Mark 12:28-34 (NRSV)
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 neighbour 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 neighbour 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.
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"The religious and the secular powers have been shown to be transcended by the new community of the victim called “resurrection.” What then shall be the power of the new community? How shall society be preserved from chaos if not by [burnt offerings] and sacrifices? And what shall be the basis of law (prohibition) in the new community?
"A lawyer who has been impressed by the astuteness of Jesus’ answers asks him for the fundamental principle of the law. Jesus answers with the Shema, which is essentially a prohibition on idolatry. The love of God with all one’s powers leaves no love for other gods. If there is to be a new, community, it must be founded on the renunciation of idolatry, which is the worship of sacrificial violence in the guise of the deified victim. The renunciation of idolatry entails the renunciation of vengeance.
"The demand for the renunciation of vengeance takes the positive form of the command to love the neighbor as the self. The full quotation from Lev 19:18 is, “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” It is clearly a proscription of the fundamental principle of law, vengeance. The web of reciprocity must be broken and replaced by a network of love if there is to be a new community, and for that to happen the idol of the primitive Sacred must be forsworn.
"Jesus rejects the whole panoply of sacred violence in its first principle as idolatry and its social manifestation as vengeance. The lawyer is the one who expresses this fact when he says, “You spoke elegantly and truly, teacher, when you said that Cod is one and there is no other besides him, and that to love him with a whole heart and a whole mind and a whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is more than [burnt offerings] and sacrifices” (12:32-33). Jesus did not speak the words about [burnt offerings] and sacrifices; the lawyer added them, and we can only understand them as a summary of all that has gone before in the section beginning with the incident in the temple and the ensuing questioning of Jesus. The lawyer had been listening to the exchanges and was impressed by Jesus’ answers. He is not far from the kingdom because he understands the import of Jesus’ teaching on the non-sacrificial nature of the new community.
"The antagonists are silenced. “No one dared to question him any more” (12:34). It is now clear that a new society called “resurrection” is at hand, based on true transcendence and mutual love, and not on the law of vengeance and the order of the scapegoat. Jesus represents something more than the order of [burnt offerings] and sacrifices; he represents a new and different possibility of love."
- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp.30-34
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"First let's concentrate on the Shema. The first commandment, curiously, is not 'love'. The first commandment is 'listen'. “Listen O Israel.” It's the collective listening. That is something which Jesus is indicating is the first and major commandment.
"We usually immediately go to the 'you must love God and your neighbour as yourself' bit, but as a good son of Israel, Jesus knows that the first commandment is 'listen'. It's being audibly under the voice of God, stretching your hearing, together with others, constantly trying to listen to the voice of God. That's at the beginning of the first commandment, there's no loving God with out that. The whole point of loving is not... 'okay, you've told me what to do now I must get on and do it, that's our problem'. No, in order to be able to love you have to undergo listening, that's the first commandment.
[...]
"So Jesus is interpreting [the commandments] in that sense: there's no love of God that is not also a love of neighbour. I'd just like to ask us to stop and think about that, because, at least psychologically for me, that's always been a tough one - knowing how. You say you should love God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and the strength - what on earth does that mean? I understand, you know, pushing a trunk uphill with all my heart with all my soul with all my mind and my strength - it's something that I can feel myself doing. I have no idea what it means to love God with all my heart, my soul, my strength, my will, because God is not a trunk or an equivalent thing - God is not a stock exchange or a house or a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
"It doesn't seem obvious how you fulfil the command, and yet the criterion is now given: the criterion is your neighbour as yourself. In other words, it's exercising all the qualities which are referred to God with your neighbour, without rivalry. There is no rivalry between the loving of God and the loving of your neighbour. On the contrary, the loving of your neighbour is the criterion for loving God. That's the absolutely central linking of these two, which is again one of the pillar teachings of Christianity.
[...]
"[T]he scribe was so pleased, because he understood perfectly well that Jesus had answered the question with relation to the one God, and with relation to the cleaving to [God] and how one worships [God] with relation to the neighbour, in such a way as to say, “Yes, I may have threatened, indeed prophesied the collapse of the temple, but I'm not here to set up another temple. What I'm going to be doing is going to be done as a witness to you for how you create [...] neighbourliness, fraternity. [...] That's what I'm going to be doing. In other words, you don't need to be frightened that what I am coming to introduce is another temple, a different sort of burnt offering. It's not a burnt offering at all. I'm going to be giving myself and creating the temple without hands that will in fact enable us all to become neighbours, and all to worship the God who is One.” So this is why the scribe goes away happy.
"“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.” Very interesting. Why didn't they dare? Well, he'd given the three pillar teachings, and in each one he'd shown himself to be absolutely loyal and central to the faith of Israel, absolutely understanding of the central texts of Israel, and absolutely determined to create neighbourliness without rivalry in what he was planning to do. In other words, those who wanted to get rid of him would have to do so by false accusation, they couldn't take anything that he had said.
"And that is the end of their formal attempts to trap him in the first place, but later, as in the case of the scribe, to begin to see that here was something really interesting, and something not to be frightened of. So the scribe was able to go away having been blessed. [...] Non-rivalry between God and neighbour is going to be introduced fully in line with the faith of Israel."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 31 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLT43GG2ZpA)
[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper26b/]
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