One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
"Which is the first of all the commandments?"
This scribe seemed to have better motives than the Pharisees and the Sadducees whom we recently saw attempting to entrap Jesus in his speech. Instead, this man appeared to have a genuine curiosity about Jesus and his teaching and asked him through this question for a summary of what he was all about. Yet although he did not appear to be hostile and although the initial answer of Jesus was not altogether surprising it still seemed like he got a response that was much more challenging than he expected.
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 scribe might well have expected to hear the great Shema prayer of Israel as the response of Jesus. Such a response in itself was in keeping with the tradition and history of the people of Israel who had been taught to value this commandment above all.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In giving a second when the scribe only asked for the first Jesus immediately changed the game. The scribe thought he was asking a question about the proper hierarchy of commandments, such that one could, if necessary, choose one over and against another. Taken to extremes this resulted in the false piety of the Pharisees who, for instance complained when healings were performed on the Sabbath. Such individuals could imagine that so much of their heart, soul, mind and strength, was directed to God that there was no room for neighbor.
There is no other commandment greater than these.
Jesus revealed instead that there could be no conflict between love of God and the love of those whom God had created. Truly loving God with the entirety of one's being meant also being utterly committed to one's neighbors. Setting the commandments against each other was a demonstration that one was not fully given over to God, but was creating opposition between commandments in order to create a space of freedom to be selfish, and to render God as more of an abstraction than one who truly made demands upon his followers.
If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? (see First John 4:20).
When we approach our Christian life we try to resolve the question of what our priorities should be by dividing various goods and weighting their values. This is such a very human way to think about things that it can be hard to imagine any other way could be possible. And, as a crutch, it isn't all bad to have such a hierarchy. The real problem is when we use it to justify our the minimalism of our own commitment of discipleship. Jesus wants to help us to see the apparently conflicting demands of discipleship in a new light wherein God and neighbor are not at odds, but a unified whole. We will experience this when our love of God feels the need to overflow into love for those around us and when our love of neighbor feels incomplete when it is without reference to God.
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.
The answer of Jesus was so impressive as to silence the crowds. No one dared to ask him any more questions because his answer to this last answer had left no wiggle room for ego or selfishness, and showed that truly loving God wholeheartedly wasn't something commonplace and already practiced by many, but rather another level and an open invitation. Hence Jesus said, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God". But what of us, who are, by grace, members of that Kingdom? How divided are our hearts? How many different directions apart from God is love leaking out of us? Jesus desires to unify us, not only with one another, but within our own hearts as well, making us to love as he loves. It is this sort of love that is worth more than sacrifices, that gives value to any offerings that are given. It is this love for God and neighbor that was preeminently on display when Jesus embraced the cross. And it is this path we are called to follow.
Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine
not because of lust,
but for a noble purpose.
Call down your mercy on me and on her,
and allow us to live together to a happy old age.
We can see in Tobiah and Sarah a relationship where love of God and love of one another was not in conflict. They loved one another all the more because God held the first place in each of their hearts. And this can be true not only of marriages as was the case with them, but with all human relationships. When we embrace the call of Jesus to love with all of our hearts we will find ourselves healed and protected by angels and safe from the powers of hell.
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