The scribe’s question in our gospel from St. Mark about the greatest commandment was not posed “to test” Jesus as is done in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. The question is, in fact, a familiar one from Jewish tradition: “Is there a way of summarizing the commandments?” Jesus gave a traditional answer. The first part is from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (Shemaʿ ), but combined with another part from Leviticus 19:18. Continue reading
I first came upon the idea of the “project of power” as a midshipman at the US Naval Academy. It was via Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Mahan’s theories and conclusions shaped modern geopolitical power in the 20th century. If you think about it, it was the United State’s ability to project sea power from the continental United States 6,000 miles away to the nation of Japan that was perhaps the key strategic element in winning the war in the Pacific. Even today in our current crisis in Israel and Gaza, the United States is able to project power with two carrier strike groups sent into the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent to further hostile actions, especially from Hezbollah. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Although the Sermon on the Mount has already included an extensive section of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples on love as fundamental to the life of discipleship (5:21–48), in this concluding encounter with his opponents Matthew gives Jesus another opportunity to summarize the core of his teaching (as 7:12). There, the teaching was to his disciples; here, it is to his opponents, in the controversy situation showing his orthodoxy as an advocate of the whole of the Law and the Prophets. Since Matthew here focuses on the argumentative aspect of the scene, he does not develop the theological issues that interest the contemporary interpreter (cf. Luke, who relocates the passage, 10:25–28): (1) the meaning of “love,” (2) the meaning of “neighbor,” and (3) the meaning of Jesus’ responding with two commands. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ choice of Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18 is notable for two reasons. In the first place, by focusing on “love” rather than on more tangible regulations to be obeyed, it raises the discussion above merely judging between competing rules, and gives the priority to a principle which has potential application to virtually every aspect of religious and communal life. When Jesus declares that “the whole law and the prophets” depend on this principle, he is repeating the point he made in 7:12, “this is the law and the prophets.” The ethical principle he there laid down did not use the word “love,” but that is what it was all about. The priority of love in the life of a disciple will be a frequently repeated NT principle, and one which it would be very hard to object to. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The test goes to the heart of the Mosaic law, and as such, it is appropriately raised by a Pharisaic lawyer. It would not be an unfamiliar question, since rabbis did discuss which of the commandments were “heavy” and which “light,” and sometimes tried to summarize the main thrust of the Mosaic law in terms of a key OT text. Since the five books of Moses (Pentateuch) contained, by rabbinic calculation, 613 commandments, some means of assessing their relative importance would be widely valued. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In commentaries and in Bible studies, I often encounter the variety of words, in the Greek, used for love. People ask lots of questions about the meaning and use of them in Scripture. There are perhaps several questions that can be asked:
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel this week condenses the teaching of Jesus into its most simple form. And it is not a new topic in this Gospel. Jesus has already taught the centrality of love in the life of the disciples and that love for “neighbor” includes the “enemy” (Sermon on the Mount; 5:21–48, esp. 23–48). It is also not a radical topic for Judaism. Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day offered the same response adding that the rest of the scriptures are but commentary on these two things. In Deut 6:4–5, the command to love God is part of the Shema, which begins with the confession of the oneness of God, the closest thing to a universal creed in Judaism. In the Gospel of Mark, this same account is told as a friendly scribe making a sincere inquiry in which Jesus commends the scribe for his answer, declaring that the scribe is not far from the kingdom of God (Mk 12:28–34). Here in Matthew’s account, why would this become a controversy? Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A.
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them (a scholar of the law) tested him by asking, 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Year B. Our gospel is taken from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is asked which of the commandments is the first and greatest. When Jesus answers the scribe, He uses the second person singular form of the verbs: “You shall love..” Jesus is telling this individual what he should do. In this way it is not a dissimilar encounter with the earlier episode of the rich young man who asks what he must do to inherit the Kingdom (Mark 10:17-22). Although the man goes away sad, he clearly understood that this was an answer to what he, personally, must do. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Year B. Our gospel is taken from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is asked which of the commandments is the first and greatest. Having answered the inquiry with respect to the commandment to love God as the first commandment, Jesus adds: “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Lev 19:18) Many people think that this was a response unique to Jesus, but as noted in yesterday’s post, when challenged by a Gentile, Hillel the Elder (ca. 40 B.C.-A.D. 10) replied: “What you yourself hate, do not do to your neighbor: this is the whole Law, the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” This was Hillel’s summary of the whole Law which, for the observant Jew, is rooted in the love of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the Shemaʿ ). The sense of there being the two great commandments was already present in Jewish thought. Continue reading
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