What is the Greatest Commandment? 10-31-2021(Mark 12.28-34)

On this day in 1517 Martin Luther walked up to the church in central Wittenberg and nailed a notice to the door. The notice was an invitation to debate what Luther had attached to the notice. These were 95 theses, or propositions, that he decided that needed to be addressed in the church. This was not a bold move that we are used to thinking of when we think of Luther. It was the equivalent of putting an announcement on the church bulletin board or putting it in the church bulletin. It was a call to debate an issue that had been troubling Luther for a while and he wanted to discuss it with others. What occurred was like a “bomb hitting the playground of theologians” to quote Karl Barth. What it began was not only a debate, but what we know as the Reformation.

Luther would have been surprised by today’s church and the number of denominations and splits that occur over the debate of what he intended on that day he nailed those theses to the door. He wanted to reform the church, not break off from it. He wanted to curb excesses within the church, not cause an excess of churches. And yet here we are today with a church on almost every corner that expound the same ideas in slightly different ways. What we don’t see is love for each other. All too often our divisions are exacerbated by our desire to prove that we are right and that the other person is wrong. We are still debating the theses that Luther proposed. But in the debates that we have we are found to be arguing over dried ink on a page and not whether the ones we are arguing with are made in the image of God.

As we remember the Reformation on this day, let us step back and take a look at those whom we are to call brothers and sisters and whom we are called to love. Let us stop and study the text for today and find what God and Jesus call us to do with one another.

Jesus is now in Jerusalem. He rode in with crowds cheering and welcoming him. He has visited the temple and cleansed it. And now he is meeting with those in power in the religious world. In doing so, he has clashes that are found in chapters 11 and 12 that must be touched on first to fully understand today’s text. First, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders question Jesus’ authority (11:27–33). In response, Jesus speaks in parables (12:1–12). Next the Pharisees and some Herodians try to trap Jesus with a question concerning human allegiance (12:13–15a). Jesus counters with a question and a command (12:15b–17). Finally some Sadducees, whose hermeneutical bias is no mystery to Mark, put forth a hypothetical situation concerning the resurrection (12:18–27). Jesus uses the flawed exegesis to expose their ignorance of the scriptures and of God’s power.[1] Then comes today’s text.

We don’t know much about the man asking the question, just that he is a scribe. A man who knew his Torah and who knew the rest of the scriptures of the Hebrew canon. And he comes to Jesus with a question. Unlike all the others this man is coming with a genuine purpose, not to question authority or to trap or to get into the weeds about the resurrection. No, he wants to know what Jesus believes. And so, he asks, “Which commandment is the first of all?[2]” He wants to know what is the greatest of the 613 commandments that are in the Torah. Jesus answers with what is known as the Shema from Deuteronomy 6: 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.[3] This would have sufficed for an answer but Jesus continues. He goes on to say, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”[4] Jesus gives a two for one answer. The second comes from Leviticus 19.8 and would have applied to those who were of the least of these in the Jewish world, the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the homeless, the beggar. These would have been regularly known to the scribe and he knows it. In fact, he would know that the second command was important because there were rabbis before Jesus who gave the same command. Rabbi Hillel, who lived in the first centuries BCE and CE, was challenged by a Gentile once: “Make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the whole law while I stand on one foot,” Hillel replied, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor: this is the whole law, the rest is commentary; go and learn”[5] There was another as well, “Rabbi Akiba similarly summed up the law: “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself … This is the encompassing principle of the law”[6]

Now these rabbis were not saying that all the other laws were not important and neither was Jesus. What they were saying was that the love of others as oneself was the important part of the law. If one loved God, then one was called upon to love one’s neighbor. Jesus even took this a step further in the telling of the parable that we know as the Good Samaritan. Here the neighbor is one who would have been despised by the Jews.

The scribe is impressed. Jesus answered the question well and so he answers that the love of God and neighbor is to be preferred over all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. Again, this is not to say that God does not want those but that God prefers one to love God and each other more than going through the motions of religion.

When Jesus hears this, he tells the scribe that he is not far from the kingdom of God. We don’t know what happens to the scribe after this. Did he follow Jesus? Did he go back to doing what he had been doing, debating the law with those around him? Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that after this no one dared to question Jesus anymore. This is an interesting word. It can be translated as “not have the courage to or be brave enough” to question Jesus anymore. Jesus showed that he was the master of the Torah and that what he answered had no rebuttal.

So, what is the first or greatest commandment? It should be obvious that the commandment is to love. Jesus gives two commandments that have the imperative word shall. When the word shall appears, whether in the text here or in the Book of Order, one is supposed to do that. So, let’s take a look at the commands to love.

Karl Barth has this to say about the command to love: “The Christian life begins with love. It also ends with love, so far as it has an end as human life in time. There is nothing that we can or must be or do as a Christian, or to become a Christian, prior to love.[7]” and “Love is the essence of Christian living. It is also its conditio sine qua non* (necessary condition), in every conceivable connexion. Wherever the Christian life in commission or omission is good before God, the good thing about it is love.[8]” “Love is the essence of Christian living”. We are to love God and our neighbors and that is what it all boils down to in our Christian lives.

Loving God calls for us to be all in. We are to love with heart, soul, and might (or strength). Mark adds mind to the mix as well. Our whole being is to be caught up in love for God. Our heart and soul, seats of emotional and spiritual aspects of our lives are called to be in love with God. We are to love with all our physical being as well, all our might, all our physical power is to go into loving God. As I said before, Mark throws in another dimension of how we are to love God. We are to love God with our minds. Our intellect should love God as well. Therefore, we should never denigrate someone who is educated and in the church. They love God as much with their minds as those who love God heart and soul. In fact, no one should look down on anyone else because all the parts are called to joined in the love for God.

The second aspect of love is love for neighbor. In the Jewish world this was a call to love those who were the least of these among the community. These would include the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the beggar and so many others who were downtrodden and on the edges of society. But Jesus brings in another dimension in the Gospel of Luke. We are to love those whom we would treat as less than because they are not of our “clan”. This would include those who believe differently than we do, those who are of a different race, those who are of a different religion, and the list goes on. We are called to love all of these, Jesus says, because they are our neighbors as well as those who are in our clan.

There is a story told of an old rabbi who was teaching two of his brightest students. The students asked him, “How do we know that the night is over and that the dawn is coming?” The rabbi replied, “What do you think?” The first student said, “When it is light enough to tell the difference between a dog and a sheep?” The old rabbi shook his head and said, “No.” The second student said, “When you can distinguish between a grapevine and a sycamore tree?” The old man shook his head again. Finally, after they petitioned him again and again, he said, “Here is how you tell when the night is over and the dawn is coming: It is when you can look into the face of a stranger and see a member of your own family. At that moment, it is the dawn that is coming.”[9]

Finally, we are to love ourselves. There is a lot about loving ourselves. This is not a self-love that puts all of our wants and desires before everyone else, a love that is selfish and tainted. It is also not a love that puts one at odds with oneself. It is, instead, a love that is healthy, that sees one as made in the image of God and is worth something in this world. And we are called to love others in the same way that we love ourselves. Lamar Williamson Jr. has this to say about this kind of love: “As” is commonly misread to mean “as much as” instead of “in the same way that” …So also we are to love our neighbor in the way that we love ourselves; that is, we are to be tolerant of, have time for, be interested in, make excuses for, deeply desire the welfare of our neighbor in the same way that we have these attitudes toward ourselves.”[10]

Luther began a reformation that is still ongoing today. As reformed people we say that we are reformed, always being reformed. But there is one way that we stay the same: We are to love God with all our heart, soul, body and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. To paraphrase Jesus there are no greater commandments than these. 1 John 4.8 tells us that “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love”[11] So, why do we hesitate? This Reformation Sunday let us reform ourselves and follow these commandments. Let us love and be loved as God loves. Amen.

[1]Jarvis, Cynthia. Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, Season After Pentecost 2. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2009. 444 electronic edition. [2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [3] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [4] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [5]Wessel, Walter W., and Mark L. Strauss. “Mark.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew–Mark (Revised Edition). Ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Vol. 9. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. 906. Print. [6]Wessel, Walter W., and Mark L. Strauss. “Mark.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew–Mark (Revised Edition). Ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Vol. 9. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. 906. Print. [7]Barth, Karl, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance. Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2. Vol. 1. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004. Print. [8]Barth, Karl, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance. Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2. Vol. 1. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004. Print. [9]Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby & Carolyn J. Sharp. Connections: Year B, Volume 3 (Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship) (p. 454). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition. [10]Williamson, Lamar Jr. Mark. Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville. 2009. 228. [11] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.