You Are Not Far Off

Mark 12:28-34

My son and I share a love of running. We like to run together when he is home from school or go exploring when we are visiting a vacation spot. One of our favorite routes is the trail that run’s from the campus of Young Harris College (where my daughter studies) to the peak of Brasstown Bald, the highest peak in Georgia. It is a 6.5 mile climb, quite steep in spots, but more gentle in other places. It is an abandoned highway, so it is fairly broad and the surface gravel still. 6.5 miles is a long climb, no matter how one sees it. By the time we enter the last couple of miles, we are usually worn to cinders, but we keep encouraging one another with panted, “We’re almost there...not far now...,” even though a peek through the trees reveals the pinnacle to be agonizingly in the distance. 

I think the scribe may have felt like us when Jesus told him, “You are not far off.” The scribe had the right words, but he had a LONG way to go to actually achieve their embodiment in his own life.

We should sympathize--faith is hard work. 

To help us along the way, we will often resort to reducing faith to aphorisms and catechisms of rules and dictums we can point to as evidence that we are doing well. I think this thinking lay behind the pushes to hang the Ten Commandments in public places--”See? Living properly is just a matter of following the rules, and, look, there are only ten...”

Of course, we completely ignore that the Ten Commandments were simply the first folio in God’s directives for the community of faith. We also completely ignore the fact that even if we can check these commandments off as obeyed, we really have done little to actually live according to faith. No, we did not murder anybody (No. 6), but have we really lived in a way that does no harm to anyone (Jesus reiteration in the Sermon on the Mount)? No, we did not commit adultery (No. 7), but have we lived in such a way that we have not objectified another human being (again, Jesus’ emphasis in the Sermon on the Mount)? 

Faith is more than ticking off checklists!

But as we discover that truth, things get sticky. The scribe is at such a juncture in his own journey. He intellectually affirms that Jesus’ answer as to the core of God’s Law is correct. He knows righteous wisdom--thinking aligned with God--when he hears it. Jesus recognizes that the scribe gets it--the scribe understands the theology of faith, the doctrines and the dogmas, so he is on his way...

...BUT...

...he still has a ways to go. 

On that mountain road, the peak toys with your mind. You can see it forever in the last mile, but it never seems to draw closer. The trail simply climbs, arduously and endlessly UP. Legs, lungs, limbs all scream for release, but the trail keeps climbing. 

Knowing what God requires is not identical to doing what God required. So, Jesus said, “You are not far off...”--getting there, but not there yet!

It is fascinating to me that at this moment, Mark tells us that all the debaters fell silent, refusing to go any further.

When we see what faith actually means for us, we so often freeze in place. We suddenly embrace our presence in the pews each Sunday as the absolute best we can do. We suddenly find that our mumbled, “Now I lay me down to sleep” bedtime rite is the absolute embodiment of prayer as it is. We suddenly seize onto the tax documents indicating the charitable checks we wrote as the full and complete assurance that we love our neighbors as ourselves. We go no further. 

In the first issue of the movie “True Grit,” Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) spends the day in the saddle, soothing his soul and limbs with a flask of hooch, finally too inebriated to continue. He slides from the horse, drunkenly collapsing in a heap, declaring, “We’ll camp right here!” when “right here” is in the middle of the trail. 

That pretty much describes where we find ourselves in our faith journey the moment we realize Jesus told us, “You are not far off...” and the immensity of what is left looms before us. “This spot is just fine, thank you!”

No, it isn’t and we know it. 

If Perry and I just stopped when we felt weary to our souls, we would be lost on the trail, too far from home to go back, and still too far from the peak to meet our ride. That is no place to be.

Keep going.

Once we see that what God requires of us is to embody love within the world--loving God wholly and completely; loving our neighbors; and loving ourselves--we keep going and make it so. We face the challenges from real life to actualizing love--people are hard to love, really--and love them anyway. We face the sacrificial nature of love--there is a cost, there are curtailed freedoms, and there will be rejections of our love--and love them anyway. 

Perry and I have always managed to finish our climbs up Brasstown. We do so because once we achieve that peak, there is a feeling of euphoria and release that cannot be found anywhere else. We feel have actually done something. We made it!

The reward of faith is so much deeper, so much more profound--Paul noted this truth well--

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. 

--1 Cor. 9:24-25

We run the race of faith to find our truest meaning, purpose, and to find God himself. But to do so, we have to run the whole race; we have to run with whole effort; and we have to run with our whole being. 

It will be worth it. We will find joy, even joy everlasting.

“You are not far off...”

Keep going.

Amen.