So Far but So Close

Mark 12:28-34

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?’ 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.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ 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 neighbor as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ 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.

This is a passage that needs a little context, I think, to really understand its significance. For the past few weeks, we haven’t skipped over a whole lot; we went through almost all of Mark chapter 10, one passage immediately following the prior. But last week, we ended at the end of Mark chapter 10, and this week, we skip ahead to the end of chapter 12. So what did we miss? Kind of a lot! We missed quite a bit of drama, actually! This pretty low-key, kind of nice scenario and conversation that’s laid out here, is really not indicative of everything that led up to it. Jesus has been in Jerusalem for a bit, and most of this time in the city has been spent debating and defending himself against attacks, challenges, deflecting, and shooting down accusations by high priests and scribes—by the religious authorities. We skipped over the infamous table flipping in the temple, after Jesus witnesses such blatant defrauding, oppression and hypocrisy. So that’s what make it all the more remarkable, that after all this, after the constant attacks, after the constant needling and interrogations, Jesus, in this instance, is able to focus on and emphasize love as the ultimate commandment; and not just love—but love of our neighbors, love of our fellow humans—the very same humans who have challenging him and antagonizing him nonstop. Church, I don’t imagine I would have much compassion left in me if I were constantly being degraded and insulted. But I am certainly not Jesus.

And this passage is very unique in Mark, for multiple reasons. Firstly, unlike some of the other gospels, love is not really an overarching or even a recurring theme in Mark. This is kind of the first time it’s really emphasized. And to add to this, this interaction with the scribe is the only moment in all of Mark in which Jesus actually has a positive interaction and a civil theological discussion with a religious authority. I know if I were in Jesus’ place, and after confrontation after confrontation, if I saw another scribe approaching me to ask a question—I’d be running for the hills. But Jesus not only entertains this scribe—they have a fruitful conversation in which they find that they actually agree with one another. And the scribe appears to come to him in a good faith, genuinely curious about Jesus’ thoughts and opinions.

It makes me so curious about this unnamed scribe. Because we can presume that he was at least aware of the many confrontations and debates that engaged Jesus, and very likely physically present for at least a couple of them. It makes me wonder if maybe this scribe is a little different than the rest—if this scribe is maybe a little more open-minded than his peers and colleagues. He approaches Jesus and it’s written that he saw “that he [had] answered them well.” It seems that this scribe was really listening to Jesus, wasn’t just waiting to jump on a mistake, or entering into an argument with him just to try to prove him wrong or make him look bad. It seems that this scribe has a sense of how Jesus will answer him, and he has a hunch he may even find some common ground with him. So he makes his way into the disputes and asks Jesus a simple question: “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answers of course, that loving God is the first, but he adds that loving one’s neighbor as yourself is right up there, on the same level with loving God. In many ways this was probably pretty radical for the time—and to temper the radicalness, Jesus begins his answer by attempting to please the scribe by directly quoting from both Deuteronomy and Leviticus, showing he is a scholar of the law. The scribe is indeed pleased. He not only says he agrees with Jesus, but includes the fact that loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself is much more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices—this is pretty huge, because burnt offerings and sacrifices were how much of the religious establishment made their living, so this scribe was definitely going against the grain here, and going against his own self-interest.

Now, not that I want to take any credit away from Jesus here, but I do want to look into a little more of the history behind Jesus combining loving God and loving your neighbor as the ultimate commandment. While it may have been a radical thing to say for some of these more rigid of the scribes and priests, it wasn’t completely out of nowhere. The Jewish sage Hillel, whose lifetime overlapped, if my math around ancient years is correct, I believe with Jesus’ said something similar. There’s a famous story from the Talmud, in which a Gentile wanting to convert to Judaism is going around asking any teacher he can to teach him the entire Torah while the would-be convert stands on one foot. Understandably he is scoffed at and sent away again and again. But when the student makes his way to Hillel, Hillel agrees to his strange request. Hillel says to the student, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is an explanation of this—go and study it!”[i] End of lesson. Torah taught. Mission accomplished.

What is so interesting and striking about both of these instances is that both Hillel and Jesus, while obviously being scholars of Jewish law and theology, are each able to understand and teach that interpretation and understanding the broad, and most important aspects is crucial; what is not often crucial is just recitation and memorizing, and holding onto hard and fast rules of the Torah, or the Bible. Because this variation of the Golden Rule that Hillel states—this is not in the Torah. It’s an interpretation of what the Torah, as a whole, represents; and Jesus saying love your neighbor as yourself: this is not a commandment. It’s Jesus’ interpretation, Jesus’ knowledge of what it means to truly love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And so if we truly love God as we claim, we must also love our neighbor as ourselves. I believe going through life with attitudes like this—being more open-minded, more open to interpretation, less rigid, less strict—allows for so much more kindness. I think it allows for so much more understanding and love.

And that’s such a problem in today’s world, isn’t it? Very few people are greeting one another with open-mindedness or understanding. It seems like the prevalent way of being in today’s world is one much more like that of the religious authorities in this story—when we’re met with people we disagree with, or whom we think we’ll disagree with, we go into the situation assuming the worst and looking for a fight. We’re ready to prove the other wrong, ready to shoot them down, ready to feel superior, rather than working to find some common ground. The internet has exacerbated this like nothing else—now people can argue and insult one another, try to make others feel small, under the disguise of anonymity, in order to feel holier-than-thou—when we’re in front of a computer screen, we don’t see the people we disagree with, or even those we agree with—as human. They’re just pictures and letters. And to add to this, now people can “do their own research” exclaim with misguided authority that they’re right and that there’s nothing anyone can do to tell them otherwise.

And with the holidays coming up, I know there are many people, who, yet again, are dreading facing family members with opposing views, bracing themselves for a tense dinner or an out-of-control argument. It’s all so discouraging and anxiety-inducing. And this is nothing new, it’s been going on for years now. So how do we enter into these situations with an open mind? How do we avoid assuming the worst of people and instead go into situations feeling able to have a fruitful or productive discussion? I saw a TED talk recently about this very thing, and the main point I took away from it, was this idea that we have separate our deeply-held ideas from our identities.[ii] Because if we align ourselves so much with our ideas that they become part of us, that they become, our whole identity, when anyone disagrees with us, or has a slightly different idea, it’s like it becomes a personal attack. And living that way, feeling attacked all the time—it’s just not sustainable.

 It makes me think the scribe who went up to Jesus was indeed different than his colleagues and peers in this way—that he didn’t see what Jesus was saying as an attack. Whereas the other religious authorities were deeply threatened by Jesus—they believed that Jesus coming to their city with his new and sometimes radical ideas was a direct and personal attack against them. They believed that he was coming to burn it all down—and maybe he was in a small sense—he wanted to rid the temples of corruption and oppression, which was rampant at the time—but he was really just spreading some new beliefs or equality and love, which still very much aligned with the teachings of the Torah; but the religious establishment had since corrupted much of the Torah proclaimed. I think the scribe in this story recognized what Jesus was doing. He could look beyond his own place in life; his identity; his sense of self wasn’t so fundamentally tied to his vocation as a scribe. He wasn’t threatened by Jesus because he had been really and truly listening to what Jesus was saying, and realized that they had quite a bit in common, and so he engaged with Jesus knowing that they would have a lovely and productive theological conversation. He didn’t go into this conversation on the defensive—in fact, since he again, had seen that Jesus had been answering them well, I wonder if he was almost going in to defend Jesus. He saw yet another attack by the establishment that he was a part of, and he was just sick of it. So he went into the middle of the dispute, and asked Jesus a very specific question, knowing that the answer Jesus would give was one that no one could disagree with without looking like a hypocritical jerk. And it worked—“After that, no one dared to ask him any question.”

Now, I think it’s a given that Jesus would be able to calmly engage with these constant bad-faith challenges. This is one of those instances in which I’m reminded of a quote from the late Rev. Peter Gomes—he was speaking during the peak of the What Would Jesus Do? craze and, and he essentially said, Jesus was perfect, it’s not fair to ourselves or others to try to always do exactly what Jesus would do. So instead, ask “what would Jesus have us do?” And I think the scribe’s actions in this passage are a perfect example of the way Jesus would want us to act in our everyday lives: to meet people we may not fully agree with in good faith; to engage with our neighbor with kindness and an open mind; to really listen to one another and find places where our values overlap.

Now all that being said, I do want to say this all with one unfortunate caveat: we do live in very divisive times, and some people’s differing opinions and ideas can indeed lead to harm or imply that some of us don’t deserve comfort or safety. So use your judgement, go with your gut when engaging and interacting with people. Because there’s another key part of this passage I haven’t talked about yet: the idea that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. I read this, especially in these days in which healthcare workers and teachers are just so burnt out, are just so stretched so thin, are already so vulnerable: we can’t love or care for others if we don’t love or care for ourselves as well. We can’t believe others are worthy of comfort and safety if we don’t believe we’re worthy of comfort and safety. So don’t enter into a situation where you’re so uncomfortable that you’re genuinely worried about your own well-being and safety, please.

But I have to believe, in order to have hope in humanity, that more people than we realize are willing to listen and talk and put down their defenses for a few minutes. And I’m not sure how we get more of these kinds of interactions in our lives with the anonymity and misinformation of the internet being in our way. But we can start small. We can work to go through life by being more open-minded; by really listening; by separating our ideas from our own humanity, from our identities. If we can do this, maybe we indeed won’t be far from the kingdom of God. Maybe we can indeed bring the kingdom of God to this earth. Amen.

[i] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

[ii] https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_dhar_how_to_disagree_productively_and_find_common_ground?referrer=playlist-the_art_of_finding_common_ground&language=en#t-813994