November 5, 2006
Mark 12:28-34
“One Is The Loveliest Number”

I recall from my childhood days the haunting refrain from one of my brother Pat’s Three Dog Night’s records: “One is the loneliest number.” Over and over again at the end, drilling in a kind of sad and quite depressing mantra: “One is the loneliest number, One is the loneliest number.”

When is “one” not lonely, but lovely? Well, as many a psychologist, counselor, and self-help writer has affirmed over the years, one can and should be one of the loveliest numbers we know. Finding a sense of peace, fulfillment, and completeness when we are by ourselves is a essential step to a healthy and vibrant life. Coming to a place in life when we can claim our identity as an individual totally independent of another human being is a mature development of our character.

And we certainly know about the times in our lives, and in the lives of friends and family members, when we have been uncomfortable with being alone and have made some hasty and oftentimes poor judgments in who we might hang around in order to subdue those terrible feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

But then, we also know that pendulum swings too far the other direction. Many who have been hurt in a relationship will forswear ever getting involved again, and seek to be a hermit, deserting friends and family as well as possible lovers or partners. It becomes clear seclusion is not the means for “One” to be the loveliest number, either.

Why my obsession with the number one? Because for the first time, I believe, in addressing this very familiar text, commonly known as “The Greatest Commandment,” I could not help but notice the repetition of a phrase I’d ignored, or overlooked before. It is neither a part of the Matthew 22 version of this story, nor the Luke 10 version. But here, in Mark 12, it is strikingly clear.

A scribe approaches Jesus to ask him a question of ultimate importance. I’m not sure how it’s translated in your text, but already we have a difference here. In Matthew and Luke, the man is designated a “lawyer,” with the implication of a sure and certain challenge being offered. The scribe, however, seems to come before Jesus with an earnest, forthright question: “Which commandment is first of all?” Now, I have told you before, and you surely have heard it said elsewhere, that there are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures. Each one was considered important, but even the most strict Pharisee or Rabbi today would agree that we humans must prioritize the laws out of necessity, as well as, in our weakest moments, sloth. So no one pretended that all the commandments were to be adhered to equally. But one? Only one as the most important?

Now you might think, “Ah, this is where Pastor Allen saw the number “one” for his sermon!” And on another occasion, you might be right. But this Sunday I was captivated by the very next line: “Jesus answered, ‘The first is , ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one…’” The Shema, perhaps the most familiar text from the Bible for Jews: “Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad”. “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” And not only does Jesus begin his answer to the scribe with this, the scribe, as a good student would, repeats it back to Jesus in his reply: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other…’”

I imagine if you were to ask any good church-going Christian “What does Jesus say is the Greatest Commandment of all?” he or she would launch immediately into the answer, just as described in Matthew and Luke, “you should love the Lord your God with…” The challenge Mark confronted me with in the past few weeks, and I offer to you today, is to never again begin to answer that question without putting it into context. The greatest commandment? Why, The Lord our God is One, and you should love the Lord our God with…”

Now, this may be interesting enough, and I would suspect you’re entirely comfortable with adding this little proviso to your already familiar response. But worthy of a full fledged sermon? Not quite.

Here’s the conundrum that got my engines going. I think we tend to find the number one in this text, but it ain’t with God – it’s with us! I think we skip over the Shema and make the commandment an individualistic, hyper-personal act of selfless devotion and piety. In other words, we see the loving of God, neighbor, and self all in terms of individual ego. By dropping out the Shema, that God is One, we lose the beautiful equation of the original. Which is:

God is one, we are many

And we tend to replace it, unthinkingly I hope, with the reverse:

The gods are many, we are one!

What do I mean? Well, let me tell you a few stories from the last few weeks.

We’ve been having some powerful discussions here around the documentary movie, “Flag Wars” which looks at a neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio going through a pretty classic phase of what is called “gentrification.” Gentrification is the process where a neighborhood of older, larger homes, which have for the most part fallen into disrepair and have been purchased by or rented to persons in the middle or lower income levels of society, are being purchased by wealthier persons in some kind of a consistent manner, and being fixed up, thus increasing the values and, eventually, the taxes of the neighborhood. In the movie, in this particular neighborhood, many of the folks who currently live in the homes are African Americans and many of the persons buying and fixing up the homes are white gay or lesbian persons.

What we observed in the movie, and many of us have also seen, on all sides of the debate, is the persistent idolization of individualism and the minimizing or, more often, total absence of a sense of community. That is to say, the rights of the individual are supreme and the rights of the community are subservient. To put it in terms of Mark 12: The Gods are many, and we are one. Some of the gods of such community tensions include:
• Fear
• Security
• Identity
• Housing values
• Tradition
• Bigotry

These gods are set up against the rights and privileges of the individual as supreme authority. There were some instances of community, such as the African American Church or the group that gathered to talk about violence against gay and lesbian persons, but these were still based, it seemed, on individualistic definitions of identity: race or sexual orientation. There seemed to be no place of true community, with a breadth and a depth that truly allowed “love of neighbor” to be more than just “love of the neighbor who looks or acts like me.”

A second place I saw a contrast with the delicate equation of Mark 12 was at the Justice Center this week. I was part of a contingent of pastors and community organization leaders, led by Bob Shores of Ohio City Near West Development Corporation, who went to Police Headquarters to get a tour of the facility and learn just a little bit more about how our police work. It was a public relations effort, and we were all honest about that, but it was helpful to see the places where some of the most important work done on behalf of the citizens of Cleveland, is performed.

What struck me in our conversations with the Sergeant, and with the other pastors and leaders, was this sense that in the moments of crisis, when a crime is about to happen or crimes have happened, we seem to all-too-often revert back to this unhealthy equation: the gods are many, we are one. Some of the gods in this instance are:
• Ego
• Personal property
• Masculinity
• Territory
• Violence
• Addiction

These gods are set up again, against the rights and privileges of the individual as supreme authority. The only place community seems to happen is when we gather people who have the same needs and priorities we have, either in gangs or in vigilante groups or in Neighborhood Watch groups, and we never seem to stretch ourselves to discover neighbors with different needs who are still our neighbors.

How can a little text from the smallest of Gospels help with such entrenched issues as community development and crime? It has everything to do with such weighty issues, and even larger ones, too! The key is getting the equation back in balance, “God is One and We are many,” and making One a lovely number, not a lonely and bitter one.

1.  First, we need to understand that there is only one God, and it ain’t us! God reserves all the rights and privileges we too frequently associate with ourselves: God is the ultimate authority. God is the end all and be all of life. God makes the final decisions. God gets to decide questions of life and death. God can redeem anyone and any situation God chooses. God is One.

2.  Second, we need to be honest about the fact that seeing ourselves as “many” is all about building relationships, and relationship-building takes lots and lots of time, patience, energy, and investment. For the wealthy one to see the poor one as neighbor, it takes time to build relationships. For the gay one or the lesbian one to see the straight one as neighbor, it takes patience to build a relationship. For the Hispanic one to see the White one as neighbor, it takes energy to build relationships. For the young street kid to see the established homeowner as neighbor, it takes an investment of resources and of self. We are many, and we can get along.

3.  Third, we need to always remind ourselves that we are many, and this is good. We are not God, thank God! We cannot go our way alone, for we need each other. The best way we can “Love the Lord our God” is by “Loving our neighbor as ourselves.” We necessarily need each other, not as stooges to play off each other for our pleasure or gain. We need one another not as a tool for our personal salvation. We need one another because that’s the way God has designed this whole creation. Interdependence, not independence. We were created to be in community.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” (1)

We are many.

Beloved, let us hear the Greatest Commandment as defined by our Sovereign and Savior not as a means to pump up our own sense of self, to make our boundaries of neighbor and stranger bolder and more permanent. Instead, let us first hear the Lord our God is One, and we, who are many, are charged with loving our God, our Neighbor, and Ourselves with all that we are, and as a community interdependent upon one another. Then, and only then, will One be the Loveliest Number that we’ve ever heard. May it be so.

Amen.

(1) Meditation XVII (No Man Is An Island) by John Donne, http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html



Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2006 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096