Generally, in the gospels, the scribes are shown as antagonistic towards Jesus and when we begin this passage we may be expecting a trap being laid by the scribe. In Jewish tradition, a lot of teaching occurs through a question and answer style and often the question is related to a particular teaching from Torah. Here, the scribe approaches Jesus as a teacher, a rabbi, and poses a question just as he would to any other worthy teacher. He asks which of the commandments Jesus regards to be foremost.
This could be an opening question to any teacher and one would expect it to be the start of a long conversation. Neither of the commandments Jesus quotes come from the Ten Commandments with which we are most familiar, but, rather, they come from other parts of Torah (the Law). His qualification of the first commandment – to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength – is a way of capturing the whole person.
What Jesus is saying is to love God completely and utterly with your whole person. Then he follows up and adds another commandment – ‘You must love your neighbour as yourself.’ The scribe agrees with Jesus’ teaching and adds that these are far more important than offering sacrifice. This is a pretty controversial statement from a scribe! Sacrifice has been the official form of prayer practised in the Temple for a very long time and he suggests that love of God and love of neighbour are far more important!
It is because of this understanding about the priority of love the hallmark of the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims – that Jesus pronounces the scribe to be ‘not far from the kingdom of God.
© Greg Sunter
Read more from here Parish Bulletin_03.11.2024
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