Friday in the Third Week of Lent, March 17, 2023

Mark 12, 28-34

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” 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 second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, He is One and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 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.

“Which is the first of all the commandments?”  We might think that the scribe’s question has an obvious answer and so we would wonder why he asked it.  After all, what he expect Jesus to answer?  But the obviousness may point to a drama we would otherwise not see.  It could well be that the scribe believed in Jesus and wanted to show the others the purity of the Lord’s teachings.  Or, he may have wanted to make a point, through the words of this teacher whom the crowds believed in, to the scribes and Pharisees about their own teachings: that they had gotten away from teaching the love of God and neighbor, which should have been the bedrock of their beliefs, and not the precise carrying out of dubious rituals, as though for its own sake.

“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.”. How wonderful and moving it would have been to hear the Lord Jesus, unimaginably in love with the Father, speaking these words!  

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  This might not have been the choice of all the Pharisees.  They might have preferred the commandment about not worshipping false gods, or about keeping the Sabbath holy.  But it makes sense as the second of the two greatest commandments because the God whom we are so to love created the human person in his own image and likeness: the love of self and of neighbor thus is a way of loving God as well.

“Well said, teacher.”  The scribe had expected this answer, and his commendation of the Lord’s answer seems like a challenge to the attitude of the other scribes and Pharisees.  He even goes further, as though adding to the Lord’s answer: “And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  This scribe certainly shows independence of mind and depths of intellect possessed by few of his fellows.  The burnt offerings and sacrifices, so dear to the hearts of the Pharisees, did not forgive sins.  They could not.  They were but signs of The Sacrifice, The Holocaust, that, offered to the Father, would take away the sins of the world. 

The scribe would not then have understood about a Sacrifice that had not yet been offered, but he was on his way to doing so.  For this reason the Lord said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”  This declaration stunned everyone within earshot, and, overwhelmed, “no one dared to ask him any more questions.”  

You and I are even nearer to the Kingdom of God than that scribe, who stood only feet away from the Son of God.  Let us pray that we may entry it.