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“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
“The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Well said, teacher. You are right … To love God with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
- Mark 12:28-34
What is the greatest commandment? To what should we give the highest priority? Jesus responds by quoting Hebrew Scripture - a prayer that he as a Jew prayed regularly, the Shema (which translates as Listen). The scribe probably would not have been surprised by this response. But, depending on his familiarity with Jesus’ teachings, the scribe might have been surprised when Jesus continued by quoting Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Loving one’s neighbor was a major theme in Jesus’ teachings. He saw love of neighbor as organically flowing forth from love of God; he knew Divinity dwells intimately within humanity.
In the parable about the Samaritan acting compassionately to a person he might well have perceived as an enemy, Jesus not only defined the term neighbor; he also defined what he meant by the verb to love; love is compassionate action. To love one’s neighbor involves living a life grounded in the understanding that loving God inherently entails acting compassionately toward others.
When the scribe in today’s Gospel affirms the intertwining nature of love of God and love of neighbor, Jesus says the scribe is “not far from the kingdom of God.” The intellectual or intuitive understanding gets the scribe close, but ultimately it is living out that understanding that will enable the scribe to experience and manifest the kingdom of God. And so it is for us as well. When we sit in loving attention, listening to the Beloved in silence, we come to experience our connection to the Divine and the Divine Indwelling in ourselves and in others. Then, in contemplative service, we experience and manifest the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Meditations
“What Jesus is saying to this young scribe is that his abstract understanding of the primary precepts of the Old Testament is ‘right on’ and that if he pursues that course, the values of the false-self system are gradually freed from their fascination with pleasure, power and security. One then moves into the awareness of the presence of God within. With that movement comes the capacity to love God with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength. By accessing the mystery of God’s presence within, we are capable of perceiving the presence of God in others. The presence of God in us recognizes the presence of God in everyone else. Then it is possible to love them as ourselves …
“Although Jesus approved … and congratulated the young man on his insights, he also said, ’You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ In other words, the kingdom of God requires something more … it is to love one another as Jesus has loved us. This is much more difficult. This is to love others in their individuality, uniqueness, personality traits, temperamental biases, personal history, and in the things that drives us up the wall, to love our neighbor, in other words, just as they are with each one’s grocery list of faults.”
- Thomas Keating, Awakenings
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“In the end, the only thing that will matter will be how well we loved. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is to pay attention to the person we encounter … to be attentive to the ones we love … to be present in the moment, heart and soul, attentive to the sounds of life in the midst of anxiety, laughter, sorrow, and wonder. Heaven opens where we are and invites us in as we are … Grace is everywhere and love abounds, but it must be received and celebrated. This is the sacrament of everyday life.”
- Ilia Delio, The Hours of the Universe
To Practice
- In her poem Gate A-4, Naomi Shihab Nye writes of an incident of loving one’s neighbor. After reading the poem, call to mind a time when someone proved to be a neighbor to you, or you manifested neighborly love to another. You may read it below or have it read to you by the poet here.
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."
Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."
We called her son; I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition.
Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
- Pause. Pray for compassion. Then intend to perform a random act of kindness to someone for whom you feel no particular affection or hold in no particular esteem.
- Post your reflections on the community forum here. Post prayer requests here. By clicking on the Subscribe link on the right-hand side of a thread, you can receive email notifications when someone posts a comment or a prayer request.
- All are welcome to join-in this free, online Zoom workshop with David Frenette on Sunday, November 14, "The Dynamic Center of Being: Awakening to Unity through Centering Prayer." Read more and register here.
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