What does Jesus think really matters?

Thankfully, Jesus wasn’t in his tomb long enough for anyone to start thinking about carving mementos on it. But we don’t have to wonder how Jesus would respond to the question of what he’d want to say in a sentence or two. He tells us today in the gospel. He was being questioned, again, by the Pharisees, the Jewish lawyers and experts in the Hebrew scriptures. They were trying, again, to trap him into saying something scandalous.

For Jesus, as for all good Jews, there was no religious obligation more sacred than to keep the Law of Moses, the commands of the Torah, all 613 of them as spelled out in the Pentateuch. And so their quest for entrapment was easy: Just get Jesus to pick one of the commands as the greatest, and then he could be accused of being soft on all the others.

But Jesus chose wisely. He gave them, and gives us, in a couple of sentences his epitaph. It is his summation of what it’s all about, what the meaning of his whole life boils down to.
They are words which all of his original audience already knew well: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus didn’t make up these words. They are right out of the Hebrew bible. They are the words contained in the mezuzot that Jews have fixed to the posts of their doorways for centuries. They are the words that ultra-orthodox Jews keep, literally, bound to their wrists and foreheads. They are the words uttered every day of a Jewish life of prayer. And they are words of love: for God, for neighbor, and for self.

Jesus said and did a lot of things in his life. He taught and preached at length; he healed and worked miracles; he prayed and forgave and consoled and cast out demons. His was a busy life, and in many ways a bewildering one.

It was a life that left his disciples often scratching their heads in confusion or feeling let down by false expectations. They were baffled by parables, uncertain in their understanding, speechless in the face of miracles, ashamed by the recognition of their own unworthiness. They were very much like us. That is why, even though the question in Sunday’s gospel was put to Jesus by teachers intent to trap him, we can be very glad they asked.

  • What actions do the two great commandments inspire in you?
  • How are the two great commandments influencing your consideration as you prepare to vote?

When all is said and done, Lord, what’s the bottom line? What measure are we to use in order to know whether we have understood you well? What might your epitaph be? What would you want the world to hear about you from now until granite melts away?” Comes the answer, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.

Unfortunately, some Christians mistake Jesus’ disagreements with other Jewish teachers and authorities to mean Jesus disagrees with and rejects all Jews and Judaism. They don’t notice that these disagreements happen all in the family. Jesus is a Jew among Jews, whose first disciples were all Jews. Christian Jews and Jews following other rabbis did not split into separate groups until the end of the first century.

Sunday’s gospel shows how deeply Jesus’ teaching draws on God’s word spoken in Israel’s history. But Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries testifies to a tragic misconception of the gospel message. Until the Vatican II reform of the liturgy, Catholics prayed for the conversion of “the perfidious Jews” in the Good Friday liturgy.

Only in 1965 did the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) acknowledge the permanent validity of God’s covenant with the Jews. The document takes Paul’s point of view that “the Jews still remain most dear to God because of their ancestors, for God does not repent of the gifts God makes nor of the calls God issues” (Romans 11.28-29).

Nostra Aetate insists the Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in other religions (#1). The bishops of the council state that what happened in Jesus’ passion “cannot be blamed on all Jews then living without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today” (#4).

  • What tensions do you experience in relating to people whose faith differs from your own?
  • What model for Jewish-Christian relationships today does Jesus’ dialog with the scribe offer?
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