November 5, 2000
By The Rev. Grant M. Gallup
© 2000 by Grant M. Gallup
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Shema Israel
Psalm 119:1-16 or 1-8 Beati immaculati
Hebrews 7:23-28 A better alianza
Mark 12:28-34 Not far from the Reign of God
The theatre is an apostolic development of the church--for its dramas were born there in passion plays, chancel dramas. In our time, it has enlarged its methods, setting our feet in a the larger room of cinema. Shakespeare has tagged along through the years, but usually carrying along (as the church does) the costumes and makeup of another age. Also the language. Though I a few years ago saw "Romeo and Juliet" done at the Goodman theatre on Michigan avenue as if it were Verona of 400 years ago, they had changed the scenery to Taylor Street of the nineteen twenties. Knives and pistols were used in duels, and Juliet committed suicide with a handgun. But what struck me most was something that was not changed--the way Shakespeare used "learn" as an equivalent for "teach." "Learn me how to sing" or "Learn me how to tie my shoes," or "Learn me the meaning of this poem" -- I remember saying such things as a child, and being corrected for it. The dictionary says that this is now "substandard" English; A resuscitated Will would have to unlearn it. Teaching is now what is done TO YOU by teachers, learning is what you do in response. Never the twain shall meet.
But I like the old usage better, and perversely use it sometimes, as I do old-fashioned spellings and pronunciations for the fun of it. And the point of it. Teaching and learning are an exchange and not a unilateral transfer, not a mere dispensing of information. One day not long ago I saw a rather overweight burgesa momma learning her toddler how to ride a tricycle. She waddled that trike along the broken sidewalk, around the cracks and fissures, leaning over laboriously to grasp the handlebars and guide them. She was so involved in the process that she was LEARNING the little one to ride. I was thus learned how to tie my shoes, and how to tie a four-in-hand knot for a necktie. Nobody ever learned me how to do a Windsor, or a bow tie. Someone has to get very close to you to learn you how to dance, and how to swim, and how to make love--three vital developmental tasks that are learned by doing, not watching.
Who was teaching, and who learning, in our gospel story today? Mark has Jesus in Jerusalem, walking in the Temple, and some of the establishment representatives confront him: they question his authority to teach, attempt to arrest him for heresy, conspire to catch him in tax resistance (he was apparently equivocal about it) and argue with him about his position on Resurrection (he was of the Pharisee school, not a low church Saducee). All of this illustrates the opposition that Jesus and the infant church received. But today we hear another side of the story--one that we don't often hear, or listen to. One of the theological scholars who had listened to all the debates Jesus had that day recognized his fine mind and came and put a question to him. "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
It's a contemporary question, too. "What do you see as the main purpose of religion? Is it for personal growth and development? Or is it for social change?" Jesus replies instantly with the creed of Judaism, the creed of Judaism and of her daughter religions to this day. It is the Shema Israel. "Hear, O Israel." From Deuteronomy the sixth chapter. "The Lord our God is one Lord and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." Jesus adds something not in Deuteronomy: "And with all your mind."
And then he grafts in something from the Book Leviticus, the nineteenth chapter: "The second is this," he says, "You must love your neighbor as yourself." Now a fundamentalist would have been upset by what Jesus did. He actually added to the creed--he balanced the vertical religion with the horizontal. Belief and faith in God was to involve the use of the mind, not just your emotions and devotions and cleverness of motions. Jesus added, "Love of neighbor is right up there with Love of God. Nothing in your religion is greater than these two."
Love God with your mind. To love God with the mind is something Jesus expects of all people. The "educated" in our society, where education is a privilege of class, and of money, and is denied to the poor, don't expect it. The privileged of our culture do not expect the unlettered to use their minds at all. Their arms and legs and backs, yes, and even their hearts and souls and strength are to be devoted to their Mammon, but their minds, no. The mind indeed may be trained, schooled, programmed, so that it may be used by the gods of the market, but it must not be allowed to be dedicated to the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor. It must never get so close to the dominion of the One True God that it might be "learned" in the love of that God, or "learned" in the love of the neighbor.
How to keep it from that? How do the false Gods of our time keep us "schooled up" in their lesson plan that we have no Mind for the God of Love, the God of Neighbor? Which is the great commandment in the law? What's the Big Creed of public life today? The local one is, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all."
Not!
It is such a false creed as this that gives us the leaders that no one but the damned deserve. Jesus would have flunked this one, or crossed his fingers. He surely stands with the Jehovah's witnsses in refusing to make this their creed. Do we really believe in One God, Creator of the indivisible United States? (Actually, Texas when it joined reserved the right to divide itself into five states). Do I really believe that the U.S. bestows liberty and justice for all, in a mandate from the Deity?
Given an option, Jesus would have slipped in the Shema at this point in the flag-raising, or at least whispered it in Aramaic.
Jesus saw that the Shema Israel put his patria and himself in the position of listeners to Yahweh, and not in the position of a substitute for Yahweh. From the verses immediately following our gospel lesson today (vv. 35-37:) "Later, while teaching in the Temple, Jesus said, 'How can the scribes maintain that Messiah is the Son of David?'" And he quotes Psalm 110, "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand and I will put your enemies under your feet." David himself (Jesus points out) calls him his Lord. How can the coming Liberator be King David's son, then, if David calls him "Lord"? And Mark says, "the great majority of people heard this with delight." Their delight was in the fact that someone outside the establishment, someone not authorized to be an interpreter of Scripture, was doing it, and doing it right there in the Temple, and doing it against the nationalist interests. Jesus is teaching here that a religion which looks only to nationalism--as Zionists to Israel--as the champion of one nation's interests over another's, is not the religion which the Holy Spirit of God breathes into our Scriptures, hymns, prayers, and history. If David, moved by the Holy Spirit, calls Messiah "Lord", then Messih is more than one who insures Israel's lebensraum in northern Palestine. Messiah is indeed more than Messiah--Messiah is CHRISTOS, for everyone. It is not "one nation under God" that we pledge our allegiance to--but the God and Ruler of all nations: Pantokrator. All the nations aupon the earth are our neighbors here. And we pledge allegiance to those neighbors as well, the neighbor's children in Baghdad and Belgrade. And you must love that neighbor as yourself.
When I was appointed liaison officer in 1988 for the companion relationship between the diocese of Chicago and the diocese of Nicaragua, a few scribes and Pharisees rose up in diocesan convention to oppose the resolution creating the relationship. One of them said, "This is recognition of one of the most inhuman regimes in the world", and "the worst violator of human rights," and so forth. The response to such a statement is simply "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Most of the mass media in the U.S. violated that commandment, and continue to do so, in lies about our neighbor nations on this planet. The lies of the Bush family hegemony, the mendacity of the political process in the U.S., are crimes against the God whom we are commanded to love with our MINDS.
We live in a time when we were taught that the most totalitarian of all human institutions, the most godless of nations, was the Soviet union. And now it is in a shambles, and our own blessed institutions, western 'democracies' and western churches, are censoring, silencing, forbidding, obfuscating, propagandizing, and brainwashing our MINDS. From law enforcement agencies to schools and industries, our institutions are manipulative. Even our denominations (including the One that pretends it's the only One) want our hearts and souls devoted to THEM, a commitment forbidden by the commandment.
"The world is too much with us," wrote William Wordsworth. "Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we find in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away." The heart belongs to God, not to Gore or Gucci's, or the GNP. At a church workshop on mission, I heard a suburban clergymale report they had spent thousands of dollars on direct mail advertising to "selected market areas" and this was listed under the rubric of "evangelism." Advertising, like that used to peddle Skippy Peanut Butter, or ACE detergent, is called evangelism. The gospel is commoditized. As political candidates are consumer items--packaging is all, the medium becomes the message, and the massage. In the face of this, Jesus says, "Don't park your brains like that and walk away from them. The world is a no-parking zone for brains." Television almost requires the parking of the brain outside, and the culture provides car hops to do the trick. Patriotism insists, "No brains allowed." Our society schools us, "Use of brain in designated areas only." And our religions in the U.S. largely function without the use of brain power at all, except at the keyboard, to find the right keys to punch. But Jesus says "You shall love God with your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor, too."
Programming is about teaching, not learning. It's not education. But that's what we're offered everywhere, and what we must resist with all our mind and with all our strength.
When the Lord Jesus spoke the summary of Torah to the scribe who asked him for it, the scribe complimented his interlocuter: "Beautifully said, Master" (he call his pupil Master) "God is one and thre is no other. To love God with heart, understanding, passion, gifts, abilities, stength, and to love neighbor as self--this is more important than any feeding of sacrifices to an addictive god who is a consumer of sacrifices, a consumer of holocausts." And then, Jesus, seeing how wisely he has spoken, said tohim, "You are not far form the kingdom of God."
Not all the way into the Reign of God, mind you. But Not Far from it. What distance did the scribe have to go, in that case, to get Kingdom-ized? Jesus in this one instance in the Greek Scriptures of what we call the Nuevo Alianza, the New Alliance, has an agreeable dialogue with a spokesperson for the old institutions of religion. They compliment each other, they are polite to each other, and more than polite. "Master" the man calls him. "You're getting close," Jesus says.
The answers you've got in MIND now, the answers that have been there all along in the great Wisdom of the Faith, in the profundities of Torah, in the goodnews of the reign of God arriving now, worship God by putting this learning to work in your choices: these are your pilgrim's passport. They are learning you the way. May the Holy Spirit learn all our minds in this teaching.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
APARTADO RP-10
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
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