The essence of the spiritual life is a commitment to love neighbor and God, extending our devotion and commitment beyond ourselves.
To Love the One We Love the Least
The scribe asked a single question: Which is the first commandment? The number one spiritual obligation? Jesus gave two answers: Love God. Love people.
Mark says Jesus’ response shut down the interrogation. Nobody dared ask him any more questions. Who can blame them? Jesus gave an irrefutable answer. What is the summary of our religion? What comes first?
Jesus says, “Love ... God.” Love the Lord with everything you are and all that you have. And without so much as taking a breath, he tags on a second commandment, from Leviticus 19, “You shall love the neighbor as you love yourself.”1 It is a stunning answer that cannot be refuted.
Those who teach the faith often sub-divide the Ten Commandments this way. The first four commandments are about loving God: no other gods, no attempts to capture God in an image, no misuse of God’s name and remember your creation and redemption by saving a complete day for God every week. Love God!
The remaining six commandments are about loving the neighbor. Honor your parents, for they are your closest neighbors. Don’t take your neighbor’s life, don’t take your neighbor’s spouse and don’t take your neighbor’s stuff. Don’t lie or distort the truth about your neighbor. Don’t covet anything your neighbor possesses.
There it is. Love God, love your neighbor. If we keep these, our lives will be greater than trying to earn our way into God’s good graces by lighting a candle, sacrificing a sheep, sending up some incense, writing a check or sitting in a long meeting (I’m paraphrasing here). God looks upon the heart, the soul, the mind, the strength. What God is looking for is any evidence of love, extended simultaneously in two directions: love returned to God, who is the source of love, the essence of love; and love extended to the neighbor.
The scribe who intended to interrogate Jesus said, “You are right, Teacher.” And then Jesus said something a bit quizzical, “You’re not far from the kingdom of God.”
Was Jesus smirking when he said, “You’re not far”? How far is not far? Would the scribe be a little bit closer if he had not tried to pile on with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians and all the other opponents who pounced on Jesus during that final week in Jerusalem? Would he have been closer to the kingdom if he weren’t a scribe?
After all, immediately following this account, Jesus poked fun at the scribes and the flattened way they interpreted the scriptures. Mark says the crowd loved it. Then he warned about scribes who prance around in long robes, claim good seats at banquets and then fleece the widow’s estates.2 As they practiced faith, there was not much love of neighbor, and more love for themselves than for God.
Exploring the consistency
The lesson is: It is possible to quote the Bible, then get it wrong. You can agree, “Love God, love neighbor,” and never actually love anybody. You can be a professional religious dignitary who understands that love draws us closer to God and God’s rule over our lives. Yet in your life, something else takes precedence.
The Gospel of Mark highlights the inconsistency. Flip a couple pages forward, and we see the scribes in the inner sanctum of religious professionals when Jesus is arrested and condemned.3 The scribes stand in the mob that hands over Jesus to Pontius Pilate. The scribes stand among those who mock the Christ when he is on the cross.4 It is one thing to know God teaches us to love; it’s another thing to love.
The distance between is “not far.”
To focus on the question for us: Whom do you love — and whom do you find difficult to love? Loving God may sound difficult because nobody can see God. Through the ages, some people have heard God speak. They have written down in the Bible what they have heard. If they keep the commandment, they will love the Lord. Showing up regularly in the places where God continues to speak demonstrates love for the Lord.
Picture a lady who sits on the floor and tells Bible stories to children. They call her “Miss Emma.” She can comprehend what God is all about. See an acorn, she says, “God is making another tree.” If you were feeling down, she would slide over by you, put her arm around you, and say, “God is with us.” In church, if she knew the hymn, she would lose herself in singing. She emptied her whole soul to the God she could not see.
Can we think of any better way to the God who stays out of sight? We can give ourselves to God and God’s purposes. If we can do this, we are close to the kingdom.
Perhaps it would be easier to love one another since we can see one another. Right? Here are our neighbors, in front of us, all around us, available for us to love. That’s easy, right? No! People have opinions, differences and warts. They say things that disturb us. They don’t value the things that we treasure.
If we think for a minute that it is easier to love the God we cannot see than to love the person we can see, we have the reformer Dorothy Day who held both together. She said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”5
To love the one we love the least
One of the clearest recent examples of loving one’s neighbor emerged after the horrific shooting of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh a few years ago. The gunman had been wounded in the gun fight after the massacre. When they brought him into the Allegheny General Hospital, he was still yelling anti-Semitic curses. Then a man in a white coat approached him and said, “I am Dr. Jeffrey Cohen. I’m here to take care of you.” He was president of the hospital.
As Dr. Cohen later explained, “We are here to take care of people who need our help.” It was a radical demonstration of humanity, far more powerful than caring for one’s own.
A person of insatiable curiosity, the doctor took a special interest in the shooter, a 46-year-old high school dropout who had few friends. The physician perceived someone incapable of generating his own hate but capable of absorbing it from others. Without dismissing what the gunman did, Dr. Cohen said, “He is just a guy. He’s not the face of evil.” He believed the gunman was alone, hearing noise in his own head that would not stop.
An FBI agent watched how Dr. Cohen greeted the shooter, sat down next to him, talked to him and tried to understand him, and then how he handed him off to the medical team to dress the man’s wounds. The agent said, “I don’t think I could have done what you just did.” Dr. Cohen nodded in understanding; and he did it anyway.6
Where did Dr. Cohen learn this? At the Tree of Life synagogue, where he is a member. He lives across the street from the sanctuary, in the same neighborhood where Mister Rogers once lived. When he heard the gunfire from his house, he left immediately for the hospital, knowing someone would need help.
You shall love God with heart, soul, mind — and surgery. You shall love the neighbor, made in God’s image. If we do not love — as Cohen loves, as Christ loves — we remain captives to the power of death.
The essential lesson for life in God’s dominion
This is a lesson that needs to be taught. There is so much noise in the air. People are demanding to be heard above everybody else. There are so many voices that are arrogant, boastful and rude, insisting on their own way or rejoicing in wrongdoing. The choice we face is love or death — love as exemplified in Jesus.
It is so important that we gather in worship to have the scriptures opened. Here is where we are taught to love God and love one another. Love is more than a concept or an idea. It is a live-giving, life-saving practice. If we do not give ourselves to someone or something greater than ourselves, life grows cold, love grows stingy. We fall into isolation, never taste joy and drift without purpose. A life without love is cut off from the gifts that God provides for our well-being.
The great teachers say it with simplicity. One might say it this way, “True spirituality is always directed toward somebody else.” The choices are simple. We can direct our love toward God or offer it toward our neighbor, but the spiritual life is always expressed in acts of love.
So, listen again, O Israel and O Christians, to the central invitation of the faith we share. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater teaching than this.
Do you love? If so, you are not far from the kingdom. In fact, you are very close.
1 Leviticus 19:18.
2 Mark 12:38-40.
3 Mark 15:1.
4 Mark 15:31.
5 Dorothy Day, quoted in https://catholicworker.org/driven-by-love-html/.
6 Eli Rosenberg, “I’m Doctor Cohen,” The Washington Post, October 30, 2018, https://wapo.st/2EU31zP.
***
Comments