Mark presents what’s happening over these Sundays as a consecutive series of encounters, sharp arguments and stunning responses, all in the Temple, in the course of a single day, just a couple of days before Jesus is arrested, tried, and executed.  Jesus is a threat, to everything the religious authorities were fighting to preserve: not just their prestige and position (though these were certainly in the mix) but the supremacy of the Law in a world where there was constant pressure to conform to Gentile, Roman customs and authority.  On the positive side, we could say that the priests, teachers of the law, and elders—the Sanhedrin, the highest social-religious authority of the Jewish people—saw themselves as protectors of the people and defenders of the faith.

It’s also the case that the Sanhedrin, as the supreme socio-religious authority, enjoyed many benefits of having power and being on the receiving end of the people’s sense of duty, not to mention the legal obligations of the people to support the Temple and those who ministered there.  The priestly caste was a wealthy in-group.  The last thing those with power and wealth, prestige and influence, want—no matter what their avowed principles may be—is a real, potent threat to the good thing they’ve got.  Jesus was that threat.  We’re told more than once that the religious authorities feared Jesus because the people regarded him so highly, as they had John the Baptist before him, a true prophet, after so long.  The priests would have been mortified to have to say so publicly, but they knew they needed the people on their side.  How to hold onto the hearts and minds of the people while acting as if you didn’t really care?

Oh, the people paid their respects, along with their taxes, to the religious authorities, but, just as we know that people in high office aren’t always of the highest moral fiber and the cleanest ethical conduct, so, too, the people there in Jerusalem, and throughout Judea, understood that those who governed their social and religious life were no better, really, than any of them.  But Jesus was another matter.  Like John the Baptist, Jesus seemed actually, genuinely to live—and believe—his message.  The people saw this.  It was his integrity that gave Jesus credit in the eyes of the people, whether they were followers or not.  There’s a message for us in this.

It’s also important not to paint with overly broad strokes.  Among the religious authorities (the teachers of the law, for example) were those genuinely hungry to live with true integrity: vital faith, not merely legal faith.  These ones perceived when God was speaking, even if they had a difficult time accepting the one through whom it pleased God to speak.  The authority of the person is nothing, beloved; the authority of the Word is all.  I don’t claim, I never will claim, to be any more clean or pure or righteous or faithful than anyone here.  I know exactly what I deserve from God!  I will always be the first to confess and acknowledge my ongoing war with my sinfulness: I will also always proclaim Christ, through whom God has claimed me.  The person is nothing; the message is everything.  In a society and culture such as ours, where Me is the most important me I know, to say the person is nothing may not sound like a winning evangelistic slogan.  The point is that no believer should ever point to him or herself, always only to God.  We evangelize by our Spirit-directed living as well as the words God gives in the moment.  Let God make our lives look like something: this is just what He already wants to do, for each of us.

“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.  Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’” (12:28).  This teacher of the law, presumably one who deeply loved God’s Word, had spent the better part of his life in constant company and ongoing conversation with God’s Word—he was now hearing something more encouraging, more powerful, than he had heard in a long time, maybe ever.  The law was understood as the “roadmap” for life God’s way, and this teacher of the law was continually striving and constantly struggling to live with integrity, to live by faith.  Now, a man was here for whom living that way seemed to come naturally, like one of the holy ones.

In this chapter, we’re told repeatedly of those who come to Jesus with questions to test him, entrap him.  The way Mark tells it, this teacher of the law, this disciple of God’s lifegiving Word, has a genuine, seeking question.  Oh, he knew not every commandment was equally important.  He did understand, though, that the principles beneath every commandment were profoundly important. Tithing herbs from the kitchen garden could never be as important as avoiding adultery or murder, and through every commandment, God was showing that there were underlying principles that matter to God because these principles reflected God’s character: justice, generosity, truth, loyalty, integrity.  Was there one commandment where everything met?  What was the heart of the law, from which flowed the lifeblood in every commandment?

“‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’” (12:29-30).  He quotes what Jews know as the Shema, from the Hebrew verb to listen, and to hear: “Hear, O Israel.”  The Shema is found in Deuteronomy, a book of the Bible hat aims to remind the people of God’s covenant, calling them once more to covenant faithfulness.  The Shema is a reminder to the faithful that there is one God only, as a warning against idolatry, certainly, and also as a call to mindfulness and loyalty: when any person has something other than God at the center of his or her life-focus, when a person has anything other than God at the peak of his or her life’s goal, such a person ends up betraying the one who created that person for a purpose, who gives that person everything and sustains everyone and everything, moment by moment, breath by breath.  To relegate God to an afterthought or a never thought would not just be impiety, it would be shocking ingratitude; a box with the word love all over it so pretty, with nothing inside.

Deuteronomy also reviews the deep straying habit among God’s people.  Having the way, knowing the way and the One who provides it, why do they stray?  That’s always the question, even today.  We mustn’t be so very surprised that those outside the church wander about lost—how would they not?  Deuteronomy reflects those within the body who stray.  Every congregation has them.

So, it’s no coincidence that Jesus also includes these words from Deuteronomy: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Dt 6:5).  More love to Thee!  Perhaps the problem never really has been so much a problem of faith as a problem of love.  We hear a lot of lecturing about love, these days, but there doesn’t seem to be much social or cultural agreement as to what love looks like, what love does, and what love does not look like and does not do: it’s personal and therefore off limits to inspection or even the gentlest, humblest, best-intentioned questions.

It’s not enough to love the Lord . . . too: to love God along with other things and people we love.  It seems that, in this life, it’s because of the things we love and the people we love that we make God and God’s Word subservient to those other loves.  That’s an old, old story.  Love the Lord with total love: make Him your highest, best desire, your highest, best fulfilment, your highest best thought, your greatest, proudest labor, our all in all.  Jesus has said as much in several ways in several places.  Jesus is always showing this love because this is just the way he lives; it’s who he is.

Part of what made Jesus so compelling for his followers as well as for men like this teacher of the law was that he lived that total love so clearly, completely, beautifully: it was like seeing what human life really ought to look like, what life on this earth together with all our fellow human beings ought to look like.

Then Jesus rounds out his answer about the greatest commandment this way, a way I hope we remember very well: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these” (12:31).  This love for neighbor is enjoined all over the Bible; the words Jesus quotes come to us from that stickiest, ickiest book, Leviticus, which deals with the grimy details of workaday life lived by the principle of total love for God.  Such living looks like something, especially in how we relate to others.  No one said it was easy.  Jesus never said it was easy to love this way, to live like this.  He did say we would have a Helper.  The law could have been that helper, if we were disposed to keep and do the law.  That’s the big if and always has been.  We want to and don’t, and then where is our help?  Jesus has given us the answer.

“‘Well said, teacher,’ the man replied. ‘You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.  To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices’” (12:32-33)—more important, that is, than the primary work of the Temple, and the priests, in the days of Jesus.  Hey Jesus, you really are speaking the truth, and you are really speaking the truth!  Remember that the Jewish religion at the time was a religion of regulation, purity, avoidance, and animal sacrifice, a religion of sins and ongoing atonement.  What had gotten overlooked, unintentionally but still overlooked, neglected, was the principle at the heart of all the Temple stood for: consecration, devotion to God and living devoted to God, our daily living as our best, highest, and ongoing offering to God: daily choices, daily devotion, daily decision, daily obedience.

The animal sacrifices were unending because it was obvious to everybody—even to the Pharisees—that nobody’s best was ever going to be enough.  Our best was always going to be marred by our worst.  Yes, the sacrifices were important: even more important was that God accepted the sacrifice, which God had provided in the first place, so that God could extend mercy, forgiveness, and grace to those who lifted their hands, hearts, and conduct to Him.  God’s holiness brooks no sin or sinfulness.  And God makes the way for Him to be among us and for us to be with Him, to the praise of His glory!  When we seek God, He will let us find Him.  When we desire to live God’s way, He will open the way for us and work alongside us and within, so that desire becomes willing, joyful action, second nature.  And the desire is also God’s gift.

It’s all about grace, which means it is about love: God’s love for us.  God doesn’t want to abolish us; He wants to establish us in His love.  Love seeks response.  The Temple was to be a house of prayer above all, but as Jesus found, it was a bustling marketplace and bloody butcher shop—all smoke, slop, and decibels.  Religion like that isn’t going to get us very far.

We can hear similar things throughout the Old Testament.  The judge Samuel told King Saul and all those listening, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?  To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22).  And what is obedience if not faithful, faith-filled living?  In the fiftieth psalm, God asks, rhetorically, “Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” (Ps 50:13).  Through Isaiah, God told His people, “‘The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?’ [. . . .] ‘I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats’” (Is 1:11; see also 1:12-17).  Through Jeremiah: “when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people.  Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you” (Jer 7:22-23).  Through Hosea, God says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos 6:6).  Faithful, faith-filled living, every day.  Proverbs sums it up this way: “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” (Pr 21:3).  Now, to obey comes from a verb which means to hear—you can’t do as you’re told if you don’t hear (or won’t hear) what you’re being told.  No one can please the Lord if they do not listen to the Lord.  Hear, O Israel!

But listening, you know, requires attention, interest, and time.  Hearing requires the disciplines of thinking, feeling, seeking comprehension, and responding in constructive ways.  I’ve found—maybe you have, too?—that what most often gets in the way of hearing is me.  As we read Scripture, we can come away with the impression that the Bible repeats itself a lot.  If you’ve ever had to talk to someone with hearing loss, an inability to hear, or an inability to focus for any length of time, you might just begin to see why Scripture repeats itself.

And the Word gets through.  There are those who listen, and among them those who respond in constructive ways.  “When Jesus saw that [the man] had answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’  And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions” (12:34).  Why?  Because they all felt the solemnity of what Jesus said?  Because they knew by that point that they couldn’t trap or trick Jesus?  Because they sensed, without quite knowing how, that they were at the border of a life-altering event?  Every so often, a beautiful opportunity comes along, and maybe we long for and fear it all at once.  To take the chance is to enter into a place, a life, we want so deeply: the cost is all that has been familiar to us.

Every Sunday, every Lord’s Day, there comes an especially powerful opportunity to draw nearer, to enter more fully.  The opportunity is also an invitation: let God in; let God work His work in you, in us all, through His Word, which He has the power to make come alive in you, to empower and bless you, to preserve you all through this life and prepare you for the life to come.  That opportunity is here, now, particularly potently in these signs of bread and juice, body and blood, atoning sacrifice and abundant, eternal life.  God has made His sacrifice for you.  Won’t you, now, rededicate yourself to Him?