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Some Thoughts
on the Liturgy
GETTING IT
+ The
family of four were coming home from Church one Sunday morning
- the young boy and girl of
the family were fighting in the back seat
- father: stop that fighting
- son: I hate her
- father: we just came from
Church—you can’t hate your sister, you love God
and God says love everyone
- son: I do love God, but God
doesn’t stick me with a pencil like she just did
- we tend to place God in a
separate category from people—
- God is out there in charge
of creation, etc.
- we are here—in this car, in
our job, in this family, in this situation, etc.
+
What was the understanding of the scribe in the Gospel that Jesus praised
today?
Jesus saw that he answered with understanding
- the evangelist Mark says
- his understanding was that
he “got it” in terms of a popular expression,
- that is, the scribe
recognized what Jesus was doing—Jesus had placed the basic religious law of
Israel, the law of Shema, namely,
to love God with all your heart on
the same level as to love your neighbor
- he tells
that scribe that he was not far from the Kingdom that he was preaching
about
- it is a remarkable statement
for Jesus to make considering the way he felt about the religious leaders
of his time
- and he made the statement
because the scribe caught the essence of what Jesus was teaching, that is,
he “got it,” he understood his teaching
+ To
truly understand a teaching is to “get it”, that is, to understand it with
the thought that goes further than simply knowing some answer
- we saw that in a dramatic
way just last week
- a group of non-violent
people saw violence in its rawest form
- it was appalling for the
American people to see
- but what stunned our often
violent country is what the Jewish community did about the violence
- at the service immediately
after the shooting, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported that the “worshipers, offered
praise, affirming the oneness of God and praying for protection.”
- they “got it” as they spoke
their Jewish belief which led to our Christianity
+
Contrast that with the negative campaigning of the candidates for office in
our country right now
- most of them Christian
people who want to have an office in which they will supposedly help the
people of whatever locale
- viciously attacking the
person who is running against him/her
- what a horrible example of
Christianity
- it is a lack of
understanding of the application of the law of love of God and neighbor
+ You
and I as followers of Jesus are called to a true understanding of the law
of love
- that is, we are called to
“get it”
- what does it mean
- it means the insight of the
scribe: this law—that of love of God AND neighbor is on the same level, and
that both are the will of God
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Worship of God is not the problem, obviously, since we wouldn’t be here if
that were the case
- it is the other part of the
law that is the problem
- that is, the love of
neighbor that is a topic of Scripture all the time
- and the problem is that in
this area, many of us just don’t “get it”
- proof that we don’t “get it”
comes from the contradictions that we allow in our individual lives
- and we need to spend time
thinking of them
+
What is needed above all in our spiritual lives is personal responsibility
- that we must put our actions
on the line
- open them up to criticism,
that is, allow our actions to be studied by someone else, like the mirror
of Scripture
- only then we will understand
enough to see what Jesus is trying to teach
- then we will “get it”
- once we “get it,” our lives
could change, or in Jesus’ words, we would not be far from the Kingdom of
heaven.
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