Thursday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 8, 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?”  The scribes were literate men who were trained in the Law.  They tended to be Pharisees or to think in line with them.  They seem to be everywhere in the Gospels and they fulfilled an important function in society, both writing contracts and witnessing them as well as arbitrating minor disputes, and writing out wills.  In a town or city where few others could read or write, anything that needed to be set down was done by them.  The Lord had little use for them and at times rebuked them sharply, as in Matthew 23, 13: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for you yourselves do not enter in and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter.”  In the same scene Jesus calls them “blind guides” (Matthew 23, 24).  He calls them to account because they set themselves up as authorities though they possess no authority.  They were not ordained, appointed, or commissioned by the Jewish priesthood or by the Romans.  They therefore act in their own interests, ostensibly following the Law but only according to their faulty and baseless interpretation of it.  

One of these scribes asks the Lord, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”  Now, while the other Pharisees would have asked this question as a prelude to attacking the Lord, this Pharisee seems genuinely curious about what the Lord thinks.  The Lord answers him by quoting the Shema Israel (Hear, O Israel).  This comes from Deuteronomy 6, 4-5.  So important were these words, a virtual profession of faith, that Moses declared, “And these words which I command you this day, shall be in your heart: And you shall tell them to your children, and you shall meditate upon them sitting in your house, and walking on your journey, sleeping and rising. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontless before your eyes. And you shall write them in the entry, and on the doors of your house” (Deuteronomy 6, 6-9).  

It might seem the obvious answer to the question posed by the scribe, but when we consider what the Gospels tell us about them as well as the Pharisees and the high priests, they do not come across as particularly religious people.  In fact, their primary occupation seems to be to maintain the status quo, if only so that they may continue to enjoy their wealth.  Jesus, in answering as he does, pulls apart the curtains of the worldly concerns of the scribes and the others and reveals to this scribe his true purpose and the meaning of true religion.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Here Jesus quotes from Leviticus 19, 18.  This admonition comes at the end of the verse that reads, “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people.”  In the reading of the Law, which extends through most of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, a scribe might easily overlook it.  It is seemingly a tag on the end of a long section of the moral code.  The Shema sticks out because of how it is framed, but the law about the love of neighbor is as though hidden.  For Jesus to pick it out as a needle in a haystack, proves to anyone within hearing that this unlettered carpenter from backwoods Nazareth knew his Law.  

The scribe was deeply impressed.  “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.”  Either this scribe has been thinking deeply about the law of the love of neighbor as the second commandment and Jesus confirms this, or it comes as a revelation to the scribe, to whom it makes the greatest sense.  He even goes so far as to reply that obeying this law is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices”, that is, worth more in the eyes of God.  This statement, denigrating the worth of the Temple sacrifices, surely put the scribe outside the camp of his fellow scribes, for whom the sacrifices were the most important part of the Law.  He makes his statement without apology, though, and does not try to take it back.  Thus the Lord looks at him and declares to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”  In fact, the scribe was within a few feet of the only-begotten Son of God.  The Lord meant that the scribe was in a position to receive the grace that would bring him to faith in him.  We can hope that this came to pass after the Resurrection.