Mark 12: 28-34
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" 29 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And 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.' 31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." 32 And the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 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, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. †
Blessing the Scribe
As Jesus and his disciples visit the temple each day, we have seen him confronted by lots of Jewish leaders. First it was the elders and chief priests; then it was the Pharisees and Herodians; next came the Sadducees—in all cases, Jesus thwarts their attempts to trap him. Each time, he answers from a perspective they don’t anticipate; the God perspective.
In today’s text, we have something different: a positive encounter with one of the scribes. The scribes had the responsibility to rightly interpret the Torah and keep people aligned with their interpretation. They were the academics—the scholars and commentators—and in Mark they have given Jesus much grief already. They question him when he heals the paralytic and forgives his sins. They condemn his choice of company, accusing him of breaking bread with tax collectors and sinners. They ask him why the disciples don’t do the ritual hand-washing. They even accuse him of being demon-possessed. We have no reason to expect anything like a positive encounter, but that is what we get.
Lest we think that Jesus was anti-Judaism, today’s text shows that he is hand-in-hand with the heart and core of rabbinical Judaism.
“What is the first and greatest commandment?” asks the scribe.
This is really something of a softball. It is something that any devout Jew would know like the first question of a well-worn catechism. It is the equivalent today of asking someone, “What does it mean to be a Christian?”
Jesus’ answer came in words that devout Jews would have spoken three times or more per day. It is called “The Shema.”
The Shema
It’s called the Shema because the first word is shema, which means “hear.”
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 might.
This comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and continues:
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Devout Jews today still recite the Shema regularly. If you’ve seen orthodox Jews with their hands wrapped, or wearing little boxes on their hands or forehead, they contain the Shema on small notes. The Shema is the closest thing to a Jewish “confession of faith.” You might say it is the Jewish Apostles’ Creed.
But Jesus’ answer is more than just the Shema. Rabbis were known and identified by their teaching (called their “yoke”). They were expected to have their own, original summations of the whole of Jewish Law—a short version of the 10 commandments. Jesus does this, but he does so in a way that re-writes the Shema, transforming not only Judaism, but laying the ground for the Church as well with a phrase:
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 might. and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The New Shema
Here is the new Shema. Jesus sums up 10 commandments with 2, and the whole of the Law and the Prophets (that’s the entirety of Old Testament Judaism) in two, short commands.
The problem Jesus had with so many of the Jewish leaders had nothing to do with the true faith of Israel; it had to do with all of the man-made additions—the elaborations, the commentaries, the rituals, the barnacles—that had glommed onto the simple faith of loving God and loving neighbor to create a behemoth of division, disagreement, and confusion.
The scribe is drawn and pleased by Jesus’ teaching, and Jesus blesses him saying, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus affirms the heart and soul of Jewish faith even though he has been uncompromising in his criticisms of the temple hypocrisies.
First Things First
These same commandments pass on to us, Jesus’ followers, as the means by which we practice the Christian faith. Let’s imagine that same scribe approaches you and me and asks not “What do you believe?” but “What is the practice of the Christian life?” We could answer with the same words: love God above all and love our neighbors as ourselves.
The first commandment is the greatest. To love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength means to put God before everything, anything, and anyone else. It’s a high bar, alright. It says we should love God so much that there is nothing even left over for anything or anyone else. Is this even possible? How can we love God to the exclusion of everything else? If we truly loved god with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, it seems we might become cold or even mean to everyone else. ALL our heart, ALL our soul, All our understanding—that leaves nothing left for our friends and family, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t say, “95% of our heart, with 5% dedicated to family and friends.” Nor does it say, “Love God with most of your mind.” It says all. All, all, all.
We don’t really need to know more than the first commandment, because if we actually managed to love God with our absolute 100%, we would accomplish all the other commandments automatically. At 100%, our will would be perfectly aligned with God’s will and we would do no wrong. But because it is such a struggle for us to even get to, say, 86.5%, we really do need that second command—to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Who is my Neighbor?
Considering the second commandment, we might ask the same question that another scribe asks in Luke’s gospel: Who is my neighbor?
The great thing about Mister Rogers is that he wants to be your and my neighbor. So who is this “neighbor” we are supposed to love as much as we love ourselves?
I thought it was worth a word study. The Greek word for neighbor is simply the word for “near.” Our English word neighbor comes with its own revelations. The word comes from a combination of two words: nigh, which simply means near, and boor, which means, well, boor.
So it turns out that our neighbor is the boor near us. You may have literal neighbors—next door residents—who are indeed insufferably boorish. They are the ones Jesus commands you to love even as you love yourself.
We are to love the “near boor” which means we are back to Jesus’ other command that we should love our enemies.
Love Your Near Boors
I think we all prefer a false idea or model of the Church. Deep down, what we really want is a happy, suburban, loving club. Like-minded people with the same values and basic station in life. No unpleasant people, no “problem” personalities—but that is not real life; that is a country club.
In a country club, people are united by common self-esteem. Conflicts are avoided, differences smoothed over. Bandaids are put over infected cuts in the hopes that they will just go away. This is fine for the country club, but it cannot be the Church.
If all we go with is what we want, we’ll end up only loving the lovable. We’ll love our friends, love those who love us, and otherwise go on despising the boors near us.
As for the Church, our unity is not in our shared self-esteem but in our common need for redemption. We acknowledge that we are all broken and all in need of redemption, so we welcome the broken and we celebrate Christ as the one who redeems any and all from their sin.
As for the Church, it is a better model, a better story, and a better witness that we welcome people with problems, people with moral blindnesses. We do our best when we gladly welcome people with problems, entitlement issues, pride, lust, anger, envy, and so on.
With difficult people nearby, we get the best love training. When we love our enemies—our near boors—we are practicing a most excellent kind of love.
We should thank God for the difficult people in our lives and pray for more difficult people to love.
Followers of Jesus, how much do we want to grow? How important to us is it that we grow into the image of Christ? If you love God with even half your heart, you will come to love what he loves and who he loves.
If we truly believe that his life is like a school and training for our eternal lives with God, and that we are here to learn to love, then we should pray for more enemies to love, for then our souls would truly grow in the most excellent, most Christlike kind of love.
Got people that bug you? People that talk smack about you behind your back? Any friends who became backstabbers? Neighbors that seem to be flaw upon flaw upon flaw and daily remind you of it? Thank God for them, because in loving them, you are practicing Christianity.
Having a tough time loving some difficult people in your life? One prescription is all we need: Commandment #1: try loving God more. Long for God’s presence, grace and peace. Pray that God would fill you with those things. Pray that The Lord would give you love to give the difficult boors in your neighborhoods. Thank him for loving you enough to grow you into a more loving person by giving you some enemies.
Good news and a great irony: when we obey the first commandment, loving God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul and all our strength, we don’t find that we have less love for others, but mysteriously, so much more. †