Out Our Way:

Mark 12:28-34

Out our way, rodeo is a major sport as is basketball, baseball, football and hockey. Being one who is quite able to fall off a perfectly gentle horse like Goliath, I have never had any interest in riding broncs or bulls - but I still enjoy watching it.

I once asked a fairly succesful bronc rider what it took to be a champion and he said, "Above all, staying on for the full eight seconds." No matter how fancy and skilled your riding may be, if you hit the dust before the whistle, you get no points. Fancy or plain riding, the ultimate goal is to stay on for eight seconds.

Jesus was asked what was the greatest of the commandments - an issue many scholars and scribes of the time argued about, but Jesus made it very clear that all the various rules and regulations the scribes and experts on the law had come up with were useless unless the basic love of God and neighbor were observed.

We don't need a manual or a thick rule book to please God and live the way we were created to be. Respect God and His creation - especially those created in his own image, and everything else falls into place.

It is amazing to me how easily most people are to get along with if you simply treat them as you want to be treated. If you love God you want to please Him, treat His children with respect. Consider. Jesus' favorite term for God is "Abba" - Father, or more correctly, "papa". That is how God wants us to see Him and also how He sees us ... ALL of us! You may be able to handle people treating you with disresct and be able to let it go - but if thy show disrespect or mistreatment to your kids ... well, that's a whole different matter! If God is the ULTIMATE PARENT, it should not surprise us that how we treat each other - God's kids - really matters to Him as well.

Amazingly, with all the 613 rules and regulations some rabbis managed to add to the 10 commandments, if we just keep these two: Love God and love neighbor, all the others are automatically covered as well. Who needs a rule book to love your family? Just love them and the rest falls into place.

The scribe who asked the question of Jesus was not trying to "trick" Jesus but was sincere in his desire to do the will of God. Jesus saw this and told him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God."

Karl Barth, the famous and much-respected theologian of the 20th century, wrote volumes on theology and the Bible. Once asked if he could sum up his massive works in a few sentences, he smiled and sang, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Good grief, after all the hours I spent wading through theology in Seminary he tells me that NOW? Yup. And having done a fair amount of scholarship and study on my own, I find he was right. For all my degrees and thesis work, I find it all still comes down to the basics. Jesus was not the only Jewish rabbi to teach this. In the Jewish commentaries on Torah - the first five books of the Bible, also called "The Law" - is the story of another rabbi who remarked, "the Law is summed up in the statement: Love God and love each other. All the rest is commentary."

"Just stay on for eight seconds" is the primary task of the rodeo bronc rider. If you don't do that, nothing else matters. In the same way, "Love God and neighbor" is the primary task of the Christian. If we don't do that, all the posturing and activities and preaching is equally useless.

--

John Bruington and Goliath try to serve Christ and neighbor in Havre - and though they sometimes do not make the buzzer, they keep getting back on and trying to make the whole eight seconds.