A Hermeneutic of Love
and the need for repentence.
I got mad last week. I got angry. I even teetered on the edge of becoming vengeful. And, lo and behold, it was a Facebook post’s comment section that held a match to the kindling wood my heart has been accumulating for years.
It all started when an old friend of mine shared some hopes he has for a newly-created denomination (because apparently 33,089 aren’t enough). And a person whom I only know tangentially took it upon himself to openly condemn any and all who, like me, remain part of The United Methodist Church. Apparently we’ve let “the liberals” lead us away from the “one,” “true” faith, and are now on the fast track to h-e-double hockey sticks.
When he received some pushback, that now-retired pastor of a California evangelical megachurch brandished his doctoral degree (which I presume is a D. Min. and not a Ph.D. - two very different degrees) as credentialed rebuttal against those less-knowledgeable commenters. How dare they disagree with such a learned man! Who are they to defy The Grand Arbiter of the One True Faith?!
Truth be told, his remarks touched on what apparently is still an open wound for me. You see, the United Methodist denomination in which I was baptized, called into ministry, married and ordained - the church into which my children have been baptized and taught and shown the love of Jesus, is going through, what I am choosing to call, its own Great Reformation. Congregations have splintered, some have left, others have closed. The in-fighting has consumed Kingdom resources and left destruction in its wake. It has been deeply draining and pain-filled for me as well. There has been tremendous loss, including friends, parishioners, and colleagues along the way. What once was, is no more. The local church my wife and I were married in left the denomination and the church in which I grew up closed its doors altogether in no small part because, to use John Wesley’s words, their love for one another grew cold.1
I’ve done a lot of grieving the past several years, not only because of the losses but also because we - churches, pastors, members, and otherwise - have placed our own preferences and priorities over and against Jesus’.
In the Gospels, there are several groups of people who regularly challenged Jesus. There were the demons, whom you’d expect, and the "Gentiles” like King Herod and Caesar. But there were also a whole bunch of “good religious folk” who disagreed vehemently with Jesus as well. You don’t have to read into the Good News accounts very far before you’ll start noticing people like the Pharisees, priests, sadducees, and elders. Shoot, even Jesus’ own disciples disagreed with Him.
There was another group of disagreers called “Scribes,” and their name in Greek - grammateus - means ‘writer.’ Each town had at least one scribe, and one of their jobs was to draft legal documents. They also transcribed the Holy Scriptures. More than that, they were also ones who determined how God’s word was to be applied to every day life. Some scribes shared similar convictions while disagreeing with others. It was not uncommon to hear them debating whose understanding of the Scriptures was correct, and whose, by extension, were wrong. Apparently Facebook comment sections aren’t entirely new after all.
One of these ‘debates’ takes place in Mark 12, when, “One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well the scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Or, to use the verbiage of a different translation, which, Jesus, out of the 613 commandments is the greatest? Which one takes priority above the rest? Through which commandment of God are we to interpret the others? What commandment should we hold on to the tightest, come what may?
If you keep reading, you might be familiar - or surprised - by what Jesus says…and what He does not say.
Unlike the Courthouse Lawn Fighters, Jesus doesn’t argue for the 10 Commandments. Unlike those who have left my denomination, Jesus doesn’t lift up human sexuality or religious polity as what is most important. Jesus didn’t even mention good things like the sacraments, reading the Bible, worship, missions, pews or chairs or the color of the carpet. No, Jesus didn’t mention any of those. Instead, this is what mattered most to Him:
“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.”
Rather than giving the scribe one commandment, Jesus gave him two: Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Apparently, at least to Jesus, how we love our neighbors is a direct reflection of how we love God. Orthodoxy (“correct” belief) and orthopraxis (“correct” action) - you can’t have one without the other…at least according to Jesus.
It appears, then, that Jesus (and the God revealed through Him) has a hermeneutic of love.
“Hermeneutic” is the fancy word describing how a person makes interpretations, particularly regarding texts like the Bible. When the scribe asked Jesus which commandment was the most important, he was asking for Jesus’ hermeneutic - how God’s people were to understand and live out the Holy Scriptures.
Understood as such, any time we feel tension between Law2 and Love, Love wins. Every. single. time.
In fact, The Law is only rightly understood and applied when read through the lens of Love. The scribe to whom Jesus was speaking appears to agree with Jesus, but it’s clear that his peers do not. Jesus said that scribe was “not far from the kingdom of God.” But the others? The Priests and Elders, Scribes and Pharisees? By implication, they are not even close.
People like the retired Rev. Dr. Megachurch would do well to revisit the words of Jesus before he picks up his next stone to throw on Facebook. And people like me need to as well. Because those standing in the crosshairs of Jesus’ teaching are not the pagans or gentiles; it’s the religious folk. It’s pastors and preachers, parishioners and choir members, those who’ve stayed and those who’ve left. It’s the progressive, the traditionalist, and the centrist. It’s people like you and most certainly me to whom Jesus is speaking.
Because almost every time, His harshest words were reserved for those ‘self-assured saints’ who have placed the emPHAsis on the wrong syLABle.
Those who care more about their polity than they do their neighbor. Those whose worship-style-preference means more than the ones seated next to them in the pew or who are sitting across the aisle in the church sanctuary. Jesus’ warning is for those whose concern for ‘orthodoxy’ places themselves in the seat of judgment, forgetting that chair doesn’t belong to anyone save Christ Jesus alone.
I’ve encountered many Rev. Dr. Megachurch’s throughout my life. Sometimes they are people who have “Reverend” or “Doctor” in front of their name. Other times, it’s been people who have their own reserved pew or seat in the choir loft. And, more times than I care to admit, I’ve encountered that person in the mirror before me. Because, to be sure, we - like Peter and James and John and Martha - mistake our own convictions for Christ’s.
Surely not I, Lord?!
Thankfully, Jesus has a hermeneutic of love, one that desires not our condemnation, but our salvation (that’s John 3:17 - how different the world would be if the John 3:16 Sign Guy had chosen that verse instead!). God’s deeper desire is not for our damnation, but for our restoration to the likeness of Jesus. All we need to do is repent. Or as The Byrds sang so wonderfully, we only need to turn, turn, turn.
Going forward, may our hearts become more humble and less judgmental. May we spend more time tending to the planks in our own eyes than trying to remove the speck in another’s. May we discover a more loving orthodoxy. May we live an orthopraxy than bends toward the well-being of our neighbor. And may you and I yield our wills, more and more, to the Jesus whose law is love and gospel is peace.
“If My people, who are called by My name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14
John Wesley was one of the leading founders of the Methodist movement, and, in his sermon On Schism, he wrote, “To separate ourselves from a body of living Christians, with whom we were before united, is a previous breach of the law of love. It is the nature of love to unite us together…It is only when our love grows cold, that we can think of separating from our brethren [sic].”
The Law in scripture is not talking about laws we think about today - like wearing a seatbelt or paying taxes. Instead, whenever “Law” is mentioned, the Bible is referring to the Torah - the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament - and, more particularly, what God gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai.