Deuteronomy 6:2–6
Hebrews 7:23–28
Mark 12:28b–34
Whenever Jesus is challenged, he goes back to basics. We heard this a few weeks ago when Jesus was challenged on the Jewish practice of divorce. He went back to Moses and Genesis. Jesus is not really challenged today. Indeed, the scribe and Jesus agree on the foundation of Israel’s faith, the community’s response and ground for the relationship with the one Lord. But, by Jesus time the Law had become complicated. There were 613 laws on the books. The question of which was important became legitimate. Which of these 613 are basic, are essential. With a detail of laws, it becomes difficult to know what really matters. So Jesus responds by going back to Moses. And he gives as a response what every devout Jew in Jesus’ day and in our day, too, says every morning and evening: “Shema, Israel. Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” Jesus takes the unity expressed here and brings forward another quote from the Law: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus takes two and brings them together as one. There is a relationship between the one God and the one humanity.
Love is the essence of the Law. Love is the center of a relationship with God. There is only one God; there is no compromise on this. One God created humans and world alike. One God made promises to the patriarchs and matriarchs. The same God brought the community out of Egypt. In other words, the one Lord saved the community from slavery. That one Lord will act again in his one Son, as we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews. And that One Lord will give us a concrete example of what it means to love with one’s whole being. The one Lord Jesus Christ will be faithful to his people and the human race by dying for us out of love for his one Father, the Lord of all.
Moses begins by saying, “Shema, Israel, Listen, O Israel….” He is asking the community to recall, to listen and hear the story of how God has loved them, how he has made them his own, how they have become his people. How he has spoken to them directly. Listen, listen to how God has shown his love, his faithfulness to you. Listen and see how he has walked with you and not abandoned you to death and evil forces. Listen and see that what he did in the past he continues to do now….
You cannot command anyone to love. You cannot force love. The actions related to love may be there but it will not be love. The heart will not be there in the actions. The heart is the place that gives birth to love. If the heart is not in the actions, then the love may appear so on the surface, but deep down it will not be a love that is in harmony with the one who creates and saves. Any person of faith will tell you that actions must have their roots from within. Love means commitment and fidelity; it has to do with totality of being. This total response to the one God and Lord begins with a listening heart. And that listening is seen in hearing the word coming to us about how we are loved first by our God. Even in our liturgy, before we give thanks over bread and wine, we must first sit and listen to the Word. We have to hear again how God is working and transforming our lives. We must hear how and where that transformation has appeared before and become permanent. We must be taught where that word needs to come alive in our hearts. When that word enters our hearts, then the words about a gracious love forming us from the foundation of the world can move our hearts to love in return.
We can love the one who has loved us. Love can respond to love. And is precisely that love responding with love that Moses and Jesus place before us. Love the one who has loved you into existence. Knowing and standing in that love will mean a response that is total: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. Heart, soul, mind and strength each refer to parts of our human self. Each reflects an essential dimension of who we are. But notice that the response to love is not half-hearted, soulless or mindless or feeble. The command Jesus gives us says love with all you are—as the one Lord loves us totally, so we are to respond with our total selves.
The love of God is reflected in mercy, kindness, gentleness, patience, being slow to anger, forgiveness, long suffering, along with a profound awareness of those around you as the beneficiaries of that love. God is all that to us and for us. If we are in a relationship with him, then what else can we do but offer the same love back in return. Our relationship with God began with love: a word and hands that raised us from the earth…and a promise that even in death that word about us being beloved will still be there to raise us up into a life where love never fails.
This command, this word calling us to love remains essential in our day. In Jesus time, there were only 613 laws….a maze of words that had accumulated as the community had a variety of experiences over the years. How to assess what is the core the heart of it all, the scribe asks. It is no less so today. We live in a world that has had life experiences far beyond Moses or even Jesus could imagine. We have done much to make sense of it all, to find our way through it. But where is the key in our faith that can guide us? It would seem that love, love from God toward us, our love of God and love of neighbor, remains at the heart of how to approach life’s experiences with their new questions. It is the rock on which we can stand firm.
What do we do when dealing with the questions of our age: nuclear power, for instance, with its potential for good as well as evil? What about globalization, the awareness of how the world is interrelated. Is the relationship to be governed only by economic factors, devoid of a human face? What about technology? Does it serve us or does it rule us? Is it meant to estrange us by word and image? How do we live with developments in the area of sexuality? What and who will be with us as we walk through all this? How do we find our way through the maze of happenings in our days?
Listen, O people of God, shema! Love is what has called you forth. Now listen to it again and allow it to root in your heart. When love is abiding in our hearts, then our actions will flow from a source that comes from the One Lord and God. Shema, Israel: “The Lord, your God is a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity, continuing his love for a thousand generations and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” “Shema, Israel. Listen, Israel: You love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.”
If we need a model, it is to be found, we heard today, in Jesus, God’s beloved Son. He loved his Father to the end, despite all temptations not to be faithful to the Father’s command of love. Yes, he loved his own to the end; he died for them. And he left us this Eucharist as a sign of that love. By sharing in it, we are sharing in love that embraces all and holds all together. For that, we can only humbly give thanks and take of the food so that we, too, can love from our hearts.
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB