Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

 

 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."  

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, "What do you think about the Christ?  Whose Son is He?"  They said to Him, "The Son of David."  He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying:

'The LORD said to my Lord,

"Sit at My right hand,

Till I make Your enemies Your footstool"'?

"If David then calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his Son?"  And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore. 

 

- Matthew 22:34-46 

 

Yesterday we read that, as Jesus has been disputing in the Temple in Jerusalem with the religious leaders, the same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were with us seven brothers.  The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother.  Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?  For they all had her."  Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.  For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.  But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."  And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

 

 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."  My study Bible comments by explaining that the Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures and debated about which one was central.  So this question is not unusual, and is in keeping with the kinds of debate which were the constant practice among the religious parties of Judaism.  Jesus answers the question by setting forth the first commandment and the second, in terms of rank, which together constitute the grand summary of the Law.  Although the lawyer came with malice to test Christ, St. Mark's account shows us that this man is converted by His answer (Mark 12:28-34).    My study Bible also comments that the second commandment must be understood as written:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself, or more clearly, "as being yourself."  It's a misinterpretation to understand it as "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself," which destroys the force of the statement.  It says that how much we love ourselves is not the standard by which Christ is calling us to love others.  Instead, we are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, as being created in God's image and likeness just as we are.  As the Fathers teach, we find our true self in loving our neighbor.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, "What do you think about the Christ?  Whose Son is He?"  They said to Him, "The Son of David."  He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying:  'The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool"'?  If David then calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his Son?"  And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.  Jesus asks this question to lead the Pharisees to the only logical conclusion:  that He is God incarnate.  The notion that the Messiah may be divine was not one that was entirely alien to Judaism at this time, but my study Bible explains that these men suppose the Messiah to be a mere man, and therefore they reply that the Messiah would be a Son of David.  It notes that David, as king of Israel, could not and would not address anyone as "Lord" except God.  But in Psalm 110:1, from which Jesus quotes, David refers to the Messiah as "Lord."  Therefore, the Messiah must be God.  The one possible conclusion from this dialogue is that the Messiah is a descendant of David according to the flesh, but is also truly divine -- sharing His Lordship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  The Pharisees do not answer because they realize the implications, and they are afraid to confess that Jesus is the Son of God.  

Sometimes it's really hard to face the truth, although it might be staring you in the face.  There may be people within a nominal group who know and understand that the pervasive opinion of the group is wrong, and yet will be afraid to say so, simply because of the public pressure upon them not to rock the boat.  John's Gospel teaches us that "even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God" (John 12:43).  I take the Gospel at its word, and I don't find this hard to believe at all.  These are learned men who spend all their time debating the Scriptures; it's the thing to which their lives are dedicated.  There is no doubt that the conclusions one would draw about Christ are all there in His ministry, His acts, His word, His teachings, and commandments.  But here, He debates them on their own terms, and again, there's no doubt who won this round.  It will have to turn to mischief, deceit, false witness, and a fake trial to sentence Christ to something worthy of death (blasphemy), and manipulation of the Roman governor to do so.  Here in open debate, among colleagues for whom debate is everything and where the whole history of Sanhedrin is one of a place to debate the Scriptures and the laws of Moses, there is no more decisive speaker than Jesus.  He's among the lawyers and the experts, the scribes and the Pharisees and Sadducees, all those who belong to the highest places for whom tradition dictates just this kind of debate, and this Man Jesus who's spent His time and ministry among the crowds and the poor and mostly far away from Jerusalem is the One who can out-debate all of them.  He's the One with the wisdom and the insight and the arguments they cannot successfully trounce except through force and manipulation.  But openly among the people they can't do that, so silence becomes their response.  It's clear from the Gospels that there were followers of Christ among the leadership, for we have two great examples in Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea of at least two men who showed incredible courage in doing so openly.  There's no doubt that many would have been convinced that Christ's death was unjust, and certainly the Gospels testify to the people's popular belief that Jesus was a prophet.  But when we read today's passages, we really need to ask ourselves how often we might find ourselves in similar circumstances.  The Gospels don't just give us a sense of something that happened 2,000 years ago, and they don't only testify to Christ.  They also open up for us the story of Christ in our midst, the story of human nature, a revelation of how we respond to truth and how we run away from it.  It teaches us about our capacity for blindness and denial, our need to go along with the crowd, our preference for the "praise of men" over the "praise of God."  Jesus' crucifixion is a lesson to us all not simply about Christ, but about all of us and for all the time.  That's because there may be truth we know, or hate to acknowledge, or are called upon in our own hearts to face -- even and most deeply as part of our faith in Christ -- and we will find ourselves in the same place as the men in the temple who hear Christ's word, who know it is true, and who stand in silence, faced with a decision they will be forced to either go along with or eventually choose differently and disrupt their lives.  This is the world that we live in, and it has not failed to continue to evince all the signs that it's the same world Christ was born into and died in.  We are faced with the same questions of the heart, of the truth, even of God's love pulling us in one direction or another, where the crowds will ask us to go along with things we need to take a closer look at and pray about.  We should not dismay when we find ourselves in this position, for here is the place Christ has opened up to show us, and the Gospels will always pose such questions of loyalty to us.  Where does truth come from?  Where does authority come from?  In whom do we trust and place our faith?  Whose commandments are essentially good, guideposts for how we live our lives?  Do we need the whole crowd to applaud and approve of who we are?  Social media platforms absolutely depend upon our need for crowd approval to keep coming back, attracted to clicks and likes.  There are those who simply like to stir up controversy, or possibly they are doing so for motives that are not open and obvious, even for a special interest -- or, as in the case of these rulers of the people, for political reasons of power.  Whatever it is, we still live in this world into which Christ came as one of us, so that He opened up life for us, showed us His way to live, gave us of His all and even His life out of love.  If we take this gift of Himself that He's given, let us look at our world and understand that He calls us now to the same place His own faithful were called.  We're the ones who decide our loyalty, where He is leading us, what His love teaches us.  What does it mean to love neighbor as oneself?  How does that stem first from the love of God?  And if we love Christ and love the truth, where does that take us in our lives?  These are the questions, and they remain for us all.