One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! 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 second is this: You should love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12.28-31)
At 37 years of age, the well-known medical doctor and Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, was sent to the first of four German concentration camps that he would endure during World War II. Just nine months married, Frankl lost his father, mother, brother, and wife in those horrendous camps during his three years in captivity.
In his iconic book, written after his release from the horrors of the concentration camps, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl tells that when he was arrested, he tried to hide in his coat a manuscript, his life’s work, that he had been writing on psychiatry. When he arrived at Auschwitz, the guards took all his possessions and clothes. The manuscript was lost forever.
Frankl writes, “I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had been sent to a gas chamber immediately after his arrival at Auschwitz railway station. Instead, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the most important Jewish prayer, Shema Israel.”
He continues, “How could I have interpreted such a ‘coincidence’ other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?” As many of us may know, that prayer, called the Shema Israel because of its first words, “Hear, O Israel,” is a quotation found in the Book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Scriptures.
There, in Chapter 6, Moses tells the Hebrew slaves of what he has been told by the Most High God atop Mount Sinai, telling them, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.”
Presenting it to the people as the great commandment, Moses directs them to “drill these words into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.”
As a result, still to this day, observant Jews carry these words on their person in small boxes and place them inside a similar container at the doorway to their homes, making clear to themselves and to others that this prayer is the centerpiece of their religious belief. Traditionally , a Jew is expected to pray the Shema twice a day and to make this prayer his or her final words, uttering them with the last breath.
So, it comes as no real surprise, then, that Rabbi Jesus, when asked by one of the scribes to tell him “which is the first of all the commandments,” should respond with the Shema Israel. As we see, the evangelist Mark presents that scene to us today, the last of four questions that the Rabbi is asked by the religious leaders as he stands in the Temple in Jerusalem, his death imminent, their questions an attack on his credibility.
However, this last question, unlike the other three, seems to have been asked without an effort to entrap the Galilean Teacher, perhaps the scribe asking this final question genuinely interested in knowing the Rabbi’s thoughts, even complimenting Rabbi Jesus when he adds to the Shema another command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” saying to the Rabbi, “Well said, Teacher.”
As we consider that conversation between Rabbi Jesus and the scribe, an event shortly before the Rabbi’s death, we are left to ponder the Galilean’s insistence that “there is no other commandment greater than these.” It is clear from the Rabbi’s words–and his life’s work–that this dual commandment has guided him on his way and, should we wish to follow, also must guide us on our way in this world.
Over the centuries, keen observers have noted that this commandment reflects the totality of the Hebrew scriptures, both the law and the prophets. Not coincidentally either, the commandment neatly summarizes the first and the second tablets of the Decalogue, that is, the Ten Commandments, considered the essence of observance of the law.
While the first tablet emphasizes a person’s relationship to God by calling for loyalty to God, abstaining from idolatry, and keeping holy the sabbath, the second tablet focuses on a person’s relationship to others, calling for respect for parents and abstaining from murder, adultery, false witness, and covetousness.
With this dual-directed love, love of God and love of neighbor, Rabbi Jesus shows a clear understanding of the Decalogue, offering a concise and concrete summation of all the commandments, forever after closing the debate over which is the most important, indicating hereby that love alone holds the place of honor.
“The most important thing in life,” Morrie tells Mitch in the profoundly personal and beautiful book, Tuesdays with Morrie, “is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” With these words, Morrie, dying from ALS, offers this last lesson to his former student, Mitch. Perhaps men staring at death, such as Rabbi Jesus and Morrie, see better than the rest of us, distilling the essence of life as they face the end. With no time to waste, they understand what is real and what is superfluous.
But we should not have to wait until death is encroaching on our days, especially for those of us who claim to follow the way of the Galilean, to gain this understanding, since Rabbi Jesus’s words and ways show us clearly that love is the one essential virtue with which to live our lives, without which nothing else we do matters.
Some years ago, a young financial planner with a successful and lucrative career learned the lesson the hard way. More concerned with the fast track than with anything else, the man woke up one day to find his marriage beyond repair. Forced to move into a small rental, most of his money taken in the divorce settlement, and allowed to see his two children now as a “weekend dad,” the man summed up what he had learned.
Speaking to a friend afterwards, his life totally changed, the man said to his friend, “I have learned so much in the past year. I used to think I wanted a bigger house, expensive vacations, a fast car, and I told myself I wanted these as much for the family as for myself. Now,” he said, “I have come to understand that there are only two questions that really matter: How I will spend my time and with whom.”
Having had a crash course in what is important in life, not by choice but by circumstance, the young man had come out on the other side with an understanding near the same as Rabbi Jesus, seeing now that the one who fails to love God and to love others fails the test of life, all the money in the world not compensating for this loss, all the success in the world not making good this failure.
Given the certainty of this truth and given the testimony of countless others who have learned it the hard way, it is both astounding and profoundly puzzling that so many others do not see it, do not get it, although all the evidence is right before their eyes. Rather than spend their numbered days on earth in an effort to excel at love, they waste their time pursuing fleeting and flimsy second-rate goals, garage-sale nik naks of little or lasting value.
Face to face with this fact of life, we can only conclude that many find it too difficult to love, finding it much easier to take than to give, to look out for oneself rather than to look out for others, to worship clay-footed gods rather than the Most High God. That, or they simply want to stay stuck in their solitary world of selfishness and self-importance, content to look into mirrors, rather than outwardly at others.
That stance was epitomized some time back when a young outfielder was trying to explain to the manager of his professional baseball team that he personally put a high priority on learning to walk with God. Without a shred of self-scrutiny, the manager shot back, “Well, I’d rather have you walk with the bases loaded.” Sadly, a man such as that manager might win a game or two, but he will never win at the game of life.
The opposite is found in a story shared by a physician who witnessed the lengths of love that one man was willing to go. As the doctor explained, the man’s wife had advanced Alzheimer’s and, as too often is the case, the woman became difficult and defiant as the disease took over. Still, her husband continued to care for the woman with the utmost love.
The doctor saw with his own eyes the man’s outpouring of love, all the more remarkable because the woman could no longer return the love, instead giving outbursts and rebukes, none of which slowed the man’s efforts to show his love for her.
Then, one day the man himself ended up in the hospital, the physician learning that the man had late-stage colon cancer. Admitting to the doctor that he had known about his diagnosis for over a year, he explained that he had refused treatment because he needed all his energy and money to take care of his wife. Her needs came first. Showing a remarkable peace of mind, the dying man said that he was willing to suffer and die to ensure that his wife had the best care possible. Little else mattered to him.
And with those actions the man showed, as others such as Rabbi Jesus showed, that there are worse things than dying. It is far worse not to have lived as God calls us to live, with love in our hearts for him and for others, a love that comes from the Most High himself, a love that, if allowed to flow outwardly, makes life worth living and makes this world worth living in. When all is said and done, as Rabbi Jesus told the scribe, love is the only thing that matters.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 