It’s a Monday morning and you walk into class to discover that there is a pop quiz. The teacher has this smirk on his face. He knows that very few of you have prepared for this pop quiz, and he has some tricks up his sleeve. The class is Religion 101. You have been studying the 613 commandments and laws in the Torah from Genesis through Deuteronomy, trying to retain the ones that prohibit and the ones that provide. Trying to remember the dos and the don’ts. There’s laws on property rights. There’s laws on punishment. Laws on idolatry, taxes, sacrifices, marriage, employees, food preparation, festivals. You get the picture. Examine the marks on the cattle before eating. Enter the temple during this festival, but not this one. Make sure the scales and the weights are correct before you measure something. You’re toast. You sit shaking at your desk, your pencil in hand, waiting for this teacher, whose smirk grows wider, to drop the piece of paper on your desk. But instead, your teacher stands at the front of the class and says this: “Instead of handing out a quiz this morning, I want you to write down for me which commandment in the law is the greatest. By the way, this is 50% of your final grade. Go.” You immediately rack your brain. Okay. Should you put Leviticus 22:23 about not saying the Lord’s name in vain? That’s a pretty good one. Or Deuteronomy 6, learn the Torah and then teach it. That would probably be impressive. Or what about reciting grace after meals like Deuteronomy 8 says? That feels like something we should do every day. What is the right answer? And then you look over and you see a kid get up, and this kid doesn’t have a look of pride or triumph on his face. He doesn’t have a look of challenge or contempt on his face, but one of mercy and tenderness. And he slowly walks up to the front of the classroom, and he grabs the hand of the teacher, and he looks into his eyes, and he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the prophets.”
You stare, stunned. The teacher relaxes his shoulders. The smirk leaves his face. You see him wipe at his eyes. And then he asks to be excused. The kid goes back to his seat. And before all of you put down your pencils, you look around in wonder at what has happened.
You do not hear another word from the master of the trick questions.
This, church, is a story about what they do not grade you for. And this might feel more like a sermon for a graduation ceremony. But as I look around, I see a congregation full of people who are continually assessed for what they know, what benchmarks they hit, and whether or not they are right. But in a world that demands academic excellence and career success, how quickly you are able to implement the new software at your company, how efficient you are at turning in reports, how many accolades or A+’s you have, what your ACT test score was, how impressive your resume is. Buried beneath such a heap, Theodore Wardlaw writes, “something called gospel is struggling to get free.” This gospel cries out to you. I am wrestling with the myth of being right. And I am begging you to remember what they don’t grade you for.
They don’t grade you for church attendance and whether you show up with it all together or not. They don’t grade you for making varsity. They don’t grade you for winning a trophy. They don’t grade you for how big your house is or how many nice things you have in it. They don’t grade you for how many figures your salary is or what kind of car you drove to get here. They don’t grade you for how much attention your social media gets. You don’t get graded on whether you tithe the most or if you succeeded in losing that weight. You don’t get graded on how much of that book you can recite or on whether or not you are right. No. Based on Jesus’s response to the Pharisee, it doesn’t really seem like we get to move ahead in the board game of life if we get it right or are the best or seem the most pious. Dang it. The question, as Anne Lamott writes, is, “Do I want to be right or do I want to have a loving heart?” And then she writes, “And will this be on the test?”
Will this be on the test? We ask our teachers. And if it’s not on the test, then we really don’t bother learning it. But what’s not on the test, I reckon, is the very mustard seed of the gospel, buried beneath the heap of self-importance and accolades. The mustard seed of the gospel that boils all 613 of these laws and commandments down to their essence and says this: “Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself.” Now, they don’t grade you on that, do they? The thing about Jesus is he trades in righteousness for mercy just about every time. And on a Monday in between Palm Sunday and his crucifixion — so Jesus knew something about Mondays — when tensions are building between him and his enemies, when a Pharisee challenges him in public, one who is pretty deeply versed in Jewish law, when all this is happening, Jesus makes it plain: love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. The loving God part, that actually would have been a pretty mainstream idea. No surprises there. It’s the loving neighbor part that really would have shocked them all, because here Jesus doesn’t mean your next-door neighbor who pulls out the lawnmower before 8 a.m. Although we’ll get into that later. We’ll get into that later. No, the love command, this is from Leviticus 19. It actually follows a series of commands that govern the behavior of how we treat the weakest members in our society. So, right before the love command in Leviticus 19, it says, “Don’t withhold wages from day laborers. And when you’re in your field and you have stray ears of corn and fallen grapes, make sure you give those to the immigrant and the poor. And don’t stand by when another person’s life is at stake.” Those are the commands right before the love one. So, Israel’s covenant with God, it actually calls them to prioritize loving their neighbors. And by that, it means the most vulnerable. It means the poorest. It means the most disenfranchised. That’s who Jesus is talking about. That’s pretty shocking stuff for the people who always got it right.
When I look around at the landscape of faith in our country, it seems like some people believe that you can love God without loving your neighbor. Amen. But as Michael E. Lee writes, one cannot love God without loving who God loves. One cannot love God and oppress or exclude any of God’s creatures, even one’s enemies. That is horrible news. Even one’s enemies. But I know that I’m smarter than the people who write hate comments on our social media, right? I’m smarter, and I’m definitely right when it comes to who I vote for. And I have God’s favor ’cause I give away my stuff to Goodwill twice a year. And God definitely loves me more than God loves the people who immediately stand up on the plane when it lands and weasel their way to the front.
I’m right. Right? There is so much that is not on the test that we may fail to learn it if we are caught up in acing this thing called life. There is so much that you will not get graded for that seems to be at the heart, mind, and soul of Jesus’s gospel mission. And a lot of it is thankless, and a lot of it is small, and a lot of it is grassroots. A lot of it is unnoticed.
Here’s what’s not on the test.
Saying sorry first. Writing a thank-you note. A real one, like pen in hand, broken cursive. Letting that person who pulled up at the same time as you have the parking space. Paying for someone’s groceries. Giving that kid a ride home, even if he lives on the other side of town and it’s rush hour. Ceaselessly praying. Picking up the phone and calling first. Crying with someone as they grieve. Taking yourself on a walk just to marvel. Just to marvel at all God has created. Giving your partner the benefit of the doubt for the thousandth time. Celebrating a friend’s milestone, an engagement or a wedding or a baby, even if you’re a little jealous. Giving money to causes you believe in and never getting a thank-you. Getting down on the floor to play with kids instead of looking down at them. Writing a letter to a senator. Recycling your bulletin. Belly laughing. Flipping tables at injustice. Buying some of the McDonald’s cards for our guests at Room in the Inn. Dressing up in costume just to see people smile. Doing your darnedest to love God and to love your favorite people and to love your least favorite people, which might include yourself, with heart, mind, and soul. That’s not on the test. And it’s not new material. It wasn’t new material for the Pharisees. They would have heard that before. And we’ve heard it before, too. And maybe that’s the problem. He says, “We already know what we’re called to do. We already know what we’re called to be. But so often we are unable to do it.” Thank goodness the psalmist writes that God’s mercies are new every day. Every day. That there’s no grade in following the gospel, that this doesn’t count for 50% of anything.
So, church, I hope today you get an A+ in attentiveness to the creation that God has stirred up for us. I hope you get a B in boldness at speaking the truth to power. I hope you get a C in compassion, even if it is not given back to you, and a D in devotion to really loving God, to taking a couple minutes, putting your phone away, and saying thank you. And yeah, I hope you get an F in forgiveness, even when it is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Even if you think they really don’t deserve it.
After Jesus gave this commandment, it says that from that day on, nobody dared ask him any more questions.
Love stopped them right there in their tracks. And then love won, didn’t it? And it wasn’t even on the test.
Amen.