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 shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, ‘He is One and there is no other than him.’ And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to ask him any more questions.” (Mark 12.28-34)
As we study this scripture passage today, it is important that we understand that Jesus is now in Jerusalem, the destination that he has been moving towards since Chapter 10 in Mark’s gospel. For Mark, Jerusalem is the place where Jesus will fulfill his mission. As the stronghold of Judaism, its religious leaders holding the places of power so far as the Jewish faith is concerned stationed in the capital city, it also is the place of controversy and conflict.
So consequential are the city and the actions of the religious leaders in Mark’s gospel that the evangelist will dedicate forty percent of his gospel to this last week in Jesus’ life. By the point that we hear the particular passage we have today, Jesus has entered the city, has cursed the fig tree for bearing no fruit, has cleansed the Temple of moneymakers, and has endured three heated arguments with the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. In other words, he has seen one helluva start to the week, the intensity here at the beginning setting the stage for the explosive events that will come at the end of the week.
This context is important to our understanding of the passage presented to us because it tells of another scribe approaching Jesus. By this point, we have come to expect trickery and trouble from the scribes, but this conversation between a scribe and Jesus will be the only exception to the rule in Mark’s gospel. Interestingly, Matthew and Luke when telling the same story keep the antagonism, both of them stating that the scribe approaches Jesus to test him.
Mark, for his part, apparently wants to present the scribe as being impressed by Jesus’ previous three answers to the religious leaders and hopes to show that he is genuinely interested in knowing what Jesus has to say about which of the commandments is the greatest of all. The question in itself did not drop out of the sky. It was a common topic for formal debates between the scholars and table talk for ordinary people as they ate their meal.
That fact should not surprise us in the least because we’re always doing the same thing, similarly intent on prioritizing our religious observances in some order of importance, hoping in this way to get it right. The scribe seems to be of much the same disposition, interested in Jesus’ point of view as well as in doing the right thing himself. Unlike his fellow scribes, this is no trap with an underlying agenda to the question.
When Jesus replies, offering not one commandment as the most important, but two commandments, he is not suggesting anything radically new or different. Both commandments were already enshrined in the Jewish scriptures, love of God found in the Book of Deuteronomy (6.5) and love of neighbor found in the Book of Leviticus (19.18). What is new is that Jesus binds the two commandments into one, twisting them together as cords of a rope, the two strands now known to us as the great commandment of love.
Scholars are prone to point out that even this act has strong roots in the Hebrew scriptures because the twin tablets of the Decalogue do much the same, the first tablet providing for a person’s right relationship with God (commandments one through four), and the second tablet offering guidance for a person’s right relationship with other people (commandments five through ten). So, Jesus is proposing the same thing that the stone tablets do–bringing together love of God and love of neighbor. In effect, then, he is summarizing the Ten Commandments and labeling his summary as the greatest of all the commandments.
As we have seen, his answer impresses the scribe who is quick to say to Jesus “you are right.” Interestingly, in repeating the words that Jesus has offered to him, he also adds his own insight, stating that this great commandment to love God and neighbor “is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” We want to remember that the conversation takes place within the Jerusalem Temple, the place where burnt offerings and sacrifices regularly take place throughout the day.
So, the scribe has shown an important insight, going beyond Jesus’ statement when he suggests the superiority of love of God and love of neighbor over all the laws in the Torah about sacrifices made to the Most High God in the Temple. Apparently, his insight pleases Jesus. Mark tells us that “when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
The response by Jesus is markedly different from that which we will find in Matthew and Luke, neither of which provides the praise given by Jesus. Of course, both of these evangelists have framed the conversation within the context of a conflict, the scholar of the law in these gospels intent on “testing” Jesus or proving him wrong.
For his part, Matthew will emphasize instead that Jesus came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. Luke concludes the same exchange with the story of the Good Samaritan, prompted by the question that the scholar asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Again, Mark’s version is unique both in the friendly attitude by the scribe and by Jesus’ affirmation of him at the end.
Some have chosen to see Jesus’ affirmation of the scribe when he says to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” as carrying a clear reference to his words to the rich man in Chapter 10 when he says to that man, “You are lacking in one thing.” Frankly, there is no disputing the similarities in the praise that Jesus gives both men, the later instance a strong echo of the first instance.
All told, this passage is not a difficult one to understand. Rabbi Jesus states forthrightly that the greatest commandment is the command to love: love God and love neighbor. And his praise of the scribe who adds emphasis by noting that the dual command to love “is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” brings home the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing supersedes the great command to love.
Therein, of course, is the rub in the story. I have often said that we spend an inordinate amount of time and effort in fulfilling far lesser rules and regulations, patting ourselves mightily on the back for our compliance to these minor duties, all the while ignoring or overlooking our failure to meet the commandment to love. In so doing, we effectively reprioritize Jesus’ own commandment to love, turning it into something less important in our lives than other rules that we put in its place.
Of course, the reason is easy to find for our reshuffling of the cards. We have found it far easier to comply with lesser duties–the list is long–than we are with the great commandment of love, so we invert the order, moving the easy-to-do ahead of the near-to-impossible to do, convincing ourselves all the while that our golf score is on par when, in fact, we aren’t even on the golf course, much less on the green.
It is a habitual sleight of hand or trick of the mind that we play on ourselves, propping up rules and regulations that pale in comparison to the great commandment of love, telling ourselves that we’re faithfully following in the footsteps of Jesus because we’re regular Sunday church goers or because we abstain from meat on Fridays in Lent when, in truth, Jesus didn’t say a thing about these matters but said a whole lot about love of God and love of neighbor.
It is not that lesser observances are unimportant; it is that they are less important. The question that the scribe asked Jesus was to specify which is the first of all commandments. When Jesus answered with love of God and love of neighbor, he ended with the categorical statement, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”
So, it seems to me quite a turn-about to replace the greatest commandment as given by Jesus with lesser commandments of our own choosing, believing that doing a lot of lesser things somehow will add up to more than doing the one thing that Jesus told us we should be doing. Instead, our energy and our drive should be directed towards doing the one thing that Jesus categorically called the greatest commandment.
In the end, we have to ask ourselves if Jesus would say to us, as he did to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” In other words, do our words and our ways show our radical commitment to living out the commandment to love God and others as Jesus has instructed us to do? Our closeness or our distance from the kingdom of God is determined by our compliance or our non-compliance with the commandment of love.
Concretely, is our love demonstrated in our vision of all others in this world, seeing them as brothers and sisters, welcoming them into our midst, respecting them as carriers of the divine spark that is instilled in the soul of every human person? Or do we denigrate, despise, and dismiss others whom we consider beneath us, unlike us, or unworthy of our love?
Do we imitate God’s vision for all his children, lifting up those who have fallen, feeding those who are hungry, and welcoming those who are strangers on foreign soil? Or do we beat down the oppressed, humiliate the other, and alienate the foreigner? Are our attitudes formed and informed by the law of love, resulting in words and works that benefit the other rather than ostracize the other, that embrace one and all rather than build up walls and boundaries to keep others away, and that see others as more like us than seeing others as more unlike us?
How far are we from the kingdom of God? As I said, the distance is easy to determine, each act of love drawing us closer, while each act of disobedience to the commandment of love pulling us further away from the ways of God. I am convinced that if we make love of God and love of neighbor the priority in our lives, everything else will fall into line. Saint Augustine probably meant the same thing when he stated in a sermon, “Once and for all, I give you this one short command: love, and do what you will.”
However, if we fail to make the great commandment of love our priority in our lives, then nothing we do will really matter, at least not in terms of bringing us ever closer to the kingdom of God. The bottom line is not all things are equal. If Jesus had answered the scribe by saying all the commandments were on the same playing field, then we could bypass the more difficult in favor of the more easily done.
But he did not say all things are equal. He said love of God and love of neighbor was the greatest of all the commandments. Unless and until we’re willing to take him at his word, putting into practice the one commandment he said was non-negotiable, then all the other stuff we’re so proud of doing is, in fact, a non-starter, meaning it’s getting us no closer to the kingdom of God.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 