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.”
Mark 12:28-31; NRSVue
“Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”
Matthew 7:24-27; NRSVue
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”
John 21:20-22; NRSVue
One of the most telling questions we can ask ourselves might be something like, What is sacrosanct to me? What do I live for? What do I base my life on? What might I be willing to die for?
We might give what we think is the correct answer, but our lives might belie that, in other words say something else. I was once in a conversation with another Christian who when I said I don’t base my life on the US Constitution seemed taken back and asked what I base it on, to which I answered, the Sermon on the Mount. Of course just what he meant would have to be uncovered, and there well could have been some misunderstanding in the exchange. But as followers of Christ we really need to seriously and prayerfully consider this question.
Jesus doesn’t leave much room. From the passages above, we find that we’re either following him in love for God and for our neighbor, including our enemies as we find in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount which he insists that we’re to build our lives on, or we’re not.
So much else can get into the mix. We might think the gospel is sacrosanct or what’s most important and sacred to us, and what that points to, but some political ideology might end up being mixed in with that, which actually weakens our commitment to the gospel or might even make it null and avoid altogether. And we may end up disagreeing on what the gospel means in application. We have to ask ourselves is what unites us in Christ in spite of what differences we have. What unites us thus forms us and directs us in how we should look at this life and the world.
There’s much more involved in all of this for sure. And we’ll have to live with many disagreements or at least different ways of looking at things in this present existence. And we certainly should listen and consider what we can learn from each other. But in spite of all of that, the heart is the heart, what is truly sacred, and that’s where we’re to be united, to be one in all of life. In and through Jesus.