What are the top commandments?

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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 neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.
-Mark 12:28-34

Jesus here is willing to answer a good question. But then again, here, he's got an audience of at least one scribe who is going to listen, who has his ears at least open.

I like the expression of love in this question and answer. The first great commandment is to love God, with all one's heart, with all one's soul, with all one's mind and with all one's strength. The second is to love one's neighbor as oneself. I think the fact that the first comes first is significant, if only because we need to understand what love is. To worship the good, to be loyal to the Person who is Love, is first of all because it teaches us what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. In these are all the law and the prophets, and better than any sacrifice or burnt offering.

I find most often in my life that situations in which there is a bad outcome seem to most frequently come about as a result of the failure to follow these rules. Selfishness seems so often at the root of community outcomes that are disastrous: corruption, greed, scandal. If we have special favors or kickbacks, a whole community's welfare is jeopardized where instead something much better, for the good of all, could have been realized.

I think that to worship God is truly to put love first. It's like saying that one's loyalty is to the good. It's possible to "love one's neighbor as oneself" by practicing a kind of selflessness that is not for the good: to be in a violent gang for example, where individual identity is wiped out, or women are treated as communal property, is a strange form of "selflessness" to the good of a bad ideal, a violent ethos. If God comes first, this is saying that we must first turn to the good, to love, to teach us what love is, how to treat that neighbor and even, indeed, what it means to love and respect oneself, even to find our true selves.

When we worship we must remember what we worship, and what for. When we serve our neighbor, we also must remember why, and learn how to do what is best for the most good. These are not easy things to learn; it takes a lifetime process, in my opinion, just to begin to know something of these things.