Gospel Reading: Mark 12:28-34
For Sunday, November 4, 2012: Year B—Ordinary 31
When I really look very closely at my congregants, I see that we are a hippie church. Peace, love and justice are our themes. In celebration of my discovery, I planned a drum circle for Hippie Church.
Drum to Drum
But let me make this clear. I am not a hippie pastor. Pinko, yes. Pacifist, yes. But not hippie. I prefer the organ to guitar, hymns to choruses, and stoic quiet to profuse emotionality. When we were required to introduce ourselves with our drums, I sought to use silence as my introduction. Clearly, a drum circle is a stretch for a non-hippie pastor.
What a surprise it was to me when I found myself loving the drum circle. Despite my lack of rhythm, my inability to keep a beat, I participated and practically grinned throughout. If I had not been using both arms to beat the drum, I may have even raised my hands in praise.
Because something happened when I held that frame drum, and found its “sweet spot,” which reverberated a low boom, boom, boom. I felt like an individual and a member of a community, at the same time. I felt the rhythm of ages past, through Africa, the Caribbean, and even the native people of my own land. I felt like I belonged in history. And I didn’t just hear the beat. I felt it. The hum, the vibration, the buzz of the drum connected to the drum of my heart and I felt alive.
Hear, O Israel?
When the scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, Jesus answers with “Hear, O Israel” which the Jewish people would have heard as the beginning of the Shema Yisrael, the prayer that Jews say twice a day.
The phrase, “Hear, O Israel,” is so much more than just an opening word. It means so much more than just “Listen up!” It means so much more than just “Hear me.” It means, like the drum circle, to feel the words that are coming. To pay more attention to them. To not just hear them, but to feel the reverberations in your life, the thrum of the drum in your gut, and to know your place, not only as an individual, but also as a member of the community.
Why Does Jesus Start Here?
Of course, Jesus gives these commandments in order to tie him to Moses—Moses was the originator of the first commandment in Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus works to seat himself in the company of the prophets, and, of course, the greatest prophet is Moses.
And why would he connect “love your neighbor?” The neighbor commandment comes from Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
The Hardest Question
More puzzling then all, though, is the question: How do we truly live to the beat of this drum pair called the “Greatest Commandment"? Sometimes it seems as if the Ten Commandments, are pretty easy to check-off (or at least easy to fake). But simply loving God? Loving my neighbor as myself? For me the hardest question is: Why did Jesus infuse my godly decision making with so many shades of grey? What’s so great about that?