Mark 12: Love Unconditionally, Loved Unconditionally

Well, this morning's passage, the story this morning is about a scribe, so sort of a religious expert at the time, and he comes up to Jesus, he says, Hey, what's the most important commandment?

So this kind of would have been a frequent probably conversation amongst experts, you know.

I mean, anybody even now, if you're around a bunch of people who love the Bible, they start getting into some debate about some detail or something.

And so this probably was something he probably shot around with his buddies, other religious experts.

What's the most important one?

Much less for this guy, a religious expert.

So he would have known, you know, the 613 Old Testament commandments, and it's somewhere along the way, he's just thinking, like, like, which one?

Like, which is the most important one?

There's so many of these.

Like, which is the most, like we boiled it down to one thing.

Just one.

Like, what is it?

What is following God really about?

What should I do?

This is what the guy's asking.

What should I do?

If I'm to follow God, what should I do?

And Jesus says, really, it's short, hey, love God and love other people.

Now we know love, we know romantic love, right?

We love romantic love.

Uh we also know brotherly or sisterly love, and that's needed, that's huge in our lives.

And then there's this word in this text.

It's not romantic love, it's not brotherly or sisterly love, it's agape love.

It's unconditional love.

It's love, it's not conditioned upon anything, so nothing caused it, nothing could stop it.

It's not conditioned upon anything.

So this is a love that never stops, ever, never even once.

It has fully and always shifted its concern and care to the other person.

Now, loving can be easy, right?

Because the person you're loving is perhaps at the moment what you want them to be, or doing what you want them to do.

Uh maybe loving God can be easy at a particular time because he's cooperating with your plan and life is good.

But then love can also be hard, right?

Because the person's difficult.

They're in the way.

Just like maybe something physically in the way, maybe emotionally in the way.

Or maybe they have their own opinions.

You didn't plan on that.

They have their own plan for the day, they have their own plan for money.

And maybe you're sharing money because you're married.

They have their own plan for the house or a project, right?

In school.

And all of a sudden it's hard to work with that person, hard to love that person because they are a person.

Right?

Or maybe like yesterday for us, when we're gonna start the Georgia game, big conversation.

It ends up, there's two people in our marriage.

It causes a problem.

It'd be a lot easier if there's just one person in our marriage, right?

But it can be hard to love when you're loving another person, because they're there.

They have their own thoughts and opinions.

And then there's God who does not do what we want him to do, because sometimes you get sick, or you lose the money, right?

Or you're still lonely, or hurting, or confused, or unfulfilled, and you don't know why.

And that can be hard, and that's real, and yet Jesus says, in light of the reality of all of that, people are hard, people are in the way, God is difficult sometimes because he's not doing what we want him to do.

In light of all of that, when this guy shows up and says, hey, give me one thing, I just want something to do, Jesus says, Hey, love God unconditionally, no matter what is going on.

And love other people unconditionally.

Never once, never one time, ever, ever, ever, ever stop.

So, point number one.

To be a person of faith is to be a person of unconditional love.

That's what Jesus is saying.

To be a person of faith is to be a person of unconditional love.

So Mark 12, 28 through 31, one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer.

So this is his shot.

He's gonna ask a question of all the commandments, which is the most important one?

So this is Jesus' chance to define what it means to follow God.

And so Jesus says the most important one is this.

Hear, O Israel.

So that word here is Shema, and so this is known as the Shema.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, with all your strength.

Okay, so Jesus is saying, like all of you, like all of it, all of you love God all the time.

And the second is this love your neighbor as yourself.

There's no commandment greater than these.

So this guy, this scribe, who's an expert of the law, he would have known this immediately because he would have known the Shema.

Comes out of Deuteronomy 6, 4 and 5.

Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Goes on just as Jesus quoted it.

So Jesus quoted something the guy would have already known.

This guy would have had it memorized.

So he would have been nodding along, sort of like, yeah, that's right.

That's right.

That's it.

That's that's the right one.

I mean, even today, a lot of times, if you go over to a practicing Jewish household, they'll have the Shema on their doorpost as you enter their home.

This is foundational.

But the thing that Jesus says differently is then he adds to it.

And the thing that he adds to it as to say, like, hey, if you're gonna love God, here's what it looks like, is he adds Leviticus 19, 18.

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

Do you remember the first time you saw the notebook?

Anyone want to confess that?

It's confession time.

Maybe you did it during the confessional prayer.

Right?

Maybe you missed it.

It was classic emotional hijacking.

I mean, at the height in 2004.

This was, this is us, the TV show today.

This was the movie version back in 2004, just a tear fest, right?

I mean, people were crying in theaters on airplanes.

If you were on an airplane and the person next to you broke down, you're like, oh, you're watching, you're watching the notebook.

I've been there.

I know what you're talking about.

I mean, there's beautiful actors, there's a kissing scene in the rain.

I mean, you know, some of you know I'm talking about.

So, of course, I put off renting it.

Christy and I eventually we rented it.

This was back in the day, you drove the blockbuster to rent the movie.

It was part of the date, and we drove the blockbuster, and we ended up with the notebook, and we end up back on the couch, cuddled up, watching it.

We're newly married, and we're watching it, and by the end of it, we're both crying, and you know, I want to love you like that.

No, I'm gonna love you like that.

You know, oh, I'm gonna, I would do that for you, and I would do that for you, right?

But you know, you you look at that movie, I won't ruin it if some of you just need a good cry.

If you just need to cry, like your life's a mess.

Just watch the notebook, you'll get all the emotions out all at one time.

But if you watch the movie, I won't ruin it.

The math on the movie is horrible.

And what I mean is this is like if you start to look at it and you add up, like you add up for that guy, you add up everything he's doing.

It took too long.

It was too much work.

Right?

I mean, that's part of the agony of the movie.

You're like, this is taking too long, this is too much work.

He needs to walk away, be done with it, right?

But love doesn't let him.

That's the thing about love, is it just won't let you.

It shifts.

It shifts your concerns from you to the other person.

So you don't bail.

Right?

You don't bail when you're offended.

You don't bail when it takes a long time.

You don't bail when the person gets sick.

You don't bail when it gets hard.

Right?

This is love that you've shifted your care and concern from yourself to the other person.

So this is inevitable, this next point.

To love is to fail.

Point number two is inevitable.

As soon as I set you up with everything I've said the last maybe seven or eight minutes, point two has to come.

I mean, the call for you to agape love, to love like that, to never once not love unconditionally, eventually, point number two comes.

Sometimes we want to love God and we want to love other people, but we fail this agape love.

We do bail, right?

In our sin, we just choose to be selfish.

It just takes too long, it's too difficult.

They're in the way.

I don't want to do, I don't want to deal with you.

Or maybe in sin we sit in judgment upon others rather than love just because we're really insecure.

You see, in the story, Jesus perfectly reveals the greatest power on earth, which is unconditional love, by the way.

He reveals that as the thing you should give your life to if you're gonna follow God, and then it crushes us.

Basically, Jesus says, Oh, you want the weight of the law?

Right?

This is an expert of the law.

You want the weight of the law?

I will give it to you.

Love God with your full self.

Never, ever one time not loving him.

And love other people, even difficult ones, even enemies, all the time, always, never once stopping.

So, what that would mean is like you plan for others more than you plan for yourself.

It means you never run out of energy of loving other people.

You never run out of money to provide for other people, you never get tired of sacrificing for other people.

You never doubt God or withhold praise because you're frustrated with Him.

You never choose gossip or envy over complete joy in the good, the absolute good that keeps happening to other people.

You never say, just a minute.

Our oldest daughter, her third word spoken into the world was Minute.

Because all we said to her the first year of her life was, just a minute, she named her baby doll minute.

I'm not kidding.

That's how selfish we were.

It's just like, just a minute, just a minute, just a minute.

And it's like, what's your baby's name?

Minute.

You see, I can't agape love.

You can't agape love.

Not perfectly.

And yet that's what Jesus is saying.

It means to follow God.

And this is why Jesus takes on the curse of the law.

Even a good holy commandment that we should give our life to, he fulfills it for us because we can't fulfill it, which removes, removes the curse of the law upon us because our failings are put upon the cross, Jesus on the cross, and his righteousness is given to us.

And so Jesus is even pointing this man toward himself, toward faith and grace.

So, what that means is your list, the list, to be perfect and to be redeemed by God, or feel redeemed, or feel loved, or accepted, that list that you live by, it's taken care of.

It's already taken care of.

And that is so reassuring and relieving and freeing.

It starts to heal the heart, and all of a sudden the very thing that you're called to do, and then you are crushed by, you are now beginning to be empowered to do.

And then, like 1 John 4, 18, and 19 actually makes sense.

There's no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

For fear has to do with punishment.

And whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

So you're you're perfected in love, so you don't have to fear.

We love because he first loved us.

There's a great story in Luke 19.

You probably remember it.

Jesus walking through a town, Zacchaeus, remember he climbs up in a tree.

There's the children's song about it.

Zacchaeus climbs up in a tree.

Nobody liked Zacchaeus, he was a tax collector.

He was unpure, his home was a non-kosher, non-Jewish home.

So you know the Jewish religious people have nothing to do with this guy.

Never, ever, ever would they enter his home.

If they entered his home and they ate with him, they were breaking all the rules that were set in place, which meant to them what it meant to follow God.

They would have nothing to do with this guy.

So of course, when Jesus says, Hey, you, I'm going home with you, I'll eat in your house, I'm gonna break all of these rules.

So we get verse 7.

All the people saw this, began to mutter.

He has gone to be a guest of a sinner.

Yeah, yeah, that's the natural reaction to a bunch of religious people in this situation.

And the whole time Jesus is redefining what it means to be faithful.

He's redefining who could be faithful.

Right?

Because a lot of people, even now, a lot of people say, you know what, you can you can eat with me if you're pure enough.

You got your act together.

You can eat with me, but you can be a part of my life if you look like me enough.

And Jesus said, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'll come eat with you.

You don't have to have your act together yet.

You don't have to be pure enough.

Just as you are.

This calls us to something great, right?

You're seeing it.

The call is something incredible for our lives to unconditionally love people.

What a great, holy, great calling.

And yet it crushes us, and yet that very thing rescues us.

Point number three is this in Jesus, God agape loves you while you fail to love him and others.

In Jesus, God agape loves you even while you fail to agape love him and others.

Do you remember the scene in Les Miz?

Maybe you just saw it to see Hugh Jackman, right?

Most half of us, maybe.

Um, I mean, he's great, right?

We'll all just say we have crushes on Hugh Jackman.

Maybe you saw the musical, maybe you saw the movie, you remember the scene?

Very beginning.

Valjean steals candlesticks from the bishop.

Bishop, the bishop is the symbol of God.

Valjean is in prison, the bishop shows up and he says, Oh, here are the candlesticks I gave you.

The guard says, What you know, what are you talking about?

You know, like, oh, you gave, I thought he stole them.

And so this gift of grace, this gift frees Valjean.

And out of this response to this unearned, unconditioned love from the bishop, Valjean says this, yet why did I allow that man to touch my soul and teach me love?

He treated me like any other.

He gave me his trust, he called me brother.

My life he claims for God above.

Can such things be?

For I had come to hate the world, this world that always hated me.

Instead, he offers me my freedom.

I feel my shame inside me like a knife.

He told me that I have a soul.

How does he know?

What spirit comes to move my life?

Is there another way to go?

You see, we need to hear the call, but we need to know the bishop comes with grace.

Like we need to know God offers to us unconditional love because we will not always fully love.

So let me say it this way.

This is kind of this morning, woke up excited about this statement.

The thing you're called to do, unconditional love, is the thing that rescues you, unconditional love.

Right?

The thing you're called to do, unconditional love, is the very thing that rescues you, unconditional love, which unbelievably helps you do the thing you're called to do, and then when you don't do it, you're still rescued by it.

It's an unbelievable thing.

So today on the church calendar is All Saints Day.

I don't know if you keep up with that.

That's what today we celebrate.

This Sunday, we celebrate All Saints Day.

What that means is it's a tradition coming out of the Reformation centuries ago.

Martin Luther, a bunch of other leaders, they they reformed out of a path and a church that were promoting merit or law to be accepted by God.

And out of that comes this good news that we celebrate today, and we celebrate it every Sunday, and that is this that we, all of us, are both and always sinner and saint.

Simultaneously, at all times, you are sinner and you are saint.

No one, none of us, is holier than any other, and there is no holy ladder to climb.

We are all saints.

There's just a savior to know.

My brothers and sisters, no matter what, in Jesus, you are a saint unconditionally loved.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that while you call us to such a great purpose to agape love you and to agape love other people, that it is that love that rescues us from our failings, our shortcomings, and even empowers us by your spirit to love you and love others.

Give us a greater trust and hope in Jesus and in the sacrifice of Jesus that we might be rescued from all of our merit, that we might know that it is by you and by your grace alone that we are saved and made whole.

God, we thank you for the rescue that helps us along this life that can be quite difficult to love you and love other people.

Holy Spirit, we ask that you'd be working in our hearts in all the ways that we hesitate to love you or give parts of ourselves to you.

And Holy Spirit, we ask that you would work in our hearts all the ways that we hesitate to give and show love to others.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.