You shall love your neighbor as yourself

 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?"  Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is:  'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  This is the first commandment.  And the second, like it, is this:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these."  So the scribe said to Him, "Well said, Teacher.  You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He.  And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."  Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  But after that no one dared question Him.

- Mark 12:28-34

Yesterday we read that some of the Pharisees and the Herodians went sent to Jesus, to catch Him in His words.  (It is Passion Week, two days after His Triumphal Entry, and Jesus has already been questioned by the chief priests, scribes, and elders.)  When they had come, they said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?  Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?"  But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why do you test Me?  Bring Me a denarius that I may see it."  So they brought it.  And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?"  They said to Him, "Caesar's."  And Jesus answered and said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  And they marveled at Him.  Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers.  The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring.  And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring.  And the third likewise.  So the seven had her and left no offspring.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be?  For all seven had her as wife." Jesus answered and said to them, "Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?  For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.  But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?  He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.  You are therefore greatly mistaken."

 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?"  Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is:  'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  This is the first commandment.  And the second, like it, is this:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these."  So the scribe said to Him, "Well said, Teacher.  You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He.  And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."  Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  But after that no one dared question Him.   The Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures, and debated about which one was central.  Here, one of the scribes comes to question Jesus about the first commandment, or the greatest in the Law.  (In Matthew's Gospel, he's called a lawyer, giving us to understand his expertise in the Law.)  We can see that he is already impressed by the answers that Jesus has given to the earlier questions posed to Him.  Jesus quotes here from Deuteronomy 6:4-5.  This is the greatest Jewish confession of faith.  It is called the shema' -- which means "hear," the first word of the confession.  But Jesus once again (as with the earlier questions) does not simply answer what He is asked.  He adds another commandment, Leviticus 19:18.  My study bible says that Jesus thereby combines what is already present in the Old Testament to create a new understanding:  that love of neighbor is an expression of love of God.  Of the second commandment Christ states here, we are to understand it as written, a note tells us:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.   More clearly stated, it's "as being yourself."  If we understand it to mean "love your neighbor as you love yourself," we miss the true form of the commandment.  How much we love ourselves is not the standard by which we're called to love ourselves.  Rather, we're called to love neighbor as being of the same nature or image as ourselves -- being created in God's image and likeness as are we.  The tradition of the Church Fathers tells us we may find our true selves in loving our neighbor. 

Jesus' teaching here echoes an earlier teaching to the disciples, when they were taught about the little ones.  The reflection of Christ's image in others is another kind of statement of this same message, that love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand and are reflections of one another; that they are inseparable from one another.  Jesus taught, "Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me."   Little children in this case stand in for the humble, for any who come to them in faith.  In Matthew chapter 18, Jesus teaches about those whom He calls lost sheep:  "Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10).  We may believe that we can understand such commandments apart from the love of God, but that isn't really the case with experience.  As my study bible says, "as we love ourselves," simply isn't the right formula.  Often, our understanding of love is deficient, and perhaps particularly so when it comes to loving ourselves.  Arrogance is the wrong kind of self-love, a selfishness that is blind to what is truly best for us and the need for correction of flaws.  Self-hatred or neglect is another form of an inverted arrogance, where the image we hold ourselves to is a false one.  In neither case do we understand what love is in the first place.  And there we truly get to the heart of why love of God is so important.  It is in that communion that we allow ourselves to be taken in hand to grow in learning how to love, and what love is exactly.  We grow in learning to be "like God."  We grow, in fact, in learning what we can be, in becoming less selfish and more understanding of love and service itself.  The world can't truly teach us such things properly.  Only that which can stretch us beyond ourselves and our own concepts can do that, take us beyond what we know.  Our faith teaches us that God is love; it is there everything begins for us.  It is there we begin to understand even what it is to be human, and to be created in the image of God.  There only do we find the communion that teaches us what Jesus is talking about.