Big Picture

Rules are important.

Sounds simple, right? If you don’t have rules you have chaos. Without rules, you have mass confusion. Rules let us know when to go, when to stop, what to do, and how to do it. With rules we know just how long we can park in a particular spot (if we can park there at all) and we know how loud and how late we can play our music. With rules we know how much the ticket will cost if we ignore them. Rules organize our lives. If a disaster happens, and no rules exist to control that behavior, we look to lawmakers to create another rule. Rules keep things in order. Rules make sense.

Rules direct life. Rules are important.

It is said that rabbis, Jewish religious teachers, believe that the world hangs on three things: Torah, Temple service, and deeds of loving kindness. These three things were the hinges the kept everything together and moving. As the list of how these “hinges” were to work and look in the lives of everyday people grew (eventually the Pharisees observed 613 laws or rules), people became bogged down with the details. Living a godly life became keeping track of each detail of the numerous laws, being careful to not skip a beat. When to eat, when to work, how long to work, what to eat, when to go to the doctor (and when not to go to the doctor), what religious looked like (and what religious didn’t look like): these all and more were written out in detailed, specific rules. What it meant to be a follower to God looks like: following all these rules.

The Jewish folks became experts at following rules. They had them memorized by heart and practiced them everyday. You see, they came to believe that if they failed to follow even one of these rules, they would fail to be followers of God. So they memorized, practiced, and followed rules in order to please God. If someone failed to follow a rule, they would be shunned by the community, cut off from their friends and family, or worse: sometimes they were killed.

[read Matthew 22:34-40]

The Pharisees saw an opportunity--Jesus had silenced the Sadducees--and they wanted to test Him. The little huddle of Pharisees scuttled over to Jesus and His disciples. They started questioning Jesus, in an attempt to catch Him saying something, anything to incriminate himself. You can hear a few in the back of the group snickering to themselves: “hehe, we’ve got Him now. He can’t possibly answer this riddle right.”

Can you choose the best, most important of all the laws? Which is the most perfect, all-encompassing, descriptive of who we are as followers of God?

The disciples must of drew in their breath and held it. How was Jesus going to answer this one? What if He says something to make the Pharisees mad? What if Jesus doesn’t see their attempt to trick Him? What will happen to us?

Jesus confounds the Pharisees’ efforts, pointing these religious teachers, interpreters, and observers to the very marrow of the Law: love God, love neighbor. It is impossible to fulfill all the nit-picky details of the law without loving God and loving your neighbor. All the laws, special rules, and guidelines were designed at one point to be helpful, to guide the Israelites in a right relationship with God. But as the years passed on the rules became engrained and people became entrenched in the rule, forgetting why they had them and Who the rules were to point them to.

Sounds a little like church, huh? I’ve grown up in the Church of the Nazarene. My grandparents were fairly conservative Nazarene and there were many things I grew up not doing (or in the case of church, doing). I know some of the rules we have. I know that some of the rules have become more than guidelines to point us to a life wholly-lived for God. It happens as time passes; people become shaped by the rules and can forget about God. We can run through the Church and Christian motions, but you will fail to embrace the meaning and journey of God’s redemptive actions in our lives. God wants to do a transformative act in our lives; something beyond “the rules makes you Christian.” A heart and life that doesn’t reflect the grace of God fails to be god-like, even in the most strict rule-follower.

God calls us to a tenacious commitment to Him. Read Deuteronomy 6:5 again: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Everything we are, everything we do is to be an act of love. If we wait for a warm-fuzzy “love” feeling, we’ll miss God’s call to do, be love in everything. With everything we can love God and love others. It’s not about “doing” church. It’s about “being” the Church—being in love with God and loving others.

The danger of going to church is that you can get lost in the church. I don’t mean that you forget your way from the fellowship hall to the sanctuary. The danger is that we become swamped with “church” things to be done: Sunday School, worship service, board meetings, potlucks, VBS, district meetings. Do you find yourself busying doing God’s work and missing the life that God has called you to? If so, don’t miss the big picture: God is calling you to love Him and love others. That is the foundation of the Church: loving God and loving others. All the things we “do” at church should be pointing in that direction: love God and love others.

What does loving God and loving others look like in your life? How does loving God and loving others reach beyond all of us sitting here in the pews this morning. Jesus said even a good person can love those who love him or her. It is the loving act of sacrifice that loves those who don’t know you, don’t like you, don’t care about you.

	Pentecost Sunday May 11, 2008
	Trinity Sunday May 18, 2008
	May 25, 2008
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