For the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 26B

Collect

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Reading

From Mark 12:28-34

“When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.””

Reflection

When Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment, his response is to recite a prayer.

Jesus takes a ridiculous question asked earnestly and gives an equally earnest response.

First, the question is academic and legalistic. It sounds like any number of questions about the nature of God, of creation, and the metaphysical makeup of the cosmos. The sort of thing scholars write long, boring papers about using words like eschaton and ontological.

But this question also sounds kind of arbitrary; as in which is the best flavor of M&Ms or which is the greatest Harry Potter book.

Jesus’s response is quite curious given the legalistic character of the question and its impossibly arbitrary concern for picking one essential among a host that are also all essential.

Jesus doesn’t give a textbook answer. In fact, he doesn’t so much answer as respond. He says a prayer. The most familiar and famous prayer to their people: the Sh’ma.

The Sh’ma was the prayer they prayed every day. They would know the prayer in their bones. It is much like our relationship to The Lord’s Prayer.

In seminary, we might describe this is as responding to a Systematic Theology question with Practical Theology. The question (which is the greatest? – like the disciples arguing along the way, eh?) is located in the head and demands logic, consistency of thought, and the certainty of a systemic thought process.

Jesus responds by praying. An act that requires the whole body, not just the mind. It evokes emotion and memory, anticipates our needs and focus, and compels us to connect with our tradition, our practice, and our community.

Jesus’s response is remarkable. But it isn’t the only remarkable response. The scribe not only commends Jesus, but reasons out the logical conclusion of Jesus’s response. Jesus then commends the scribe for that response. Not because he is right intellectually, but because the scribe demonstrates that his whole self aligns with the Kin-dom work Jesus is doing.

We’re not supposed to seek to be right but to be whole.