Friday in the Third Week of Lent, March 12, 2021

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.

The scribe in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass is not asking his question because he himself does not know the answer.  He is asking in order to start at the very foundation with Jesus in order to understand who he is and what he is teaching.  He does what anyone should do when discussing a matter with someone with a possible different understanding of a subject: he defines his terms.  Here, he does this by asking a fundamental question.  The Lord replies by presenting the commandment in its form at the head of the Torah, the Law.  These are the most important words in Judaism.  They are at once a prayer and a creed.  Answering in this way, Jesus firmly identifies himself as a Jew.  Having established that basis for further dialogue (in the classical sense), he proposes the second law: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Indeed, the Ten Commandments are composed of laws pertaining to the love and honor of God, and the rest to the love and honor of one’s neighbor.  And this is true through the whole Mosaic Law.  The actual words of what the Lord calls “the second commandment” are not found directly after the law of the love of God but much later, in Leviticus 19, 18, and they take the form of a comment on a series of laws regrading the treatment of other people.  That the Lord would choose these words to sum up the laws regarding one’s neighbor and to posit this as the second commandment, complementary to the first, is nothing short of genius, and displays an astounding understanding of the law.  Those witnessing this, other scribes and Pharisees, must have realized that this man had to be something far more than an illiterate carpenter from Nazareth.

For his part, the scribe bestowed a rare compliment on the Lord.  His reply, building on the Lord’s answer, shows him to be a man of rare perception, especially for a Pharisee, which he almost certainly was: “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.”  The scribe goes beyond the Pharisaical notion that nothing came before the worship in the Temple, nothing had greater importance than the correct burnt offerings and sacrifices, as according to the Law.  In doing this, the scribe lands himself squarely into the Law as fulfilled by the Lord Jesus.  Perhaps in his enthusiasm he did not see what he had done, that he had spoken with “understanding”, but the Lord points it out to him: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”  By speaking with the Lord openly and honestly, the scribe had moved from thinking as a Pharisee to thinking as the Lord.  It stunned him to discover this, and it may well have led him to make a serious reexamination of what the Pharisees held.

The Lord’s words to the man, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”, silenced all those around the Lord: “And no one dared to ask him any more questions”, which might more clearly be translated as, “And no one was so bold as to question him further.”  The scribes and Pharisees saw what honesty and openness could do and they dreaded it.  They would rather stick with their interpretation of the Scriptures with its smoky sacrifices than breathe the fresh air of the freedom of the children of God.  This reminds us how necessary it is to know the Gospels as they are so we may have the mind of Christ, that one day we may not hear merely, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”, but “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you” (Matthew 25, 34).