Reboot

‘…stand up and raise your heads.’ (Luke 21:28)

                                                   The fig tree is budding

Luke 21:25-36 (Year C: The First Sunday of Advent, 2^nd December, 2018)

None of us knows what lies ahead. But of three things we can be certain:

• Ageing
• Illness
• Death

The questions of when and how are beyond our knowing. The question of why must be approached through a humble mind and open heart. The question of what might lie beyond the horizons of this small world and life is for God alone to show us in his time and in his way.

During this Advent season the Church invites us to watch and pray. The lines of Luke read as follows:

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap

This is hardly compatible with the ‘festive’ season of frenetic shopping, partying and Ho Ho!  But, the truth is that much of this Northern Hemisphere mid-winter Ho Ho is about sub-consciously putting away some of our all-year winter demons. What are they? They concern our worries – our very real worries about:

• Getting old (eventually)
• Facing ill-health of mind or body now or in the future
• Having lost or possibly losing income or employment in the future (it happens to people who retire for example)
• Relationships past or present where wounds may run deep
• Facing some external dangers to body, mind or person (not untypical for many millions of people across the globe).

And, the list is not exhaustive ....

We find distraction in sundry indulgences from substance attachment to constant affirmation-seeking on social media to projects that demand our all and we wonder why we are still missing something. But, in the midst of all this clamour and un-ease (or should we say dis-ease?) we are reminded of what Jesus said according to verse 28 of Luke:

stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

When faced with uncertainty and, perhaps, a load of concerns and worries, we do well to:

• Stay calmly grounded in the here and now
• Remain steadfast in love because this is the only thing that matters
• Keep moving forward towards some goal or destination no matter how dim it seems.

Staying calm meanings trusting that God has a plan for this world and our lives in it just as He did for the Prophet Jeremiah 6 centuries before the birth of Christ.

Remaining steadfast means living our lives to the full in the here and now that we may ‘increase and abound in love for one another’ (1 Thessalonians 3:12). The best way to prepare for death is to live life to the full now and to live it well so that we leave a good memory and example and find our well-being in this thought.

As Chiara Lubich of the Focolare movement once said:

Precisely because we do not know the day nor the hour of His coming, we can concentrate more easily on living one day at a time, on the troubles of today, on what Providence offers to us now.  Some time ago I spontaneously uttered this prayer to God.  - Jesus, make me always speak as if it were the last word I say. Make me always act as if it were the last action I take. Make me always suffer as if it were the last suffering I had to offer you. Make me always pray as if it were the last opportunity I have here on earth to converse with you

580 words (above)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

This is the first Sunday in the new liturgical or Church calendar year. On this blog page I follow the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) used in the Church of Ireland as well as in many other Christian churches. The cycle of readings may be found here.  Typically, the Gospel reading is the same, each Sunday, whether you are using the RCL or the cycle used in the Roman Catholic Church. The first and second reading (Old and New Testament, respectively) sometimes vary as does the appointed Psalm of the day. To complicate (or enrich?) matters, the Church of Ireland offers a cycle of reading according to ‘continuous’ or ‘paired’ cycle. I prefer to follow the latter, on this site, as it pairs thematically the first reading (from the Old Testament) and the Gospel. In addition, I follow the ‘principal service’ of the day rather than the ‘second service’ (the latter being typically used for an evening service).

This Sunday’s reading is from Luke 21:25-36.  Throughout this coming year (from December 2018 to 30^th November 2019), the Gospel reading is usually from the Gospel of Saint Luke. As many readers of this blog are from the Roman Catholic tradition, I signal any differences in readings that may occur between Cycles.  On this Sunday, the choice of other readings is not the same as between the RCL and that used in the Roman Catholic Church.  The RCL readings in addition to the Gospel are: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25(24):1-9; and 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13.  Directly parallel Gospel readings to this particular Gospel reading from Luke may be found in Matthew 24:43-44 and in Matthew 6:25-34.

In the liturgical cycle of the Roman Catholic Church, for this coming Sunday, the choice of readings is as follows: Jeremiah 33:14-16 and 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 plus two additional verses in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-2. The Gospel is from Luke 21:25-28,34-36.

12:25-28:  The coming of the Son of Man

‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

There are strong echoes, here, of the prophecies of Isaiah (13:10), Joel (2:30-31), Daniel (12:1)and Ezechiel (32:7-8).  Could some of this be a warning about impending environmental disaster for humanity in the 21^st Century?!

The context in which Luke writes for his community in the 80’s is fraught. Disaster, war, insurrection, destruction and the gathering of an intense persecution of the disciples of Jesus is underway. It has salience then as it does now for us as a community and, also, as individuals faced with ageing, death and resurrection. In the here and now we must be of good courage and ‘stand up and raise’ our heads because our ‘redemption is drawing near’. This passage which follows a somewhat apocalyptic series of warnings and predictions leads us into the next and final phase of Jesus’s earthly ministry in the days or weeks before his passion. The early disciples wait and watch for ‘signs’ of God’s coming reign. It is a time of terror and it is a time of great hope and expectation. As often is the case in the drama of human and personal history: it is the worst of times and it is the best of times.

Our ‘redemption’ (apolytrōsis) is near at hand. This ‘redemption’ literally means a ‘buying back’ and is rooted in Old Testament ideas. It can also be found in many of the letters of St Paul. However, only in the gospels does the word appear here in Luke.

12:29-33    The Lesson of the Fig Tree

Then he told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Luke inserts this parable to reinforce the narrative. Jesus points – as he typically does – to growth and ‘signs’ in nature about the listeners. The fig tree in Palestine is as dead a looking plant as you can get. Yet, it bursts into life in the spring. Very likely, the saying of Jesus coincides with spring time before the Passover.

The saying ‘my words will not pass away’ gives us comfort and reassurance today just as it did nearly 2,000 years ago. It says to us that Jesus is every bit as alive and relevant today as then and the final victory is God’s even if we might be tempted to think that nearly everything is lost in this corrupt society in which we live.

12:34-36          Exhortation to Watch

‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

Timely for this time of year, we are reminded to be Mind-full, Prayer-full and Ready.  Only trusting and praying can open us to a gift of serenity and calm in the face of whatever confronts us in life and in the world.

The Lord loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from And what can we do right now in this time of darkness as the fig trees are withered? We may take courage from the words of the Psalmist (97:10-12):

The Lord loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked. Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!

And this too shall pass

“…Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mark 13:2))

Mark 13:1-8 (Year B: The 2nd Sunday before Advent or the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 18^th November, 2018)

Many of us love our churches: I mean the buildings. They remind us of other times, perhaps, or of other people including those gone before us. I like to muse a while the odd occasion when I visit the church where my parents attended mass daily or weekly in the final quarter of their lives. I know many people, across all Christian traditions, who like a particular pew or seat in a regular place at a regular time with a regular service. Then, there is the beauty of the Cathedral or the hillside chapel with fond memories. These places (and times) can still the soul and provide just a little bit of space to be still and to know that we are loved. I call these secret places of the soul.

But, all of this will pass. We are strangers and pilgrims in a temporary abode waiting and working for a kingdom that cannot be seen but is more real and infinitely more powerful than the kingdoms of this world. Next Sunday we will celebrate the ‘Kingship of Christ’ and after that a new ‘church year’ begins on the first Sunday of Advent (yes, Christmas is coming!). Liturgically, we living in ‘end times’, so to speak, and those who live in the northern hemisphere look around and we observe decay in the gardens and woods around us. Winter is now truly arrived. And this too will pass.

The prophet, Daniel, in the first reading writes:

At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.

This time of anguish referred to by Daniel mirrors what has happened or is about to happen when Mark wrote his gospel for the second generation of Christ-followers who faced a dark world ruled by evil spirits. Some readers old enough to remember will recall a special prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel which was incorporated immediately after the saying of the ‘Low Mass’ from 1886 to 1964 (in the latter year I made my first Holy Communion although I don’t think I was paying too much attention to liturgical details of the Usus Antiquior at the time!). Interestingly, this prayer has enjoyed a little revival only very recently when, one, Pope Francis (against whom no accusation of being a recalcitrant sponsor of a Tridentine revival can be levelled) urged Roman Catholics to pray this short prayer at this difficult, divisive and crisis-laid time.

All Christians may return to the sources of scripture including today’s readings from Daniel and Mark to deepen our sense of urgency in the struggle to witness to a communion of love. Rather than shunning the world and seeing everything and everyone as our enemy we should look up to God and outwards to a world in urgent need of healing. Then, we might be better placed to return inwards to those secret places in our soul where the Holy Spirit is gently at work whispering peace, healing and renewal in our tired spiritual bones. A simple prayer of trusting and loving is more powerful than a million tweets or thousand likes or a frenzy of off-line and on-line activity.

And these times of darkness, schism, repression, marginalisation and spiritual poverty will pass too so that “with the morn those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since, and lost awhile” (from ‘Lead Kindly Light’ by Blessed John H. Newman whose feast day is the 9^th October in the Roman Catholic Church and the 11^th August in the Church of England and don’t ask me why!).

Its winter but we are a people of hope because we may ‘hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful’ (Hebrews 10:23).  In these dark times for our country and our continent we may strive to be among those who ‘shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever’ (Daniel 12:3). What else can we do?

Word count (above) = 683

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In addition to this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, which is common to most Christian churches, the other readings from scripture found in the ‘paired’ Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) of the Church of Ireland for this Sunday are: Daniel 12:1-3;  Psalm 16(15); and  Hebrews 10:11-25.  Directly parallel Gospel readings to this particular Gospel reading from Mark may be found in Matthew 24:1-8 and in Luke 21:5-11.

In the liturgical cycle of the Roman Catholic Church, for this coming Sunday, the choice of readings is the same as above except for the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 13:24-32 (The coming of the Son of Man and the Lesson of the Fig Tree. See previous blog “Not Knowing”).

Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse (Gospel of Mark 13:1-8)

Preliminaries

Mark is setting the scene for a difficult discourse imminent in Chapter 13. The chapter opens up with a question from the disciples. We are in the company of the disciples, here, and not ‘the crowds’.

1-2:  A question and an answer

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’  Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’

Today, we see that Jesus’ prediction came through about the mighty Temple only fully restored, ironically, by the Romans and then to be destroyed, again, by fire. Quite likely, the gospel of Mark that we have received was first written immediately before the destruction of the Temple in around 70 A.D.

3-4:  Still more questions

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ 

The closest of Jesus’ disciples want to know. When will this happen and how will we know when it is about to happen. They are less focussed on the here and now but on what will happen about which they know little or nothing.

5-8:  A time of great tribulation

Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

In times of darkness there is a temptation to lurch from one extreme to another as we grasp to what we think is certain and unmovable. God, alone, does not change. Everything else does.  We must be on guard for many will come with false promises and the seduction of certainty and promise only to mislead and disappoint. By their fruit you will know them.

Restoring dignity

“…she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:44)

Mark 12:38-44 (Year B: The Third Sunday before Advent or the 32^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 11^th November, 2018)

The insecurity of the rich

This story from the gospel of Mark contrasts two sets of persons – those who were poor and regarded as less worthy of social distinction and respect and those who were at the top of society by virtue of family, religion or wealth.  It is important to read this passage in its historical context. The poor were, frequently, blamed for their plight. Riches were seen in many quarters as a blessing and a reward from God.  The result was that those in positions of authority associated with religion or politics were accorded dignity and security. They were secure in their religious and secular knowledge as well as financial security. They could afford to be demonstrably ‘generous’ when it came to public manifestations of giving. They were also seen as persons of honour to be greeted in reverential terms wherever they went and given special places (‘the best seats’) at banquets, religious services and other occasions. As for the poor, they had the benevolence of the better off to rely on especially if they had little or no means of a livelihood such as might have been the case for the blind, the lame, the lepers, widows and orphans.

The ‘best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets’ (verse 39) would have been, according to scripture scholars, the bench in front of the ark containing the sacred volumes where those seated faced the congregation. How sweet!

The story today?

Does any of this sound remotely possible or familiar to a 21^st century community never mind a church community?  Have positions and practices of grandeur ever been created in the way business is done in universities, grammy awards, ordinations or State Banquets? Indeed, this Sunday marks the inauguration of a new President of Ireland. It also marks the centenary of the end of World War I.

We ought not to be too hard on others because one way or another we are party to a bit of show and pomp and that on the pretext that ‘it’s the done thing’ and ‘there is no harm in it’.  That may be so but when it comes to real poverty we need to watch our ways of behaving.

What has poverty to do with me or you, it may be asked? Isn’t poverty largely abolished in Western European societies? And isn’t much poverty caused by political corruption, environmental factors directly beyond our control and isn’t it the result of wars and famines that are man-made?

It is noteworthy how attitudes regarding poverty have come almost full circle in the last 100 years. 

There was a time – in the 19^th century – when famines, mass emigration and workhouses were a feature of many European countries including Ireland.  It was seen as somehow natural and tragic and the remedy was identified in terms of ‘charity’ or ‘correction’.  Advances in industry, medicine, education, democracy and the rise of various political movements changed all that (sometimes with the active support and engagement of Christians but very often not). In the process of change, the role of the State came to the fore to such an extent that the rich paid a very large proportion of their income by way of taxes to fund social programmes and payments. The calamity of the great depression in the 1930s reinforced the role of public authorities in providing a safety net for those who were out of work, sick, retired or unable to work for one reason or another. There was, also, the rise of the universal welfare state that provided public goods such as education up to and including higher level, national health and various other social supports. All of this began to change radically in the decades following the 1970s.

What has all of this to do with this Sunday’s gospel reading and why should Christians or other believers bother with the worlds of poverty, environmental change and political instability?  The answer is that God is alive today not only (or if only) in our churches and sanctuaries and choirs and on altars and in tabernacles but in the shanty towns of Sao Paolo, the open seas of the Mediterranean and the streets of Dublin where many people sleep rough this wintry November. The story of arrogance, presumption and public display on show in the Temple, as recounted by Mark in the first half of this Sunday’s gospel reading, is being retold, today, in many parts of the world.

While it is true that millions have been lifted out of poverty in absolute material terms compared to what prevailed in the 19^th century, it is clear that millions are still stuck in poverty particularly in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa.  The extent of inequality by, all statistical measures, has soared in countries such as the USA.  Europe may be following in that direction in the longer-term given recent trends since the 1980s. Poverty is associated with material deprivation and lack of access to fundamental goods and services compatible with human dignity and rights.  Two ‘I’s’ characterise real poverty: Indignity and insecurity

The irony of the scene described by Mark, here, is that those considered secure and with dignity were anything but. Their need to impress others and to command respect and deference showed how insecure they were in themselves. And there is no dignity in behaving this way in the sight of God and people. Here is the paradox: by elevating themselves they revealed their deep insecurities and inconsistencies. In a similar passage in Matthew 12:1-12 Jesus concludes that ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’ However, this week’s passage in Mark is not, primarily about poverty and riches but about how those who may be rich or poor or neither can be generous with their money, their time and their talents. Alongside this message, there is a coherent message that those who use power and wealth to exclude or put down others will answer for this. The conclusion that can be drawn is that generosity extends beyond offering a helping hand or some money from time to time to those in material need. Generosity invites us to consider what sort of society we are creating or helping to sustain. How is this reflected in the way we consume, invest, work, play, travel, vote?  - even pray for those for whom prayer is as precious as oxygen! 

The 'All'

“…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5))

Mark 12:28-34 (Year B: The Fourth Sunday before Advent or the 31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 4^th November, 2018)

In addition to this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading which is common to most Christian churches, the other readings from scripture found in the ‘paired’ Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) of the Church of Ireland for this Sunday are: Deuteronomy 6:1-9;  Psalm 119(118):1-8; and  Hebrews 9:11-14.  Directly parallel Gospel readings to this particular Gospel reading from Mark may be found in Matthew 22:34-46 and in Luke 10:25-28.

In the liturgical cycle of the Roman Catholic Church, for this coming Sunday, the choice of readings is the same as above except for the following: Psalm where 18(17) is used instead of 119 and the Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews is 7:23-28.

The next time you read the Bible cover to cover you might like to use a yellow marker and mark over the word ‘all’ (assuming you are reading the Bible in English). You will run out of yellow marker! You will be surprised at how often this word ‘All’ crops up from start to finish:

• In all wisdom
• With all your heart
• All the people of Israel
• That all may be one
• Christ in all
• Etc. etc.

John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement which sprung up from within Anglicanism, spoke of four important ‘Alls’:

1. All people need to be saved.

2. All people can be saved.

3. All people can know they are saved.

4. All people can be saved to the uttermost

When all is said and done, the ultimate goal of history, and of our own personal lives and of our communities is straightforward: it is simply that God may be all in all.

But how?

The response by Jesus to a question from a scribe (a type of 1^st century Jewish theologian whose role was to interpret and to teach) shows all that we need to know and do in order to be all (whole or holy):

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (verse 29)

Oddly enough, we sometimes don’t stop and ponder what the meaning of the phrase ‘all your mind’ actually means. It doesn’t mean suspending our God-given human reason to question and deepen our understanding and commitment.  To ‘heart’, ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ could be added ‘body’.  (Mark and Luke refer, in addition, to ‘all your strength’).  In short, we are called to love with all our being – every bit of it.

But to love God – who is all – with all our being means something very concrete, here and now. It means the following:

Love your neighbour as yourself. (verse 31)

In other words, we can only know if our love for God is sincere and meaningful if it is expressed in love for this neighbour in this moment, in this place and in these circumstances. To love is to act based on a desire for what is truly good for our neighbour and for ourselves. We realise our own good through loving.  It could actually lead to such heroic deeds as giving up our seat on a bus to someone in particular need (provided that we, ourselves, are not pregnant or infirm!). Then it might involve staying faithful to a commitment or an appointment when this dearly costs.  It might even lead ultimately to the giving of our life;  not such a rare thing in some parts of the world for people of faith.

In responding to the questioner, Jesus brings together two foundational commandments from the Old Testament:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength’ (Deuteronomy 6:5)

‘…love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18)

The emphasis on loving the other to be found in the sacred scriptures was on ‘loving one’s own’ or more than that, loving the sojourner in our midest (e.g. in Exodus 23:9).  On occasions, one or other of the prophets gave clear indications that God’s saving power was for everyone in the world and not exclusively for his own chosen people. 

So, there is nothing new at one level – Jesus is merely quoting Jewish scripture.  At another level, something new is happening. He is bringing two commandments together and directly linking them by means of a ‘new commandment’ which combines both. In many other places Jesus goes beyond loving the stranger who stays with us but he reaches out to many who are outside our place and tribe such as happened when he met the Samaritan woman.  It is the hallmark of real Christianity which would follow much later as the Jesus movement within Judaism evolved into a gathering (ekklesia) of disciples a growing number of whom would be gentiles.

The symbol, power and truth of the Cross is at the centre of Christian loving as revealed in Jesus Christ.  The cross has two beams:

• a horizontal one that indicates love for one another (the two thieves on each side of Jesus, for example, as well as the onlooking crowd including immediate family).
• a vertical one that indicates God’s love for us and our love for God.

Now the vertical beam cannot stand without the horizontal one and the horizontal one cannot hold without the support of the vertical one. So it is with one and the same love that has been given to us. In offering himself (Hebrews 9:1—14), Jesus is taking the place of the High Priest in the Jewish cult. In his own blood he has shown us a way forward – a deliverance from the bondage of ‘dead works’ as the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it.

God is loved in and through our neighbour. But, we love our neighbour for himself or herself and not as an instrument to satisfy our own spiritual needs or impulses. That is the way God wants it. After all God who is in all, loves all wants us to love all with our all.

And that’s not all:

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:40)

In one swoop Jesus reduces the 613 commandments of the ‘Old Law’ into two commandments not so much by abolishing them all or at once but in rooting then in the essential. His listeners were left speechless.

How we could simplify our lives and our laws and our canon laws and our rules of community if we took to hear the simple truth that underlying ‘all the law’ and the scriptures is the commandment to love God with our all and to do so sincerely by loving the person next to me now.

Very simple. Too simple in fact.

Love is the one thing you cannot overdo. If we risk everything for love we can liberate ourselves from false and dead religion and be conquered by that Love which has loved us from all eternity in the first place.

And that’s all for now!

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

A ‘scribe’ (it is a ‘pharisee’ in Matthew and a ‘lawyer’ in Luke) questions Jesus about The Law.  It is not, as it appears in Matthew and Luke, a hostile line of questioning. The scribe, like us, is struggling to work things out. He knows only too well the controversies of interpretation of the sacred writings in the Jewish world of his time. As Mark tells this story, it follows on from a controversy involving the ‘conservative’ priestly elite known as the Sadducees who had rejected any notion of an after-life or a resurrection (it could be claimed that they were closer to Richard Dawkins than the Pharisees!) and the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection as well as the ‘oral’ Torah (what went beyond the literal words of that part of scripture accepted by the Sadducees. Jesus sided more with the Pharisees.

A type of socratice dialogue opens up in the passage that follows the Sadducee-Pharisee controversy.  Jesus draws on a key passage from scripture – the basis of the daily Shema recited by devout Jews then as well as today (Deuteronomy 6:4-9):

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Jesus, however, goes further and draws on Leviticus 19:18:

you shall love your neighbour as yourself

And, here is the key point – he brought both together as distinct but mutually reinforcing and necessary sides of the same coin.  In one way, Jesus was not saying or doing anything new. It was all there in the sacred scriptures when God spoke to his chosen people. In another way it was all new because Jesus was restating an Old Commandment and making this very emphatically and very centrally the basis of all other commandments. It was a matter of radically simplified moral theology!  It might have seemed that these two commandments entailed loving God first and then our neighbour as an afterthought. Not so. It means loving God with all our being and loving our neighbour as ourselves at one and the same time.  Loving God comes first in terms of the order of commandments but loving our neighbour comes first in terms of action because it is in loving our neighbour that we know for sure that we are loving God. God is in our neighbour – poor, excluded, lonely, oppressed and hungry as well as in the next person beside you at this moment on a bus, at a counter, in a queue, online ….

10:28   A Question for Jesus

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 

This scribe was looking to go deeper. He wanted to know how to get to heaven. But, Jesus will reveal to him in verse 34 that he was already very near the Kingdom of God.

10:29-30          The first and greatest commandment

Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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.” 

We may note the repetition of ‘all’. We may, also, note the entirety of being. Loving God is more than saying a prayer, giving intellectual assent or performing particular works.  All of that may be good and helpful: even essential for our journey. What is essential to our lives as followers of Jesus is love – love of God with every fibre of our being not because we chose to so much as we became aware in our lives of God’s love already present in our lives simply because God is Love and Love is.

10:31   The second and great commandment

The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

From hundreds of rules and from thousands of norms that may go with ‘religious’ living there is one Rule that governs our actions and on which all other rules and norms may be based. We may tick all the boxes and put on an impressive liturgy, sermon or piece of theological discourse. But, if we are not living out of the love of God we are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (plates of metal used as a musical instrument) (1 Corinthians 13:1).

10:32-33          The scribe gets it

Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”;  and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ 

The scribe calls it out just as Jesus says it but, more than that, he makes the message his own. We, too, must make the words of Jesus our own by internalising them, living them and applying them afresh day by day. The Scribe adds a significant detail: Love is more important than ritual sacrifices. Now, that was as radical departure. This may happen when we listen deeply with others in the living current of Christian tradition.

10:34               Here is the Kingdom of God very near

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.