This gospel passage we are reading today is actually astonishing.
It does not unfold as we might have thought. I doubt that even Jesus could have foreseen the direction his conversation with the scribe would go. For a start, the scribe is a lawyer, an expert in the Jewish Law. From the outset of his ministry, Jesus has been plagued by endless questions about the Jewish Law, and his interpretation of it. These questions come from the various religious and spiritual leaders of Israel, all with university degrees in the Jewish Scriptures, who try to catch Jesus out by showing up his own lack of knowledge of the Law. Jesus, after all, has not been to university or rabbinic school as they have, so he cannot possibly know as much as they. Wrong, so, so wrong. One by one, Jesus turns the tables on them, and shows that he is smarter, more knowledgeable , wiser and shrewder than all of them put together Should we pay taxes to Caesar, can a man divorce his wife for any cause whatsoever, if a woman marries each of seven brothers, whose wife will she be in heaven, and, today’s gospel, which is the greatest and first commandment? Jesus shows he has the answer, and more, to each of the challenges they put to him.
But, in today’s gospel, something incredible is happening.
For here comes a lawyer, who actually is not trying to catch Jesus out. He genuinely wants to know the answer: “Which commandment is the first of all?” That is not as easy a question to answer as we might think. We think there are only ten commandments. In fact there were no less than 613 different commandments in the Jewish Law by Jesus’ time, many of them the result of added interpretation by various rabbis and scholars of the Law throughout the centuries, since God wrote down the original ten on tablets of stone for Moses to give the people. As someone who studied law in university myself, I can readily understand how something which was easy to understand when it was written down, now under the burden of case law over the years, becomes something very complex and burdensome, hence the reason why there are so many lawyers around these days. The lawyer is genuinely looking to Jesus to cut through all the layers of case law and recover the original intention of God in giving the Law to Moses, returning it to its primary clarity and purpose.
And Jesus responds by quoting the age-old Jewish command “Hear, O Israel, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all you might”. But then he surprises the scribe, and, indeed, all his listeners, by quoting another commandment, which was hidden away in the whole Jewish Law: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”, tucked away in Leviticus 19:18. The scribe, recovering from his surprise, now affirms Jesus by saying “You 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.”
So this is something surprising.
Not only is the scribe agreeing with Jesus, but he is also affirming that the entire sacrificial system of the Jewish Law is not as important as the inward attitude of the person who is offering up the sacrifice. To make this relevant to our day, I have to say, brothers and sisters, that, as you come to Mass, in which you will offer up the eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross, none of that matters at all, unless you have a heart of love for the Lord and for his people. If you are here, going through the motions, bored with what you are participating in, and just waiting for when you can leave, your entire presence here is worthless. Worthless. You may as well not bother being here. Shock, horror! Surely, coming to Mass is the most important thing you can do as a Catholic? Wrong! Unless you are here, with full heart and soul and might, your presence here is worthless. Unless you are here because you love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, then your presence has no value. Read again the story in our gospel. Jesus is affirming the scribe because he has moved beyond legalism and going through the motions, and placing ultimate importance in the attitude of the heart.
We are told that the scribe, in our gospel, “answered wisely”, in other words, according to the wisdom and will of God. When Jesus says to him “You are not far from the kingdom of God”, he is telling him that the next step towards salvation is to become a disciple of Jesus. There comes a moment, brothers and sisters, in our spiritual journey, when we stop pretending to be a disciple of Jesus because we simply go to Mass, and decide that we really believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that he has the key to our salvation, and we decide to make the commitment to give our whole lives, heart, soul and spirit, to Jesus. Jesus is not simply seeking people who declare themselves to be Christians, simply because they go through the motions of prayer, attending the sacraments, especially the Mass and confession, but he is seeking those who declare themselves to be his disciples, who will live their lives out of pure love for him and for his people. How do we respond to this challenge, brothers and sisters? Why are we here, at Mass? Why do we say we believe that Jesus is the Son of God , and what does that mean for the way in which we live our lives? Is the Lord really and truly, in the words of our responsorial psalm today, “my rock, my shield, my source of salvation, my stronghold, the God of my salvation?”