3 November 2024 Pentecost 24
Ruth 1.1-18; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9.11-15; Mark 12.13-17, 28-34
The two great commandments. We know them well. We hear them every Sunday in our Liturgy. Most of us could probably recite them ‘off pat’ if we were asked to, without even thinking about them. But is it enough to ‘know’ them, or is there more to the equation.
This gospel passage opens with Jesus answering a question about taxes, and, although we have not heard them he was asked more questions about other things before the Scribe asked the question about the commandments. Although the earlier questions were designed to ‘trap him’ I am not sure this one was. I think this one was from someone who heard good answers and genuinely wanted more. Because, after Jesus’ answers, the scribe not only agrees with what Jesus has said, he adds to it with explanatory notes about loving God and neighbour being more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices. In other words, love is more important than piety, ritual, tradition or penance. And it is this insight that prompts Jesus to tell him he is ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. And because of Jesus’ answer, the rest of the crowd fell silent. Were they intimidated by Jesus answers, and maybe even the Scribes answer, or were the answers were so deep, so informed and so ‘meaty’, that silence was the only appropriate response.
I would like us to think about the word at the centre of Jesus’ reply. Love. Love God. Love neighbour as yourself. So is Jesus talking about emotional love. Love, that is a feeling. Or is there something deeper in this word, something that we often do not give much thought to. Jesus tells us we are to love with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. In other words, with head, heart, and hands. Loving is a saintly activity. When we choose to love our neighbour it sets us apart from those who only know how to love themselves. Some people know what sainthood looks like, not because they or we are better or holier than thou, but because they/we have been called to see outside of ourselves for the sake of the world, as God does.
Poet Mary Oliver, when speaking about loving neighbour as yourself, says “Christianity is profoundly counterintuitive – ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ – which [when] properly understood means your neighbour is as worthy of love as you are, not that you’re actually going to be capable of this sort of superhuman feat. But you’re supposed to run against the grain. It’s supposed to be difficult. It’s supposed to be a challenge.”
Jesus’ response to the Scribe brought the crowd to silence. And I am wondering - when was the last time I felt moved to silence by a call to love. When was the last time that the challenge and beauty of the commandment to love God caused me to stop, to change course, or to reorder my life. And the answer would have to be a long time, because my ‘default’ thinking about love is in affective terms. I think about it as being a ‘feeling’. My default position is that love, loving God, means having an attraction or affinity, that it means being called to a deep emotion.
And while there is an emotional element to love, love is an action not a feeling. It is something I do not something I feel. Sometimes we focus so hard on the emotive or affective aspect of love that we forget its robustness, its discomfort. We assume that loving God and our neighbour means having ‘friendly sentiments’ toward God, or ‘exchanging pleasantries’ with the people around us. We forget that in the scriptures, the call to love is a call to vulnerability, sacrifice and suffering. It is a call to bear our cross and lay down our lives. Biblical love is not an emotion that is felt, it is a path that is travelled. And as children of God, we are called to walk in love. It is more like an aerobic activity than a Hallmark sentiment.
At varying levels our problem is that we are very good at quoting this commandment, but not very good at actually doing it. And I think it is ironic that, this time, we might actually wish we were more like the Scribe, and considering the gospel tone toward Scribes in general, that is very rare. But this passage invites us to get outside of ourselves so that we can sense what it feels like, what it means, and actually love our neighbour as ourselves.