Mark 12:28-34: Two for the price of one

In our fast-paced world prioritizing is often, well, a priority.  We can’t do a million things, or pay attention to every little detail, but if we can narrow down our lists of concerns to just a few, we might have a shot at actually being productive, and feeling like we’re getting somewhere.  As much as we’d like to believe that our generation is unique in thinking that way, it’s not.  While parents didn’t have to worry about PTA meetings and baseball practice in Jesus’ day, simply working to put food on the table and a roof over one’s head took up a far greater proportion of their time.  That might have been why a scribe spoke up to ask “what is the greatest commandment?” 

With 613 laws in the Torah, it was only natural for people to want to prioritize.  With that many laws, it was entirely possible for paralysis by analysis to set in, so that one’s time could be entirely consumed just in trying to follow, or at the very least refrain from breaking, the rules.  Others had been asked this question before, and had given pretty decent answers.  Hillel the Elder would respond to a similar question saying, “What you yourself hate, do not do to your neighbor: this is the whole Law, the rest is commentary.  Go and learn it.”  His instruction is sometimes referred to as the “silver rule”, for reasons you probably already know.  While Hillel’s answer is good, it isn’t the best answer given.  The perfect answer I’m referring to comes from the one at whom the question is directed in our current context, Jesus of Nazareth.  And in fact it comes in the form of not one, but two answers.  Jesus weaves together two passages from the Torah, Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, to offer this divine synopsis of the Law:

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  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.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  - Mark 12:29-31   

The piling up of “heart, soul, mind, and strength” shows that we are to love God with our entire being.  While it’s not mentioned here, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus answers the follow-up question of “who is my neighbor?” by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, thus offering an illustration of the unbounded love that Jesus longs to see manifested in his creation. 

If you want to know what kind of impact Jesus’ teaching had on his first followers, consider the prominence of Jesus’ love commands in the church’s earliest teachings, given by the apostles themselves.  In his letter to the Romans Paul would write: 

“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” – Romans 13:8-10

To the Galatians he would state the same truth more succinctly:

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”   – Galatians 5:14

And this teaching wasn’t limited to the letters of Paul, as we see it propagated by James as well in his epistle:

“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” – James 2:8

I can’t help but wonder if Jesus’ teachings about loving God and our neighbor still resonate the same way in the contemporary church?  It’s easy to love God, or so we think, because God is the one who redeemed us for all eternity.  But do we realize that if we implement our Lord’s instructions, that eternity can begin now?  I fear that the church has fallen asleep at the switch,  in many ways failing to realize that Jesus’ salvation is not just a future event, but that it can touch our lives even now if we care to listen to the words he speaks to us concerning how we ought to love others.  Did that scribe realize that he was receiving commentary from the very one who wrote the Law?  Probably not, but that didn’t stop him from seeing the wisdom and value of Jesus’ answer.  Considering that we know far more about Jesus than that scribe did, shouldn’t we value Jesus’ insight all the more?