“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…You shall love your neighbour as yourself…There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12: 28-34
In the late 18th Century, the English poet William Blake wrote what might be considered a nutshell summary of today’s gospel-reading: “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see; I sought my God, but my God eluded me; I sought my neighbour, and I found all three.”
With William Blake’s words in mind, we can launch into an exploration of what might have moved Jesus to state that the commandment to love God with all of one’s being is inseparably linked to the commandment to love one’s neighbour. In today’s gospel-reading from Mark, we hear tell of an apparently friendly conversation between Jesus and a scribe. Jesus had so many confrontations with Pharisees and scribes trying to catch him out, that we can all too easily conclude that they were all tarred with the same brush. Perhaps the scribe who approached Jesus with his question about the greatest commandment already knew the answer to what he was asking and was only looking to Jesus for confirmation. Jesus responded by linking together two commandments from the Torah which every practicing Jew would have known without even thinking that they were really inextricably linked. The first of those commandments, known as the Shema, was written on every devout Jew’s heart, repeated in prayer twice every day and displayed on the doorpost of every Jewish household. It is to be found in Deuteronomy (6: 4-9) as it was taught to the people by Moses following a directive from God. The second: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” is from Leviticus (19: 18). These two directives joined together by Jesus in answer to the friendly scribe’s question are neither metaphors nor recommendations. They are commandments! They are integral to authentically faithful Christian living.
What’s more, there are repeated references to them in the New Testament. Luke, for example, records a conversation between Jesus and a lawyer which parallels today’s gospel-reading from Mark. In response to the lawyer’s question: “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10: 29), Jesus responded with the parable of The Good Samaritan, making the point that we are to love even those who have been regarded as hostile and/or repulsive. Jesus presented the Samaritan as a model to be imitated, as one who had learned to be merciful to a Jew in need. Moreover, the writer of John’s First Letter boldly states: “Anyone who says: ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, is a liar, since anyone who does not love the brother whom he can see, cannot love God, whom he has never seen” (1 John 4: 20)
There is a pressing challenge here for every single one of us and for all the parish communities and Church organisations to which we belong. Who exactly are our neighbours? Are they only the people with whom we have cultivated friendships, only those with whom we regularly socialise? What efforts do we make to engage with the residents who live in houses in the vicinity of our parish churches? Do we ever go out of our way to engage with struggling women and men who find shelter at night on the fringes and in the doorways of our parish churches and halls, or in nearby shop-fronts?
We can easily become spectators, looking at those around us who are struggling, destitute and overlooked rather than being participants in their helplessness, misery and loneliness. We can become numbed to their need. We regret their misfortune but, somehow, distance ourselves from it. We have an expression for situations that we find repulsive – “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole or a barge pole.” One parish wag remarked: “Our Church needs a set of 11-foot poles to help us deal with all those neighbours we wouldn’t touch with 10-foot poles!”
Jesus’ response to the scribe in today’s gospel-reading highlights the importance of neighbours in the development, growth and personal formation of everyone of us. We are who we are because we have been shaped by other people – parents, mentors, friends, colleagues, neighbours, teachers, sports coaches, writers, wisdom figures and strangers we have not even met. They have all been created in the image of God and God’s Spirit is alive, at least in some small way, in everyone of them. Were it not for them, we would have no relationship with our God. Jesuit Priest, Michael Buckley contributed in 2016 to the Christian Century magazine an article entitled: “What Mary Saw at Cana: The indispensability of others”. Not only does this article highlight Mary’s sensitivity to the embarrassment of those who had invited her and Jesus to their wedding, but the vital significance of Jesus’ response to his mother’s comment that the wine for the guests had run out. “What is this to me and to you?” is a question that implied that we all have a role to play in addressing the concerns that impact on the lives of people who belong to the broad category of neighbours. Their concerns all too often are part and parcel of the social-justice agenda of our world and our Christian community. Mary’s comment: “They have no wine” was not a request, but it evoked from Jesus a question that raised the need for all his followers to respond with empathy and practical action to all who find themselves in need of support and help. The Gospel that Jesus proclaimed had at its foundation that we are all created equal, with a right to self-determination and a share in the goodness of creation, enabling us all to live with dignity and be respected by all around us.
As Christians, we have, first of all, to notice situations that arise in our local communities and in our wider world that evoke from us the observation “They have no wine”. To live the Gospel demands us to move from the position of spectator to activist. I conclude with one illustration from Michael Buckley: “Women demeaned and threatened by violence and their disproportionate level of financial insecurity, patronised and discriminated against at the highest level of decision-making even within the Church, and by their level of poverty…’They have no wine!’”
