Welcome to the fourth week of our message series, “Confessions of a Control Freak.” We have said that we are all control freaks about one thing or another, and these things can actually get in the way of our relationship with God. Instead, if we can learn to loosen our grip, even just a little bit, the quality of our relationship with God, and of all of our relationships would get better. And that's what this series is all about.
    Today we are going to be talking about a tendency that most, if not all, of us have to want to try to control other people. All of us from time to time can be tempted to want to control the decisions, the actions, and the behaviors of other people. Don't get me wrong, none of us wants to be labeled as a controlling person, but we can all be tempted to this behavior from time to time. It might be as simple as laying yours, your spouse’s, and your children’s cloths out the night before. My brother-in-law puts everyone’s medications and vitamins in their cereal bowls the night before.
    Most of the time – I would guess 99% of the time – it is because we care about the person.  We want what is best for them.  Most of us have probably seen family members or friends making bad decisions, and we want to save them from that.  It is a noble intention, however, we know that it usually does not work out. Our efforts to try to control other people, ultimately, don't really get us what we really want. Our efforts to control other people just wind up in frustration. I mean, sure, you can try. You can try, keyword there is try, to control other people, but ultimately it's not going to work and you're just going to drive that person away.
    This does not mean that we should take the opposite extreme. This message is not about advocating for some totally hands-off approach to life. It is not realistic to think that we are not going to have some involvement in the lives of the people that we care about. The bottom line for today’s message is not live and let live today. There's a difference, however, between influence and control, and we were made to be an influencer. We were called and designed to be influential in the lives of the people around us, the people that we care about most, but we were not meant to be a controller. Today, we are going to talk about the difference.
    In order to do so, we are going to need to expand a bit on the Gospel passage we just heard.  We are in the 12th Chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, and in that chapter three groups of people are encountered: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes.  All three groups were religious and political leaders, though they often saw things differently.
    Earlier in Chapter 12, the Pharisees pose a question to Jesus.  The Pharisees could be described as the more traditional religious group.  They strictly interpreted the Torah, and they opposed the Romans.  They asked Jesus the question about whether it was lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar.
    Right after Jesus dealt with the Pharisees’ question, the Sadducees stepped up to ask Jesus a question.  The Sadducees were the more progressive religious group.  They did not believe in things like angels, the resurrection of the dead, and they were more accepting of the Romans.  They posed the story of the woman who married seven brothers, and asked whose wife she would be if there is a resurrection of the dead.
    Both the Pharisees and Sadducees were trying to control Jesus. Their agenda is to try to discredit him entirely. The tactics that they use are these passive-aggressive trick questions. They are trying to pin Jesus in a corner. They are trying to trap him so that the only way out is either to contradict himself or to agree with their own position.  As we know, or we can go read about in Chapter 12 of St. Mark’s Gospel this week, Jesus avoids the traps of both the Pharisees and Sadducees.
    This week Jesus is asked a question by a member of the third group, a Scribe.  He asks, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”  At first this might also seem like a trick question, but it really isn’t.  The Scribes were the Scripture scholars.  Since there was no printing press, they would make copies of the Torah and the writings of the Prophets for the various synagogues by long-hand. Since they spent so much time copying the Scriptures, they knew the Scriptures quite well.  They knew that there were 613 commandments in the Torah, and rabbis debated which was the most important, which was the essential of all Jewish teaching. The Scribe is saying, "Jesus, if I'm going to live my life according to the Jewish Scriptures, what's the essential? What's my North Star or the guiding principle that I should live my life by?"
    Jesus’ reply does not start off with anything astonishing.  He quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, a prayer known as the Shema, that practicing Jews say several times a day, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The crowd, and maybe even the Scribe, might have yawned as this answer.
    However, Jesus was not finished. He goes on and says, "The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself," another direct quote here from the scriptures, this time from Leviticus 19. Now Jesus has done something new. He has done something astonishing because he's put together two things that have never before been put together. Jesus is saying that we cannot separate the love of God from the love of people. We cannot call ourself a follower of God, a lover of God if we are not also a lover of people. You want the core? The core, the greatest commandment is love.
    The application of that for us here today when it comes to our relationships, when it comes to our desire sometimes to control other people is this, you can either have control or love, but you can't have both. God, the creator of all things, knows this to be true. God made us in his image and likeness, and gave us free will. He could have made machines that would have carried out His will perfectly for all of eternity, but our creator knows that He could control or He could love, but not both. God knows this to be true.
    Control ultimately says, "My goal is just to get my way, and I'm going to try to get you to do it." Love does not insist on its own way. That's because love is humble. Control, on the other hand, is prideful. Control says, "I know what's best. I know what's best for you and for everybody else." But we have to wake up to the fact that so often we don't know what is best. Only God knows best.
    The Pharisees and Sadducees tried to control Jesus, and when Jesus didn't answer them the way they wanted, they walked away frustrated. But here, the Scribe seemed genuinely satisfied with the answer. It's because the Scribe was humble. Because of that, Jesus says he's not far from the kingdom of God.
    So, you want what's best for your family? For the people that you love? Your friends? The only way to guarantee that they'll actually get it is if you choose love and not control. Because when the posture of your heart is humble and loving, you can be incredibly influential. But when the posture of your heart is prideful and controlling, your influence isn't going to get you anything other than frustrated. That's the difference between influence and control – Love and humility.