Year B

Mark 12:28-34

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

 The Measure of a Saint

Today is the Day we remember and give thanks for the Saint’s. All Saints Day is always on November 1, but we celebrate it on the nearest Sunday to the first. This is the day in which we remember and honor the saints, those faithful disciples whose lives and examples are still with us, who inspire and challenge us to be the saints of God. But the saints were not super Christians with halos. They were ordinary people just like you and me. What made them saints was that they heard and lived the heart of the Law. They loved God above all else, and their neighbor as themselves. They lived out the greatest commandment to love. This most intimate and warm, creative and committed of human acts is what God wants from us. This is what God desires of us and all the readings today focus on this single measure, to know the law and live by it.

The OT people of God had a convenient method for measuring things. They used a cubit, which is generally thought to have been the distance from the elbow to the tip of one’s middle finger. This was not a precise or universal unit of measurement, but it was handy, for you always had it with you. In a sense, the OT law offered a similar convenient method for measuring things called the “Shema.” The Shema is central to the faith of Judaism, a part of every synagogue service, and recited daily by every observant Jew, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This summary of devotion and duty to God or the chief commandment is the greatest of which all the rest follow.   

Most of the book of Deuteronomy is a speech in which Moses reminds the people of the events that took place at Mt. Sinai with the receiving of the Law, the commandments from God, and calls the people to observe the Law and to teach the summary of duty to God, the Shema, the Creed of Judaism or confession of faith, from one generation to another. To remain in good standing with God one must live in accord with God’s will, as it is revealed in the Commandments. The commandments are to be internalized so that they shape the will-the heart- and form a whole way of life. This includes as Jesus tells us today loving one’s neighbor as oneself.  

There is an old rabbinic that legend tells of a Gentile who approached Rabbi Hillel the elder and asked him, “Rabbi, teach me the whole Torah or the Law while I stand on one foot.” The Rabbi’s famous reply was, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Law; the rest is commentary. Go and learn”, he says. Jesus, when asked by the scribe the question today in the gospel “Which commandment is the first of all?” quotes the Shema as the first and great commandment found in Deuteronomy, to love God with the whole self, he then combines it with verse 18 in chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love of neighbor then is on an equal basis with love of God.

To love your neighbor is to love God! To love yourself is to love God! To love your neighbor as we love our self is a high bar, and not something that comes naturally to us. Our natural human reflex is to love the people who love us. It does not come naturally to love the people who neglect or disappoint or criticize or oppose. Yet, we are not called to love them as they love us, but to love them as we love ourselves. After all, it is very loving of us to be equally concerned about someone else’s needs, feelings, and preferences as we are concerned about our own needs, feelings and preferences. As measurements go, this sort of love requires more than just a cubit it requires work and help, for we can’t do this in our own strength. I fail to love my neighbor this way and have to ask for forgiveness and help.

In the power of God we can. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given us. Jesus himself demonstrated whole-hearted love for God and for neighbor on the cross itself. The shape of the cross visually summarizes for us the two great commandments. The vertical beam is the primary one, anchoring the cross in the earth so that it can stand. It reaches upward to direct our love to God. The horizontal beam is placed on the vertical beam, which gives it support. Stretching horizontally, it directs our love to those around us, the neighbor.

The one God is of course primary and therefore we shall love God with our entire being; but the love of neighbor is an appropriate expression of that love for God. Unless you love God with such complete passion, you can never really love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God always means loving God in all ways and we are all a work in progress like all the saints were, including I’m the scribe today. The answer Jesus gives the scribe to which commandment is first of all is profound, and the scribe is impressed and agrees with Jesus’ answer. He understands that love of neighbor must be combined with true worship of God and Jesus tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God.

Not because he was climbing a ladder of spiritual achievement, but because the scribe had grasped the truth at the heart of Jesus’ ministry: Jesus had come to offer, to accomplish, what burnt offerings and sacrifices in the temple could not. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin. All they could do was point us to what was accomplished through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Christ as our high priest offers his own life to purify us and prepare us for true worship. The critics of Jesus that day are silenced and he has now committed his course to the cross. No one is going to take Jesus on again in Mark’s gospel, until he is arrested and brought before the religious leaders.

In a few short verses, Jesus will show the scribe and all of us the cost of fully loving God and our neighbor. For the scribe, for the disciples and for all those around him, the story of love is not complete until they see the cross of Jesus and the power of God. The good news today is that any step we take toward Jesus puts us closer to the kingdom of God that Jesus represents in his human form. If love of God and neighbor is “much more important than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” then we are to follow Jesus in the way he went? The way of perfect obedience, to love God, and how much shall we love God? With all that we are and with everything we’ve got and all the rest will follow. This is what we are to strive for as saints and how we are to measure our lives every day.