this widow poor? Why does she need to give out of her poverty when so many around her have an abundance?
Is it possible that she is one of those widows whose property and house were devoured by the greed and corruption of the Scribes who then spiritualized it all by saying that the widow’s “property” was for the TEMPLE?
I challenge all of us today. I challenge all of us in this time of uncertainty.
Is by chance this story of the poor widow who “gave all” she had, our invitation to ask,
In God’s Kingdom how can we share abundantly together?
If you were to continue this story, what might you add as a Kingdom story?
This is my Abundant Kingdom Story:
And, some of the people who were bringing of their resources to the Temple saw the woman give her two coins – and they took of their abundance and invited her to dinner and asked her to share about her story. And suddenly this “poor widow” had a name and the beginning of a community in which she can share even more of herself.
These three encounters reveal the Heart of God:
1)Love is at the center of God’s Kingdom
2) Abuse is never a part of God’s Kingdom
3) Abundance of all kind is to be shared in God’s Kingdom
What does this mean for us?