The Great Commandment: McCall Heckel
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And 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 neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 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, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
- Mark 12:28-34
To start off, I would like to go over the scene in which this passage takes place by taking a minute to describe how I imagine this whole exchange happening. The scribe comes up and realizes that the people around him are arguing. He notices that a man answered those who are arguing well, so he decides to ask the man a question that he has been thinking of, hoping that he can finally get an answer that is better than the many different opinions he has heard regarding the matter. He hopes he won’t stir the pot by asking this question, but he really just wants to know what the man has to say; and the pot has already been stirred anyway, so he might as well take his chances and hope for the best. So, he asks the man, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” His answer was so good that the scribe exclaimed with relief, joy, and gratitude, “You are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 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, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Then, the teacher looked pleased at the scribe’s answer and said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Everyone who witnessed this conversation felt embarrassed and convicted by the conversation that took place, and because of the foolishness they felt after hearing the teacher’s answer, nobody else dared to ask him any more questions.
The feeling of the previously arguing crowd is all too familiar to me. You know the feeling of being in an argument, fighting to be right and knowing surely you are, asking someone nearby who is, in fact, right, and then experiencing a hurtful blow to the pride of both parties involved when something or someone makes you realize how dumb and pointless the whole thing was in the first place? I wonder what the people who heard that conversation felt convicted by the most, and I wonder if they had the same thought that I did, which was that Jesus really roasted them for arguing with one another by the two commandments he said were most important. I think I personally made this connection because I realized that in arguing with one another they had all failed to love their neighbors as themselves and, in doing that, failed to love God with all of their heart, soul, and strength.
Had Jesus named the commandments “do not murder” and “do not commit adultery” as the two most important ones, maybe everyone would not have felt so obviously convicted. It seems to me that the commandment “do not murder” is a lot easier to follow than the two most important commandments that Jesus named, but as soon as I had that thought, a lightbulb moment occurred in my head. I realized that it makes so much sense for Jesus to tell us that loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself need to be the top two commandments we follow because if we are doing those two things, then it would not be possible to break any of the other commandments that follow them. If we love God with all of our being and love our neighbor, then the death that comes with sin would not be a part of our lives.
After my lightbulb moment happened, I also began to think about the fact that loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbors as ourselves are hard to do sometimes. I want to challenge myself and each of you to reflect on these questions often, probably a lot more frequently than you currently do if you are in the same boat as I am:
Do you love God with all that you are and all that you have?
Do you love yourself, and are you letting yourself be loved by God? We cannot truly love ourselves without first loving God.
If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, then how well are you loving your neighbor?
Lastly, after all of these things, I pondered what Jesus said to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of Heaven.” The scribe was excited about loving God and loving his neighbor as himself. If loving God and neighbor is the measure for how close one is to the Kingdom of Heaven, then how far are you from the Kingdom of Heaven?
At the Lord’s Table, we get to come close to the Kingdom of Heaven. Here, we can let ourselves be loved by God as we eat His body, broken for us, and His blood, shed for us. Here, we can ask forgiveness for not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Here, we can sing praises to the Father, loving Him with all that we have and all that we are. In doing these things, we are fulfilling the greatest two commandments together as a part of the Body of Christ. May these actions and a spirit of love, praise, thanksgiving, and forgiveness remain with us throughout our days, so that we may not go far from the Kingdom of God. Amen.*
*Homily given on October 31, 2021, at Wesley’s Sunday Evening Eucharist service
McCall Heckel is a beloved second year intern at the Wesley. She is the proud mother of a Springer Spaniel named Franny, and she is always willing to have a good laugh.