Mark 12:28-34
(Note: The text of the sermon preached at the 10 am Solemn High Mass can be found here.)
In this morning’s Gospel, we have Mark’s version of the Great Commandment. A scribe asks our Lord: “Which Commandment is the first of all?” It was a common question among the rabbis of the time: which one of all the hundreds of commandments stands first in importance as summing up and interpreting the meaning of the rest?
In his response, our Lord gives not one text from the Torah but two. First, he quotes the text from Deuteronomy 6:5 known as the Shema, recited twice daily by pious Jews, “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.” And to this he joins a second text from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
According to some commentators, this answer differed significantly from many other answers given by various priests, scribes, and rabbis of the time. Some argued that keeping the Sabbath was the most important commandment; others that it was circumcision; others that it was the offering of the Temple sacrifices.
Yet at least some teachers gave answers similar to that of Jesus. The great rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived in the first century BC, was once asked to sum up the entire Torah concisely to a gentile who wanted to become a Jew, and he answered: “What is hateful to thee, do not do unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law, the rest is commentary; go and learn.” Likewise, the rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, who lived in the late first and early second centuries, called “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” the most important principle of Judaism.
The great genius of our Lord’s response, however, was to join the two verses together: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God …” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” To my knowledge, none of the other Jewish teachers of the time made this move. And together, these two commandments passed into the Christian tradition as the Summary of the Law, Matthew’s version of which we recite in the Episcopal Church at the beginning of every Rite I Mass.
As any of the kids who’ve been through my Confirmation class can tell you, the Summary of the Law furnishes the two headings under which the Ten Commandments are arranged. Commandments 1 through 4 tell us what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength: You shall have no other Gods before me; you shall not worship idols; you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain; keep holy the Sabbath day.
And Commandments 5 through 10 explain what’s involved in loving your neighbor as yourself: Honor your father and mother; Do not commit murder; Do not commit adultery; Do not steal; Do not bear false witness; Do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.
And of course under the subheadings of each of the Ten Commandments, Christian ethicists have extrapolated many more principles, rules, and precepts of moral behavior. But in the end they all fall under the wide umbrella of our Lord’s Summary of the Law: Love the Lord your God; Love your neighbor as yourself.
A key message for us is that the way of Christian discipleship isn’t ultimately about obeying rules: It is rather about love; or, more precisely, about learning to love the right things; and learning to love them rightly. Love is at the heart of the Gospel. As Saint John says, “God is love.” In his life, death, and resurrection, Christ reveals and manifests the depth of God’s love for us. Through baptism, and participation in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, we are engrafted into Christ’s Body and his life becomes our life; we live in him and he lives in us. And it follows that his life becomes manifest in us precisely insofar as we learn to love as he loves. Indeed, it is Christ alone who has perfectly fulfilled his own commandments: loving God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength; and loving his neighbor as himself. In John’s Gospel, Jesus makes his command explicit: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
And so, when we’re contemplating the ethics of one course of action versus another, a key question is whether the action under consideration adequately expresses our love for God and our love for our neighbor. Or does it place, say, the love of self or of some created commodity in place of both? It’s a fairly simple test; and a question that we can all benefit from asking ourselves periodically.
The Jewish rabbis whose sayings are recorded in the Mishnah and the Talmud agreed that we love God by behaving in such a way that brings honor to God in the sight of all our fellow creatures. And one way in which we express our love for both God and our neighbor is by regular attendance at worship. Even before we kneel down and say our prayers, the very effort of getting up and getting here to Mass is a visible expression of our love for God, a public testimony to God’s place in our lives. Moreover, it is an expression of our love for our neighbor, because believe it or not, when you come to Mass you give encouragement and support to your fellow parishioners, many of whom are glad to see you, and conversely are disappointed when they don’t see you.
The genius of our Lord’s Summary of the Law is the joining together of two commandments that really are inseparable. We cannot love God adequately without loving our neighbor. But neither can we love our neighbor adequately without loving God. Some years ago, a couple told me they were stopping coming to church because they felt that their time and money would be better spent helping those in need, for example, by contributing to the Rhode Island food bank. On reflection, it seems that they got only half of the Summary of the Law, but at least they got it right: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Still, they were missing the first half: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. As Christians, we’re not given the option of picking one or the other. We’re called to do both.
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