Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 5, 2010
Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Mark 12:23-34

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 • Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:28-34 • One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?“ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall 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, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ’ There is no other commandment greater than these. “ Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. “ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God. “ After that no one dared to ask him any question.

I. BEGINNING

I’m no doubt going to date myself with this one, but The Blues Brothers is still one of my favorite movies. In it, Jake and Elwood Blues seek to raise money for the Catholic orphanage where they were raised. The nuns are having a hard time paying the property taxes on their property and the Blues brothers take it upon themselves to “get the band back together” and have one last great concert to raise money for the sisters. Throughout the movie, whenever they tell someone what they’re doing, in order to make clear the urgency of the matter, they’ll say, “We’re on a mission from God.”

Now this is no small matter. It’s what keeps them focused on the task at hand. So whether they’re evading angry country western stars or sheriff’s deputies, or the dreaded “Illinois Nazis”, Jake and Elwood stay focused on what it is they need to do.

Having a sense of mission is important to keeping you focused on the task ahead. Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the United Methodist church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, Kansas, when speaking of the importance of understanding one’s mission, notes that there was one man, who for three years, was able to lead his followers wherever he needed them to go, they would do anything he asked, because he was so clear as to what his mission was. It is at is point that he plays a clip and you see an image of the starship Enterprise whooshing by as Captain Kirk’s voice is heard saying, “…to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before…”

Now, I’m partial to that illustration, not the least of which is because it’s from Star Trek, but also because it does make something clear: as a crew, as a company, as a community, as a church, it is far easier to be dedicated to the work that is ahead of us if we know what the mission is that we are seeking to accomplish.

II. UNDERSTANDING ONE’S MISSION

It’s interesting to look at what some of the biggest companies have as their mission statements. What it is they think they’re supposed to be doing.

• Reebok: “Our purpose is to ignite a passion for winning, to do the extraordinary, and to capture the customer’s heart and mind.”
• Walt Disney: “To make people happy.”
• Wal-Mart: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.”
• The Body Shop: “Tirelessly work to narrow the gap between principle and practice whilst making fun, passion and care part of our daily lives.”
• Coca Cola: “The basic proposition of our business is simple, solid and timeless. When we bring refreshment, value, joy and fun to our stakeholders, then we successfully nurture and protect our brands.”

Sometimes a company can get a little carried away. Ringling Bros circus had a somewhat more grandiose mission, which they wrote in 1899:
“To be good, mankind must be happy. To wreathe the faces of humanity in smiles for a time, to loosen the chains that hold man captive to his duties and return him to them better fitted for his obligations, is the mission of amusement.”[1]

The current prevailing wisdom is that a mission statement should be short, probably no more than eight words, so that everyone in the company can know the mission by heart. Every action taken can be compared against the mission of the company.

CVS’s mission statement is short and to the point: “We will be the easiest pharmacy retailer for customers to use.” I’ll let you be the judges as to whether they’ve accomplished that mission. So long as ‘easiest’ doesn’t mean ‘fastest’ they may be okay.

Hershey’s mission is three words long: “Undisputed Marketplace Leadership.” In short: crush the competition. It’s hard to argue with that, given the abundance of different kinds of kisses available at your neighborhood CVS.

Nike’s mission—To Bring Inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world—is a little bit harder to quantify. How will they know if they’ve inspired every athlete in the world?

Now, with church organizations, the mission should not be tied to profits or market dominance (though there are a few out there giving their best shot). Nor should they really be about customer service. They should reflect a deeper, in many ways more urgent, mission.

John Wesley’s Methodists set out to “reform the nation, especially the church, and spread scriptural holiness across the land.” The mission of our own United Methodist Church is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”

But what about us here at AU? What would be the mission of this particular Christian community? It turns out that a few years ago the leadership of this community came up with a mission statement:

As an expression of Christian faith, we call, nurture, and equip the members of the American University community to grow in discipleship, serve others, create inclusive communities, build relationships with God and one another, discern vocation, and become leaders in the Church and the world.

It’s nice. It says a lot about what we as a community seek to be engaged in. It’s a very busy list. A very AU list, to be sure. But I’m not sure that it’s one a lot of you could recite off the top of your heads. And so we decided this past summer to look into rewriting that mission statement to something more direct, something easier to remember. Something that the entire community could know and remember.

But where would we begin? What are the essentials of our mission as a community on this campus?

III. THE WARRANTS OF SCRIPTURE

Jesus was once asked a similar question by a scribe of the law. After Jesus has answered another series of questions, a scribe, clearly impressed, asks: “Which commandment is the first of all?”

In response, Jesus quotes two passages of scripture, the first being among the most famous verses of the Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy 6:4-9 known in the Jewish tradition as the Shema. Shema, Yisrael… “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” A passage of scripture read on every Sabbath in the synagogues to this day. A commandment to make God the center of one’s thinking, feeling, and very being.

And then Jesus continues by quoting another verse of scripture, this time from Leviticus, by saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And then he concludes by saying, “There is no commandment greater than these.” The entirely of the commandments of the law and the teachings of the prophets is summed up in those two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbor.

IV. THE GOSPEL MISSION

A. Love of God

When we talk about loving God, we are not talking about emotion alone, though that enthusiasm of feeling can be important. Methodists have long embraced the evangelical message that faith ought to be felt deep within one’s heart.

But “love” primarily means to live in right relationship. And so, first and foremost, we live in right relationship with God.

“Love” in a Biblical sense can also mean to place foremost–so when we love God we do so by placing God first. And how do we demonstrate this love? By joyful praise. Like the kind of worship that we have here tonight. Full of meaningful prayer, moving music, and authentic expressions of faith.

We demonstrate that love by thoughtful study. By asking tough questions, by exploring our scriptures and our traditions thoroughly. By grounding our faith in a serious reflection on the collective wisdom of the Christian tradition and the application of our minds (this is what Jesus means by loving God with all our minds). We demonstrate this love of God through prayer and reflection and renewing our commitment to God and our faith.

B. Serve Others

But we also, we show this love of God by serving others. That’s why Jesus ties together the commandment to love God and to love neighbor. Jesus makes it clear that loving God necessitates loving one’s neighbor. The vertical covenant with God is accompanied by the horizontal covenant with one another. (If only there were some graphic representation of a vertical line and a horizontal line that we could use to remind us of this essential pairing).

In a way, loving neighbor is one of the most important ways that we love God. As the old Shaker hymn says, “If ye love not each other in daily communion, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?”

But how does one love a neighbor? For those of you who live in close quarters in the dormitories, it may be very difficult at times to love your neighbors. How is possible to love everyone? Again, love isn’t an emotion, it’s a way of living in right relationship. And so we love one another by serving one another.

Jesus would also say to his disciples:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28 NRSV).

Christian love is demonstrated through service. Through actions of mercy and charity, lending a helping hand, offering a compassionate ear. Through working for justice to uproot the sinful structures of oppression and injustice. Giving a voice to those who have none. We demonstrate that we are disciples of Jesus by making ourselves into servants of everyone.

C. Welcoming All

But if there is one aspect of our mission that is the most important on a college campus it is this: to welcome everyone. There are many people on this campus who know the church to be a welcoming, supportive community. But there are also many people who know the church to be a place of judgment, a place where they have not felt welcomed. Perhaps they belonged to such a community and have left. Perhaps they have only observed such communities from the outside. Perhaps they have come to expect Christian communities to be places where they are not welcome, where they do not belong.

And so we remind ourselves that it was not with the insiders that Jesus spent most of his time. Jesus spent his time reaching out to those whom the religious establishment had pushed to the margins.

And so we welcome all. Without regard to race, age, sexuality, ability, ideology, background or belief, we welcome everyone. As Christ welcomed those whom society marginalized, we welcome those whom others would reject. We engage in radical hospitality to all. By so doing we testify to the expansive, gracious love of God.

V. END

And so it is that our mission statement as a community wound up being: “Love God. Serve Others. Welcome All.” It’s a good mission statement. It’s short. It’s easy to memorize. But it’s more than that.

Because it turns out that those six little words pack a theological wallop. They sum up perfectly our calling not only as this campus community, but as Christians. For we are called to love God, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are called to reach out to all people, including those whom the world would reject, and welcome them into the community of love and grace that we know.

If anyone should ask why it is that we as a community are so committed to vibrant worship, study, service, justice, and radical hospitality, we can always just tell them, “We’re on a mission from God.”

NOTES
[] http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-9-2005-80969.asp