THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY "B"

SUNDAY THIRTY-FIRST OF THE YEAR

Cycle “B”  Mk 12, 28-34

“Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law ?”  The question may appear harmless to us, but it was a verbal hand grenade in Jesus’ time. For centuries the Jews had been arguing about that question. I guess you know that laws were aplenty for the Jews. According to Rabbi Simlai, the collection of laws in the Torah reached up to a total of 613. In the U.S. today there are strict rabbis who advise the News how many floors they can ascend by lift on a Sabbath.

So here was a test case for Jesus. Were all the laws equally binding ? Was there not one that could sum up them all and call it the greatest commandment ?  Jesus’ answer was straight from the Old Testament, loud and clear: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,” that is, wholeheartedly, as we might say. This particular commandment was known as the Shema. It was a call to worship; they were words to live and die by. Hebrew martyrs went to their deaths with these words on their lips. These words were put into tiny prayer boxes and fixed to the entrances of homes. We Christians have adopted this respect for God’s words by signing our foreheads, lips and hearts whenever the Gospel is proclaimed.

So far, so good. But Jesus added something new: you must not only love God but also the neighbour next to you, making it very clear that the Jews must also love the gentiles. The Pharisees only loved to hate the gentiles. The Russian author, Dostoyevsky, in his novel, “The Brothers Karamazov”, tells the story of a selfish woman and the onion. When she died she was despatched to hell. But an angel pleaded with God on her behalf: “But, Lord, she once gave an onion to a beggar.” So God ordered that she be lifted out of hell by the onion. The woman was desperately clutching the small onion as she was being lifted out. But the people, as anxious to get out of hell as she was, reached out to clutch her legs. She kicked them off. “Just me,” she shouted. As she spoke these words, her hands slipped off the onion. She fell back into hell. According to the Russian author, Dostoyevsky, Jesus Christ was not pulling our collective legs when he told us to love our neighbours with as much enthusiasm and warmth as we love our own selves.

Here Jesus gives us a good indictor or yardstick: love your neighbour as you love yourself. That’s the yardstick. It’s a very practical starting point. For instance, don’t we have an habitual tendency to watch out for our own interests, seeking out whatever is good for us and avoiding whatever threatens us ? We go on loving ourselves in this pragmatic fashion whether we are pleased with ourselves or disgusted. In this sense, self-love is remarkably tolerant, maintaining its devotedness to the welfare of the self. And this is precisely what we should do for our neighbour: watch out for their interests with practicality, whoever they may be, regardless how much or how little our neighbour pleases us. Mother Teresa always said that you could put all the essence of the Gospel in five words: “you did it to me.” The great rabbi Hillel was a contemporary of Jesus. One day one of Hillell’s students asked him to sum up the whole law while standing on one leg. Without hesitation, he took his right leg off the floor, and he summed up the whole law in these words: “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbour. This is the entire law.” Then Hillel placed his right foot back on the floor and smiled at his admiring disciple.

The parable of the Good Samaritan forcefully reminds us how indifferent to personal likes and dislikes this love is required to be. The parable shows that love is indiscriminatory, i.e. it is sensitively alert to the needs of others and to how these needs can be provided for.

The marvel of Jesus’ Gospel is that while it is admittedly difficult to put into action, it is so simple as to be understood by a child. Psychiatrists testify that one reason we find it difficult to love others is that we really do not love ourselves. Each of us must better learn to appreciate our own selves. And if we work with children or young people, we must teach them to be comfortable with themselves. If we are successful, the next generation of adults will be able to live out their lives in a more peaceable kingdom than we. The author Scot Seethaler incisively writes: “Christianity is not a religion of me but we. We are being invited to hand over our five loaves and two fish that God will multiply our gifts.”

So, dear friends, this week give of your time. Give a friend flowers or share a plate of steaming rice with someone. Or how about a phone call or cheerful note ? Give hope to a sick person. Hug a child needing affection. Speak praise of a teenager. Give peace. Forgive an enemy, if any. Set differences aside. Use humour to defuse an argument. Smile. Say “Thank You” and mean it. This Gospel speaks to each one of us.

PRAYER by Oliver Warner (1903-1976). Oliver Warner was a naval historian, a publisher’s reader, and a prolific author.

A Prayer for Racial Harmony

Father, you have made us all in your likeness and you love all whom you have made; suffer not our family to separate itself from you by building barriers of race or colour. As your Son our Saviour was born of a Hebrew mother, but rejoiced in the faith of a Syrian woman and of a Roman soldier, welcomed the Greeks who sought him, and allowed a man from Africa to carry his cross; so teach us to regard the members of all races as fellow heirs of the kingdom of Jesus Christ our Lord.