The Question That Keeps Coming Up

Mark 12:28-34
October 31, 2021

This fall, we have traveled in the company of the twelve disciples. They have been taught one lesson after another, lessons that we have overheard as we reflect on what kind of Christians we will be. They have been moving toward Jerusalem, and now they are there. So we listen in again:

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.”

Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.


The scribe asked a single question. "Which is the first commandment? The number one spiritual obligation?" Jesus gives two answers, "Love God. Love people."

Mark says his response shut down the interrogation. Nobody dared ask him any more questions. Who can blame them? Jesus gave an irrefutable answer. What is the summary of our religion? What comes first?

Jesus says, “Love God.” Love the Lord with everything you are and all that you have. And without so much as taking a breath, he tags on a second commandment, from Leviticus 19, “You shall love the neighbor as much as you love yourself.” It is a stunning answer and cannot be argued against.

Those who teach the faith will sub-divide the Ten Commandments this way. The first four commandments are about loving God: no other gods, no attempts to capture God in an image, no misuse of God’s name, remember your creation and redemption by saving a complete day for God every week. Love God!

The remaining six commandments constitute loving the neighbor. Honor your parents, for they are your closest neighbors. Don’t take your neighbor’s life, don’t take your neighbor’s spouse, don’t take your neighbor’s stuff. Don’t lie or distort the truth about your neighbor. Don’t desire anything your neighbor possesses.

There it is: love God, love your neighbor. As the scribe babbles back in astonishment, if we keep these, our lives will be greater than trying to earn our way into God’s good graces by lighting a candle, sacrificing a sheep, smoking up some incense, writing a check, or sitting in a long meeting. God looks upon the heart, the soul, the mind, the strength. What God is looking for is any evidence of love, extended simultaneously in two directions: love returned to God, who is the source of love, the essence of love; and love extended to the neighbor.

The scribe who intended to interrogate Jesus said, “You are right, Teacher.” And then Jesus said something a bit quizzical, “You’re not far from the kingdom of God.”

I have always pictured him saying that with a smirk on his face. “You’re not far.” How are is ‘not far’? Would the scribe be a little bit closer if he hadn’t tried to pile on with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and all the other opponents who pounced on Jesus during that final week in Jerusalem? Would he have been closer to the kingdom if he weren’t a scribe?

After all, immediately following this account, Jesus poked fun at the scribes and the flattened way they interpreted the scriptures. Mark says the crowd loved it. Then he warned about the scribes, “They prance around line long robes, claim good seats at banquets, and then fleece the widow’s estates.” As they practiced faith, there was not much love of neighbor, and more love for themselves than for God.

The lesson is it’s possible to quote the Bible, then get it wrong. You can agree, “Love God, love neighbor,” and never actually love anybody. You can be a professional religious dignitary who understands that love draws us closer to God and God’s rule over our lives. Yet in your life, something else takes precedence.

The Gospel of Mark highlights the inconsistency. Flip a couple pages forward, and we see the scribes in the inner sanctum of religious professionals when Jesus is arrested and condemned (15:1). The scribes stand in the mob that hand over Jesus to Pontius Pilate. The scribes stand among those who mock the Christ when he is on the cross (15:31). It’s one thing to know God teaches us to love; it’s another thing to love.

The distance between is “not far.”

To focus the question for us: whom do you love – and whom do you find difficult to love? Loving God may sound difficult because, at least on the surface, nobody can see God. Through the ages, some people have heard God speak. They have written down what they’ve heard in the Bible. If they keep the teaching, it is a way to love the Lord. If they show up regularly in the places where God continues to speak, it is another way to love the Lord.

But I remember a lady with purple eyes. When I was a kid, they looked purple to me. She could comprehend what God is all about. See an acorn, she said, “God is making another tree.” If you were feeling down, she would slide over by you, put her arm around you, and say, “God is with us.” In church, if she knew the hymn, she would lose herself in singing. She emptied her whole soul to the God she could not see.

That’s when I ever understood we can love the God who stays out of sight. We can give ourselves to God and God’s purposes. If we can do this, we are close to the kingdom.

And you would think it’s so much easier to love one another, whom we can see. Right? Here they are, standing in front of us, available for us to love. That’s easy, right? It’s not easy at all. People have warts, and opinions, and differences. They say things that disturb us. They toss over the things that we treasure.

And should we think for a minute that it’s easier to love the God we cannot see than to love the person we can see, we have the reformer Dorothy Day who held both together. She said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

One of the clearest examples emerged after the horrific shooting of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh three years ago. They wheeled the gunman into Allegheny General Hospital. He had been wounded in the gun fight after the massacre. When they brought him in, he was still yelling anti-Semitic curses. Then a man in a white coat approached him and said, “I’m Dr. Jeffrey Cohen. I’m here to take care of you.” He was president of the hospital.

As Dr. Cohen later explained, “We are here to take care of sick people. We’re not here to judge. We’re not here to ask, ‘Do you have insurance?’ We’re here to take care of people who need our help.” As someone noted, “It is a stark reminder that there is something more powerful than caring for one’s own.” It was a radical demonstration of humanity.

A person of insatiable curiosity, the doctor took a special interest in the shooter, a 46-year-old high school dropout who had few friends. He perceived someone incapable of generating his own hate and so absorbing it from others. Without dismissing what the gunman did, Dr. Cohen said, “He’s just a guy. He’s not the face of evil. Once he was a child and people looked at him with all the hope in the world. Now, he’s someone all alone and all he hears is the noise in his head all the time.”

An FBI agent watched how Dr. Cohen greeted the gunman, how he sat down next to him, how he talked to him and tried to understand him, and then how he handed him off to the medical team to dress his wounds. The agent said, “I don’t think I could have done what you just did.” Dr. Cohen nodded in understanding; and he did it anyway.[1]

And where did Dr. Cohen learn this? At the Tree of Life synagogue where he is a member. He lives across the street from the sanctuary, in the same neighborhood where Mister Rogers once lived. When he heard the gunfire from his house, he left immediately for the hospital, knowing someone needed help.

You shall love God with heart, soul, mind, and surgery. You shall love the neighbor, made in God’s image. If we do not love, as Cohen loves, as Christ loves, we remain captives to the power of death.

Where do we learn this? In the church, just like the synagogue. I don’t know anywhere else where the lesson is being taught. There is so much noise in the air. People demanding to be heard above everybody else. So many voices that are arrogant, boastful, arrogant, and rude, insisting on their own way, rejoicing in wrongdoing. The choice we face is love or death, exemplified in Jesus, who learned it from Moses.

This is why the church is so important. Here is where we are taught to love God and love one another. And not merely as a concept or an idea – but as a live-giving, life-saving practice. If we don’t give ourselves to Someone or Something greater than ourselves, life grows cold, love grows stingy. We fall into isolation, never tasting joy, drifting without purpose, cut off from the very gifts that God provides for our well-being.

One of my spiritual teachers is a short nun, advanced in years. The great teachers can say it with simplicity, and she says, “True spirituality is always directed toward somebody else.” The choices are simple, too. You can direct it toward God or direct it toward neighbor, but it is always expressed in acts of love.

So hear again, O Israel, the central invitation of the faith we share: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is not greater word than this.

And for all who love, you’re not far from the kingdom. In fact, you’re very close.


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------
[1] Eli Rosenberg, “I’m Doctor Cohen,” Washington Post, October 30, 2018. https://wapo.st/2EU31zP