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What’s it like to be “not far from the dominion of God?” Is it the same as being within the dominion of God? Or is it like standing juuuuust outside the reach of an umbrella, so close to staying dry but getting fully rained on instead?
Over these next few weeks, we’ll hear the last of a few more chapters in Mark’s Gospel, which isn’t the end of the story—we covered that way back during Easter—but this part is sort of the pinnacle of Jesus’s teaching. The part we’ve read today is the end of the argument—“No one dared to ask him any question.” But what has happened?
When I first read this Gospel lesson, I get a little lost in the quotations—obviously the reference comes from somewhere. I recognize the words as religious in nature—from somewhere in the Bible! But I lose track of where specifically these words come from.
Jesus first quotes from the Shema, which comes from Deuteronomy, and would be very familiar among Jewish people: “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohanu, Adonai Ehad.” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This would be something that everyone knows really well and says the words together, kinda like the way Christians say the Lord’s Prayer, from memory.
But then Jesus adds this other Scripture reference—“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which comes not exactly out of nowhere, but is from Leviticus, a different book of the Torah. And what’s interesting about this pairing is that people didn’t bring these two different Scripture references together. While everyone knows these Scriptures, and everyone agrees yeah, these are the commandments and these are good things to do, loving one’s neighbor wasn’t considered as important as loving God.
Now the Torah has plenty to say about caring for one’s neighbor, so it’s not like Jesus just plucked this verse out of context. But this particular quote from Leviticus[1] comes after “a litany of commands prohibiting the oppression and exploitation of Israel’s weak and poor,” including leaving the outer edges of your field unplowed so that travelers could glean and have food to eat; and do not steal, deal falsely, or profane God; do not oppress the neighbor, exploit employees, or discriminate against disabled people; and do no injustice or show partiality in judgment, or slander or witness against the neighbor.
Biblical scholar Ched Myers notices the point, writing this:
“…according to [the gospel writer] Mark’s narrative, these are precisely the commands violated regularly by the dominant Jewish groups, especially the scribes.” “….The point Mark is trying to make…is consistent with his ideology: heaven must come to earth—there is no love of God except in love of neighbor.”[2]
In other words, Jesus is speaking to the scribe who belongs to a system that’s inclined to use God’s laws to trap and bind vulnerable people so that they can be judged unworthy, so Jesus brings up love of neighbor as an essential part of keeping God’s law—the way to love God is to show love to your neighbor. And Jesus even gets this scribe to agree with him! But Jesus does not then invite the scribe to follow along as a disciple.
As Myers writes, “[…when Jesus says] ’Not far [from the dominion of God]’…[this] implies that orthodoxy is not enough; it must be accompanied by the practice of justice to one’s neighbor.”[3] Words and actions go together; action is part of one’s testimony about God.
Ched Myers considers this scene with Jesus and the scribe as the completion of the series of debates, and it’s over when no one wants to debate Jesus anymore. Myers writes:
“[Jesus] has thrown the commercial special interests out of the temple and in their place assumed a role as ‘teacher.’
He has met challenges and foiled plots with brilliant rhetorical skill.
He has gone nose to nose with the political leaders and the intellectuals, questioning the legitimacy of their respective vocations insofar as they are based upon privilege and exploitation.
And in the end, he has silenced his social and political opponents, and done it on their own home ground: the temple. In other words, Jesus appears to have ‘bound the strong men,’ and ransacked their house.”[4]
In case you don’t remember, Jesus said this weird thing back in chapter 3 of Mark’s Gospel, back when Jesus had just begun teaching and healing publicly—even if he was still telling people not to mention the Messiah stuff. Back then, even Jesus’s family wanted him to stop healing and teaching and come back home, and some of the religious leaders were saying that Jesus had a demon or maybe it was somehow because of Satan that Jesus was able to cast out demons.
So Jesus spoke back saying “How can Satan cast out Satan? …if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”[5] In this parable, the strong man is Satan, the house is the world which Satan has bound, and the thief breaking into the house to set everyone free—that’s Jesus.
We still need to be set free. We still live in a world bound by sin and brokenness. We still need these reminders that we show our love for God by the way we treat our neighbors. We still struggle to love our neighbors, or we want to choose our neighbors to be the people we already agree with or share a culture with or at least live within a similar socioeconomic range. We still want to discard the people who get in the way of our righteous self-image.
This is not news. In 1963, at the march on Washington, anti-Nazi activist and civil rights leader Rabbi Joachim Prinz said, “Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept.”[6] You get to decide whether you accept all of humanity as your neighbor.
The United States has an election happening this week, and perhaps you’re as anxious and exhausted as I am by the constant reporting on polls and projections and increasingly dangerous rhetoric. The only thing that’s really clear to me is that, no matter who wins these various contests, there will be plenty of healing that needs to be done. We will still need to rebuild our communities and establish our commonality with the people we disagree with. Sometimes, as Jesus did, we will be able to point out: where are those places where we agree?
This isn’t simply about a battle of words; Jesus wasn’t angling to win a rhetorical contest. Jesus was breaking into humanity to save us from ourselves. He wasn’t just going to keep teaching and speaking, but his actions would show us, would prove the lengths to which God would go to demonstrate God’s love for humanity and God’s love for all creation. There’s no sacrifice big enough to fix the brokenness; only God could step in and provide a way out, to liberate us from the brokenness of the world and show us a family, a kin-dom of healing, a dominion of justice. On the cross, Jesus saves us and becomes our last blood sacrifice, and in the resurrection, Jesus shows us the way to abundant life.
The dominion of God is so much bigger than this week’s elections. If you are tempted to despair, let the saints remind you to expand your vision, to explore history—because humanity has been here before—and seek the wisdom of our ancestors.
I’ll close with this poem by M Jade Kaiser, titled “For All Saints Day”:
“God, you have been with us throughout the ages.
In remembrance and gratitude, we name the saints who hungered for righteousness and whose sacrifices contributed to a more just society.
In remembrance and gratitude, we name the saints who loved us, nurtured us, embraced us, celebrated us, or supported us. We are because they were.
We also hold in remembrance the ones whose lives were taken by injustice, the ones who were severed from their own sense of belovedness, those who passed on our faith, who gave us art, song, and poetry. We are because they were.
Like us, we know they were imperfect, too. Life is messy and contradictory, often betraying the very justice and love we seek to embody. And yet, you, O God, promise that our loving labors are never in vain.
Help us to lean on the witness of those who have gone before us, drawing on the love, justice, community, and faith that weave us together, generation after generation—past, present, and future.
With gratitude and in remembrance we pray.
Amen.”[7]
Pastor Cheryl
[1] Leviticus 19:18
[2] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, page 318.
[3] Ibid 318.
[4] Ibid 318.
[5] Mark 3:26-27
[6] Quoted in Sojourners magazine by Raj Nadella, “Living the Word” column, November 2024, page 48.
[7] M Jade Kaiser, “For All Saints Day,” in Sojourners magazine, November 2024, page 5.
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