“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Since Jesus was a rabbi asking him about the most important commandment in the law was equivalent to asking him to give a summary of his entire message. What was the one unifying theme that could connect a variety of apparently disparate teachings? In some way, the answer Jesus gave was not surprising. He did refer to technical details or obscure rituals. The commandment that God had given first among the ten given to Moses was, in the eyes of Jesus, also the greatest.
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Had Jesus stopped there everyone could have walked away comfortable and content. Of course he cited the Shema, a prayer so important it was worn in the phylacteries of Jewish attire. No surprise there. Everyone understood the central importance of loving God first. But not everyone had a clear sense of how that connected to other commandments, or to the practical concerns of daily life. The Pharisees often seemed to set love of God against other commandments and even to use it as an excuse to pursue what were actually their own ambitions and priorities. When it was inconvenient to love their neighbor they often claimed that it was out of love for God that they could not do so. But Jesus continued his answer to the Pharisees by claiming that it was actually impossible to divide love of God and love of neighbor in this way.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In what way was this second commandment like the first? They were both commandments about love, but was there more? It was also like the first because humanity was created in the image and likeness of God. Much more than our relationship to anything else in creation, our love of neighbor cannot help but reflect on our love of the God who created this neighbor as his own image. How could one claim to love God and yet bear hatred or even indifference toward those whom God loved into being? To claim to love God but not to love what God loved was not really love of God but love of some idol manufactured by one's own imagination. At the same time, it was not truly possible to love a neighbor as he was meant to be loved without reference to God. We can imagine that such an attempt might heap upon him power, prestige, and wealth. But what good would it do when such riches inevitably failed? What love was sufficient, not for this life only, but for the life to come? Only a love of neighbor directed toward God himself as the final end would suffice.
God's plan to be together with his people forever, to live in a relationship of love, he and them, they and one another, was the thread on which hung all of the law and the prophets. Even eternity without God would not be enough to satisfy the longing of the human heart. But with him? With him there would be no end or limit to the joy in store for us.
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
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