Mark 12:28-34

Blessed are they who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with all their heart. (Psalm 119:2.)

In the Scripture from Mark, Jesus calls us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What is He asking?

Some people and churches believe Jesus is asking that we believe the right thing. You’ve heard this before: "How can you be a Christian if you don’t believe THIS?!"

Some people and churches believe Jesus is asking that we DO the right thing. "How can you be a Christian if you don’t work here and serve there and attend this?"

But loving the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength is really like going to the dentist.
The good news of Jesus Christ, the overwhelming mercy of God on the cross, is not a requirement that we believe the Right Thing, nor is it an order that we DO the Right Thing. The good news of Christ is an invitation, to receive the love of God and sit in dentist chair.

Saying "I believe in God," is like saying, "I believe there's a dentist. Here's his name. Here's where he works."

Jesus tells the scribe, in Mark’s gospel, that believing in God is not enough for the power and love of God to flow into our lives. We can believe a dentist is a good dentist, that he never makes mistakes; we can believe that he’s honest, careful, that he helps the poor. Those things can all be true. But that doesn't do one thing for our teeth. If we have cavities, believing this dentist is a good dentist doesn't help us. Jesus calls us to something more: to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbor as our self.

Christian faith is not DOING big things, small things, today’s things or yesterday’s things for God. We can buy a new chair for the dentist’s office. We can pay his phone bill. We can paint his reception room. We can have our dentist and his family over for dinner every week.

But that doesn’t do a thing for our teeth. If we have cavities, all the doing in the world does not fix them.
To get our cavities fixed, we have to go to the dentist and sit in his chair and trust him to work. That is what puts us in touch with the power and love of God – not just that we believe God exists and is good, not just that we do things for God, but that we put ourselves in the place where He can work on us. To love and trust God as a disciple of Jesus is to give him our cavities, those messed up, decaying places in us; our flaws and failures; the grieving, wounded places in our hearts. When we trust God and sit in His chair, He works on us, forgiving, healing, making us new.

Loving Him is not so much that we DO amazing and wonderful things for Christ, but that we allow the life of God, His Spirit and mercy, to live in our hearts, to guide our lives, to touch others through us.
I have a fun story today. The story you are about to hear could be true. The names have been changed to describe the guilty.

The Church of the Generous Allowance was involved in a building campaign. Their pastor, Rev. Roger, believed in generous allowances for his children. But when he sat down with the Stained Glass Window Committee, he shuddered to think what horrific creation would come from the people sitting around the table.
To his right was Mrs. Ida Oh-Yes-Whatever-You-Say, Yes! In the five years that Rev. Roger had been pastor of Church of the Generous Allowance, he had seen her second countless motions, affirm numerous ideas, applaud wholeheartedly, but he had never seen her offer a thought of her own.

To his left was Mrs. Frances B. Forceful. Frances had a solution to every problem, the confidence that her solution was superior to anyone else’s and an ironclad determination never to settle for second best. Rev. Roger was sure that the folder, sitting neatly on the table in front of her, contained drawings of the stained glass windows as Mrs. Frances B. Forceful wanted them to appear.

Across the table was Mrs. Laura Lost Everything. Rev. Roger had been in her home. He’d seen the breathtaking artwork she had done. But three years ago, her husband and children had been killed in a car accident. Ever since then, she’d had an empty, tormented look in her eyes; a stiff frown on her face; and nothing escaped from her soul.

Sure enough, Frances B. Forceful opened the folder before her. "Here’s the windows as I’ve sketched them," she began, taking over the meeting as she took over every meeting at Church of the Generous Allowance.
"My first window commemorates Psalm 42, ‘As the deer longs for streams of flowing water, so longs my soul for thee, O God.’ My second sketch celebrates Christ’s miracle with the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee found in Luke chapter 5."

Mrs. Forceful’s "sketches" were full color renditions. Looking at them, Rev. Roger winced. The focal point for the first was a magnificent stag with a full rack of antlers standing beside the stream. Rev. Roger imagined the itchy trigger fingers on the hunters in the congregation when they sat in the sanctuary and looked up at that deer. The second window showed the miraculous catch of fish as if they were cascading from Peter’s nets right into the sanctuary. Rev. Roger imagined the dreamy look on the face of the fishermen in the congregation when they saw those fish.

This was worse than he imagined. These windows wouldn’t lead people into worship and prayer, they’d lead them right out of it. But what could he do? In five years at Church of the Generous Allowance, he had never seen anyone deter Frances B. Forceful from her determined path.

Then Ida Oh-Yes spoke, and Rev. Roger thought his ears were disconnected from his brain. "I had a thought," she said. "We could have something modern in stained glass." Ida took a deep breath, "It could show Jesus standing over a car wreck."

"Over a car wreck!" Frances B. Forceful exploded. "In a stained glass window?" Rev. Roger realized with a start it was the first time in five years he had agreed with Frances.

"Think about it," Ida Oh-Yes said calmly. "Last year the high school cheerleaders were hit by a car on the way to that game across the state. And there was Mr. Hoskins. And Miss Semple’s son, out in Arizona. And Turners, Gladwins, and Moore’s all had someone hurt in that big expressway crash that icy night."
Ida turned to Laura Lost Everything. "I always wanted to tell you," she said softly, "that I was sorry you lost your husband and your children..."

Tears overflowed from Laura’s eyes.

Frances B. Forceful was speechless.

Laura Lost Everything jumped up from the table and left the room. Rev. Roger was ready to go after her when she returned with a pair of scissors. Laura snatched the color renditions from in front of Frances B. Forceful and began to cut them into pieces.

Rev. Roger knew there was a God because Frances B. Forceful did not swell up and burst all over the room. In fact, she seemed to take the destruction of her drawings calmly.

The committee sat in silence for at least a half an hour. Laura cut. The others watched. Rev. Roger wondered if Frances B. Forceful had ever sat still for half an hour. A holiness came over them -- as if, just by being there in silence, they were praying for Laura’s grief, for her inspiration; as if they were hesitantly inviting the Presence of God.

Laura began arranging colored pieces on the table before them. A car took shape -- a mangled wreck, awash in flames. "I never saw the accident where Frank and the boys died," she said as she added more colored pieces to the picture. "But I was always afraid that it looked like this."

She added more colored pieces. Behind the wreck, above the wreck, the figure of Jesus could be seen, tender compassion on his face, tears streaming from his eyes, the nail wounds on his wrist bright with blood, his hands reaching out toward the wrecked car.

"I was always afraid," Laura told them. "What if Jesus had not been there? But when you said that just now," she nodded to Ida Oh-Yes, "I knew it was like this – He was there. He was crying like I’ve been crying." Her quick hands slid the last of the colored pieces into place, finishing the night sky behind the luminous Christ.
Ida Oh-Yes looked at the picture before them. "Oh," she said. "I was wrong. That won’t do at all." She jumped from her chair, reached across the table, and swept away the burning car wreck, leaving Jesus, with the light on his face and tears in his eyes, reaching out – no longer to a mangled automobile, but to them.

Rev. Roger didn’t know what amazed him more: that Ida Oh-Yes had the nerve to sweep away part of Laura’s artwork, or that Frances B. Forceful was sitting there quietly, looking at someone else’s idea and nodding, "That’s it."

"He was there for them," Laura murmured. "And He’s here – for me." And as she said it, they all felt His Presence, and an unalterable, incomprehensible love touching deep places within them. And the silence was a prayer.