Sermon Seeds: You Shall Love

Sunday, November 3, 2024
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost | Year B
(Liturgical Color: Green)

Lectionary Citations
Ruth 1:1-18 and Psalm 146 OR Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Psalm 119:1-8 • Hebrews 9:11-14 • Mark 12:28-34
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=p&d=82&y=382

Focus Scripture: Mark 12:28-34
Focus Theme: You Shall Love
Series: Here I Am…Testing and Tested (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

The English language does not have as many words for love as the ancient Greeks. Eros reflects romantic love. Philo denotes the affection and relationship of siblings while storge is parental love. Friendship is expressed as phileo and pragma is love that endures. Then, there is agape love, divine or selfless love. While all forms of love have value, it is important to note that in this focus scripture, when Jesus and the scribe converse, every time they evoke the word we translate simply as love, they speak of agape love.

Further, each time they speak of love, they use it as a verb. Love can also be a noun, or employed as an adjective or adverb. In this case, love is action, what we do beyond what we feel. Sometimes, the many forms that love takes can confuse our understanding of the commandment to love. We struggle to love the neighbor we do not like, for example, and while loving our neighbor may require us to overcome antagonistic feelings, we need not become best friends to love with agape love.

That framing may suggest that agape love is easier; experience tells another story. This is love like God loves. There is no higher form in expression, feeling, or action to demonstrate love than that. Yet, this is the commandment, a clear expectation of the minimum of faithfulness. The bar has been set, and it is virtually unattainable. As a test, we hope to pass it and not be graded on a curve.

In the gospel narrative, Jesus has an encounter with a scribe. The one-on-one nature of the dialogue is unique as typically in the gospels, and in this section of Mark in particular, Jesus tends to have discussions with religious leaders in groups. Like Nicodemus in another gospel account, this scribe demonstrates an open curiosity toward Jesus as his question lacks the animus associated with the interrogative approach of his peers.

Mark 12:28–34, the story of the “good scribe,” is different from the other encounters between Jesus and his questioners in this section of the Gospel. Here Jesus is approached not by a group but by an individual, a scribe—a scholar with expertise in Torah—who has overheard the debate with the Sadducees and seen that Jesus has answered them well (12:28). Although the reader/audience might expect such a figure to be opposed to Jesus, his question is not hostile or sarcastic, but serious: “What is the first commandment of all?” (12:28; cf. Matt. 22:34–35 and Luke 10:25, where the encounter is more confrontational). In Jewish terms, this is a question of (“the way of the land”), concerning fundamental principles of conduct. In this context, “first” (prōtē) does not refer to priority in order, but in weightiness or importance (cf. Matt. 22:36). Jesus answers with not one but two commands that epitomize the commands of Torah: “‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one,’ and ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the second: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (12:29–31). The first commandment is a quotation from Deut 6:4b–5, known as the Shema (“Hear!”), a daily Jewish prayer. Like the first four commands in the Decalogue (Exod. 20:2–11), it pertains to Israel’s obligation to love God. The phrase “with all your mind” is not found in the Hebrew (or LXX) text of Deut. 6:5; Donahue and Harrington (2002, 355) speculate that its addition here and in Matt. 22:37 “may reflect greater concern among Jews with the ‘things of the mind’ in Hellenistic times.” The second commandment is from Lev. 19:18b, and it parallels the six laws in Exod. 20:12–17, governing interpersonal relations among Israelites. These two foremost commandments are linked by the catchword “you shall love” (agapēseis).
Mary Ann Beavis

The scribe eagerly concurs with Jesus’ response. In fact, the scribe repeats Jesus’ answer and amplifies it. The scribe seems to be set apart from his peers, but perhaps, his presence and this exchange serve to illustrate that no group should be considered a monolith. Perhaps the scribe represents those religious rulers and authorities who were receptive to the message of Jesus or at least not antagonistic toward it. Further, this exchange reminds the observer that the good news as shared by Jesus was not a clean departure from Jewish law. Rather, it was an amplification of it. The enthusiastic response of the scribe, “This is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices,” reads like words found in the Prophets, calling the people from mindless observance of rituals in place of fidelity and faithfulness toward their God.

This passage is situated after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem during what has become known as Holy Week. Between the Triumphal Entry and the Last Supper, Jesus has a series of encounters with religious leaders. The one described in this passage is the last and represents a turning point. The others reflect not only acrimony from those leaders toward Jesus; they also express Jesus’ concern and disdain for a religious system that has been corrupted. Jesus’ critique is not against the Jewish faith (one that he observed throughout his life and particularly in this week commemorating the Passover) nor is it an indictment of the Jewish people. Nor is it a repudiation of religious practice, which contemporary critics of religion often conflate with religious systems. Even those systems are neutral as structures, it’s how power is wielded within them that makes the difference.

The temple is not functioning as intended. Therefore, one of Jesus’ first undertakings is symbolically to cleanse the temple. He uses the language of the prophets to describe what has happened to the temple. Instead of being a “house of prayer for all nations” (Isa. 56:7), it has become “a den of robbers” (Jer. 7:11). In Mark, Jesus specifically uses the Greek word for “bandits”. He equates temple practices with those of first-century highway robbers who plunder people by force. He also depicts Jesus as the stronger one who enters the strong man’s house (3:27). And he uses the language of exorcism to describe the driving out of the buyers and sellers (11:15). Additionally, Mark shows the temple system to be representative of a tree that does not produce fruit….The corrupt temple system and its impending demise is the result of corrupt leadership….Therefore, Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes can be applied to all of the Jewish leaders whose opposition has increased in numbers and in intensity as the scribes and chief priests also look for a way to kill Jesus (11:18).
Raquel S. Lettsome

The scribe in this story demonstrates how power may be used in support of the gospel and as an antidote to corruption. This scribe asks a question that he knows the answer to, but he does not set Jesus up in a trap. He throws a softball at Jesus and praises Jesus for hitting it out of the park leading to a victory so decisive that it stops the questioning. Perhaps that was the scribe’s intention in asking the question.

So, who was being tested in this encounter? The scribe asks Jesus the question, yet their interaction suggests that both were fully aware of the answer and neither was in a competitive mode against the other.

Perhaps the scribe was testing love, taking a chance on distancing himself from his peers and colleagues in the name of truth and justice. In the midst of a week that will take Jesus and his disciples from highs to lows, there is one who will take a stand and maintain a commitment to love the Holy One and their neighbor in public and with resolve…trusting love not to fail them, abandon them, or let them down.

Or, perhaps Love was doing the testing…not to force either participant in this conversation to prove themselves, but to prove that love is the answer…in all the tests.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one’s own place, One’s own people, One’s own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise— Into growth and destruction, Into solitude and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

For Further Reflection
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” — Mother Teresa
“Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things.
Love is the same way.
Use it to season people.” ― Vera Nazarian
“Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment…’dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love — which is to transform us.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.” — bell hooks

Works Cited
Beavis, Mary Ann. Mark (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament). Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
Lettsome, Raquel S. “Mark.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
This sermon series invites us to explore the call to Christian discipleship and to examine our response. Consider the commandment, “You shall love.” In what ways does your love, as a faith community, need to take action?

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-pentecost-24b-november-3/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.