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Jesus’ Vision for us and the ‘Other’


Jesus’ Vision for us and the ‘Other’

By Douglas Tennant – November 4, 2018
A message for Greenwood United Church, Pembroke Ontario


The biblical story of Ruth which I read for us earlier is a not a story about separation or differentness. It is not a story about the ‘Other’ or someone who looks and acts so different from us as to make us feel uncomfortable or even scared of them. It is a story about inclusivity. According to the United Church Gathering, that story was written thousands of years ago to correct a sense of entitlement and self-righteousness that was growing within ancient Israel. You see it was forbidden back then to marry outsiders especially those foreigners and second-class people of the surrounding tribes who may have been arriving in Israel in caravan upon caravan.
I love this story from a personal viewpoint. Indeed, when Jeannie and I got married we included this story as a scripture reading at our wedding. So this is a family story and it starts off about Naomi, who found comfort and married and lived in the land of Moab. In relation to Israel, Moab was the land of the foreigner. It was the foreign territory that belonged to the ‘Other’. And it just so happened that Moab was the homeland of Ruth, Naomi’s daughter-in-law. And as you heard, Ruth showed love and loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi even though they came from two very different countries and cultures.   When Naomi decided it was time to return to Israel Naomi said to Ruth, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.    
For those who are into genealogy this is a unique story because as you heard, Ruth did go to Israel with Naomi, and even though she was a Moabite, Ruth became the great-grandmother of Israel’s favourite king, King David.
In the context of today, especially in light of what is going on in the United States, or in recent times with thousands of new Canadians coming from Syria or England or the Ukraine, what ethnic or religious background might we imagine Ruth to be in order to examine the important topic of inclusivity that Jesus spoke and about and often acted upon? Is she our neighbour? Who else is our neighbour? How different is Ruth from the Israelites? Who do you notice that looks different from you and me at the food store? Who has a different looking child in minor hockey or on the soccer field? Who do you notice in your local community as the ‘Other’? What is your vision of how we should interact with the Other? What are their cultural differences from you and me? Do they eat different types of food, wear different types of clothes, play different card games or celebrate different religious holidays? And so what about the response to all of these questions? What if there are Others all around us. Indeed what if there were so many Others all around us that the table is switched around and we become the Other? Does that possibility make you uncomfortable? Is that possibility scary? Why would it be scary?

There is something in the gospel reading from Mark’s this morning that should make the situation I asked just a moment ago less scary. It involves faith and trust and an acceptance that Jesus has, notice I said has, not had, a simple yet grand vision for us. In Mark’s gospel Jesus’ vision for us can be summarised through a couple of surprisingly simple yet extremely powerful commandments like this:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

After Jesus said these words, the person who was doing the questioning of Jesus in the temple on the topic of the most important commandment remarked to Jesus “[y]ou are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all [the] burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
So this was an extremely profound transformation moment regarding Jesus’ vision for us. In spite of the supposedly important burnt offerings or sacrifices, as they did in those days, or whatever else we might bring today to Greenwood church in the form of money or any material thing, it is the power of love that Jesus envisions for us to be most important. He goes on to say that it is through unselfish love that we will become associated with the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ vision for completeness for us involves the power of our love for God and our neighbour. The love of our literal neighbours, the ones who live next door to us, and the love of our neighbours who we know as the Other. Following these two simple yet all-encompassing commandments bring us ever closer to our personal friend and Saviour – Jesus the Christ. As we will joyfully sing in a few moments, it is the living of our lives through the fulfillment of Jesus’ vision, through the comfort and wonder of love, that we will reach heaven’s joys.

            Indeed, it is through these two simple laws from Jesus, which is His vision of how we should live our daily lives, that we can reach the joys of heaven and find the truth and joy of freedom. Indeed, it is a wondrous gift of freedom to lovingly worship our God knowing that God loves us unconditionally. Additionally, there is a second gift in the vision of Jesus, which is the call to love the Other as Christ has loved and continues to love us.

In both of these commandments outlined by Mark, we hear Jesus teaching us about His vision which involves selfless love. What a unique and powerful gift of word and deed. We are afforded the opportunity to live as God intended us to live - in a loving relationship with the God of all creation and the person, our neighbour, the Other, whom God has created in God's own image.

The bottom line sisters and brothers in Christ, is that through our deeds and actions of loving God and our neighbour, the whole world will know that we are Christians by our love. Amen.

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