NOTES for Mar 12:28-37

In His conversation with the scribe, Christ asks him about what he knows by the nature of his work. Answering Christ, the scribe speaks of love for God and neighbor, saying that these are more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And Christ says to him: you are not far from the Kingdom of God. In the Apostle Peter (1 Pet 4:1-11) we find a call to serve, that is, to fulfill one's duty and responsibilities according to the strength God gives. In his work, in his studies, the scribe still saw what mattered most. He saw the essence and meaning of faith. Christ constantly calls us to seek the meaning of every step we take and every thought we have: the meaning of what, here and today, we can do for the glory of God and out of love for Him. Serving one another is the most important thing that should become the meaning of our life after love for God. There are different ways to serve. One can work in a factory or raise children. A scholar and a cleaner glorify God equally by their labor if, in that labor, they find time and place for God. The apostle calls us to serve one another with the gift each has received. The gift we have received is the possibility of meeting God at every moment of life; it is the gift of His love. By our life we can confirm His presence in this world, His love for people. And every day we must ask God to give us strength to serve one another. Through constant prayer and communion with Him we will gain the joy of His presence and of recognizing Him in every manifestation of life.

In spiritual life, reason often does not occupy the most honored place. We take care to act well, to follow the commandments, and not to harm either our neighbor or ourselves - and that is wonderful, for this is exactly what the parable of the Judgment speaks about (Matt 25:31-46).

We are attentive to the movements of the heart, to feelings: we strive to have compassion, to rejoice with others, to love God and neighbor. Most often we turn to our reason when we read Scripture: here too, of course, it is important to measure our life against the Word of God, important to listen and hear it, as Mary listened by the manger, 'keeping all these words and pondering them in her heart' (Luke 2:19), but it is no less important still to strive to understand, to read deeply into the meaning.

And we really do this. But how often do we pay attention to how exactly we think? Do we consider this important? Yes, of course, at every service we proclaim our faith, listing the dogmas on which it is built. But how often at that moment do we ponder every word, trying to understand why the fathers of this or that Ecumenical Council established exactly these words as the foundation of our Church?

Sometimes we say: all this can be left to theologians, while I believe as my heart tells me, for the foundation of faith is prayer, the Encounter with God, the reading of the Word of God. Of course, all this is true. But from Jesus' conversation with the scribe it is clear that our Lord values reason no less than feelings, the will directed toward good, or deeds performed out of love.

The scribe says to Him: 'You have spoken the truth.' Truth belongs to reason, to how we think and what we agree with. These words already bring the scribe nearer to God, for he and God have one common truth. The scribe pronounces words that affirm his faith. We know nothing about his deeds, about how he prayed, or how sincerely he conversed with God. We do not even know how attentive he was in studying Scripture, although his membership among the scribes shows that he devoted much time to interpretation. We know exactly one thing: he understood the essence of Scripture in the same way as Jesus and agreed with His words in his mind. And Jesus, 'seeing that he answered wisely, said to him: You are not far from the Kingdom of God.' It follows that not only prayer, not only good deeds, but also precision of thought brings us nearer to the Kingdom.

Jesus does not break the familiar world, but He radically changes it from within, filling established ideas with the right understanding. Out of the many commandments, so familiar, He singles out two, and the meaning of a person's relationship with God and with the world immediately comes into clear focus. True, the scribe is interested in only one commandment, since from a human point of view only one thing can be most important. Yet Christ unexpectedly places two commandments side by side.

That the commandment to love God is named first is natural and could not be otherwise. But that the commandment to love a human being is placed beside it, and that no other commandment can compare with these two, was a breakthrough in grasping the highest Reality. The high dignity of the human person, the calling to deification, is something absent from non-biblical religions and is the reason God became man. Understanding this is one of those golden talents given to us by the Savior that we ought not bury in the ground, but put to use more often.

The scribe who understands this (a very modern figure, by the way) is not far from the Kingdom of God. Someone who is near is not yet inside; he still has to take a step toward Christ, and that step can be so hard to take. People like this scribe often find it hard to decide on such a step, but because they have drawn near, it would also be easier for them to enter.

This is a rare passage in the Gospel where a scribe is shown in a favorable light. When he asks his question, he does so without any trap, truly wanting to receive an answer. And when he receives it, this man keeps it in his heart and draws such a conclusion that the Lord Himself says to him: "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." This scribe grasped Christ's good news that love is greater than burnt offerings and sacrifices.

It appears that for the scribe in the Gospel, the question of the hierarchy of the commandments stopped being a purely theoretical question on which one could sharpen the mind and, besides, catch Jesus. For him it became a question of changing one's whole life in accordance with the importance of these commandments.

The Lord expects from us faithfulness and love for Him and for those whom He has placed beside us, our neighbors. But how often we forget this, especially if those neighbors have thoroughly worn us out. It is easier to observe rules and norms regardless of the fact that by doing so we violate the commandment of love. Because it is easier to offer a sacrifice to the invisible God than to show mercy to a badly behaved teenager or to a homeless person who smells unpleasant.

The dialogue between Jesus and an unnamed teacher of the Torah, a "scribe," is remarkable because, at least outwardly, the participants say nothing especially unusual. The teacher of the Torah asks Jesus an elementary school question about the meaning of the Torah, the answer to which was known to any yeshiva student: the meaning of the Torah comes down to two commandments, the commandment to love God ("with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength," if we recall the corresponding line from Deuteronomy) and to love one's neighbor as oneself (as is said in Leviticus). This understanding of the meaning of the Torah was already quite traditional in Gospel times, and the teacher asks Jesus his question with the clear intention of testing His knowledge of the tradition.

Jesus gives the correct answer, the teacher approves His answer - "well said" - and in turn receives the Savior's assessment: you are not far from the Kingdom of God. What did the Savior like so much in the teacher of the Torah's reaction to His words? Perhaps that he says directly that love for God and neighbor is greater than all sacrifices? Evidently yes, for Jesus constantly reminds people that in the Kingdom and for the Kingdom the main thing is relationships, and that the question of abiding in the Kingdom is connected with a person's spiritual state, not with his activity, even if that activity is religious.

For the spiritual state, what matters is precisely that God be at the center of a person's whole life, in his heart, in his soul, that He be the center of all the efforts a person makes in his life. This, of course, is not about some abstract ideal, nor even about faith as a system of convictions around which religious people often build their lives, but precisely about God's real presence in the deepest part of the human person, in that center which in biblical language is called the heart.

Judging by Jesus' answer, He saw that for the teacher of the Torah who had turned to Him, this was not just theory, that the meaning of the Torah had become reality for him, that he lived as he taught, as far as this was possible for him as a human being. A person is limited here by his fallen nature, but if he does everything possible and lives to the maximum, fully realizing his spiritual potential, then he really is not far from the Kingdom. Only the last step remains, and the One who brought the Kingdom into the world can help him take it.

Christ's answer to the scribe's question about the greatest commandment in the law has fundamental importance for the New Covenant. The question itself reflects the heated debates taking place among the Jews during the Savior's earthly life. Some of them believed that in the law every commandment without exception has decisive importance, and that among them there are none more or less important. From this point of view, the one who sins against one commandment becomes a violator of the whole law. This view found expression, in particular, in the apostle Paul's letter to the Romans. Those who held this position believed that the law as such was given by God and therefore is holy. Yet it is hard to consider equally important, on the one hand, the commandments "I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods" and "you shall not kill," and on the other hand, the commandments "do not spoil the edges of your beard" and the commandment about the need to relieve oneself outside the camp.

Other Jews, on the contrary, considered the commandments of the Sinai covenant far from equal. The answer of Rabbi Hillel to a Gentile who wished to know the essence of Judaism briefly, "while standing on one foot," is well known. Hillel told him: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; this is the whole law, the rest is only its explanation." The Lord Jesus' answer evidently supports this latter point of view. Yet there is a significant difference between the positions of Christ and His older contemporary Hillel.

Unlike the learned rabbi, the Son of God formulates two chief commandments, placing first the commandment to love God. Moreover, the Lord expresses both chief commandments in an active, positive form: instead of "do not do," He says, "love," that is, His understanding of the law is directed not toward what must not be done, but toward what should be done. Further, it is crucial that the Lord joins these two commandments. In essence, the New Covenant gives us one commandment, calling us to love God and neighbor with the love with which the Son of God loved us on the Cross. Finally, Christ resolutely refuses to compare other commandments with these two, emphasizing their uniqueness and exhaustive character.

The scribe who asked the question pays attention precisely to this last aspect: "You have truly said... and to love Him... and to love one's neighbor... is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." The Lord approved this understanding, telling the scribe that he was not far from the Kingdom of God.

The connection of the two commandments given at the time of Moses shows here, that they are the same thing. It is impossible to love God and the same time don’t love those whom He loves (1Jn 4:20); it is impossible to love a person if we are not dwell in love with God who is Himself love (1Jn 4:16). And Jesus who showed to people what is love by giving " His life for His friends ", shows as well what is love to God, accomplishing all that the Father ordered Him (Jn 14:31). To love as Jesus loves is the fulfillment of this double command.

This line that Jesus takes from a psalm seems obscure and incomprehensible. Apparently, in Gospel times as today, it raised just as many questions. Perhaps this is why the Lord quotes it, wishing to put an end to the Pharisees’ arguments and provocative questions. They simply could have no answer to this question except embarrassed silence.

The answer, as so often happens, is hidden in God Himself, for it is of Him that the psalmist speaks. The Pharisees could not know about Jesus’ twofold nature. To understand this, they would have had to truly encounter Him instead of merely posing scholastic riddles. Then it would have been revealed to them that Christ was fully Man, a descendant of David, and at the same time God, the true Lord of the glorified king.

This line taken by Jesus of the psalm seems foggy and incomprehensible. Quite as today, moment of evangelization, it arouses apparently so many questions as at that time. This can be the reason why the Lord quotes it here, wishing to end Pharisees’ disputes and provocative inquiries. For they could not have the answer to this question; except a bewildered silence.

The answer is masked as usual in God Himself, because the psalmist speaks effectively about Him. Pharisees were not able to know the duality of Jesus nature. They didn’t have to give Him only scholastic enigmas, but had to really meet Him in order to know or see the duality. It would have then be opened to them that Jesus Christ was absolutely a person, a descendant of David and the same time the genuine Master of the glorious king.

Today's passage offers us two images: the image of the scribes, who were used to honor and respect, and the image of a poor widow who gave to the Temple the last thing she had. At first glance, we have two different themes before us, with little connection to each other. And yet there is a connection between them, though it does not stand out at once. In essence, what is at issue here is wealth and poverty.

The point is not only that the "scribes," that is, the theologians and teachers of the Law, were usually people of means, which certainly cannot be said of the poor widow. In the Gospel, as in the Bible as a whole, poverty is considered first of all not as a material condition, but as a spiritual one. One of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, Isaiah of Jerusalem, also considered himself "poor," even though he belonged to one of the finest aristocratic families of Jerusalem and was far from destitute. His followers as well, whom the Old Testament often calls "the poor," were apparently mostly people of moderate means. These people called themselves "poor" because they considered their only support in life to be not property and not social status, but God, to whom they entrusted themselves completely and without looking back, as though apart from God they truly had nothing else on which they could lean or grasp in a difficult moment.

And the poor widow, after giving to the Temple the last thing she had, acted in exactly the same way: her gift showed that she trusted God absolutely. It is different with those who gave only part of what they had: in that case another part of their savings remains, something they can always count on. Of course, such a gift also remains acceptable to God, but the fullness of trust is not yet there. The widow, by giving everything to God, showed Him precisely that full trust. It is just such poor people whom Jesus calls "blessed" in the Sermon on the Mount.

But wealth can be expressed not only in money or property. Knowledge, honor, social position: all of these are also a kind of wealth. And genuine Gospel poverty is impossible as long as the owner enjoys his wealth, which can take forms such as those seen in the scribes described in today's story, intoxicated by the signs of honor and respect shown to them by ordinary believers. The matter here, of course, is not knowledge or status in itself, nor even the sins that can be connected with it (the mention of "devouring widows' houses" in v. 40 is hardly accidental, especially considering that encroaching on the property of a widow or orphan is a direct violation of the Law that these people taught to others). The point is that knowledge and status obscure God for those who possess them, making them believe in something that is not actually there: their own righteousness and importance in God's eyes. And then one can hardly speak of the fullness of trust in God that Gospel poverty presupposes.

The greatest and final stumbling block for the Pharisees was the simplicity of Jesus' origin. How could they acknowledge Him as the Christ, that is, the Messiah? Everyone knows that the Messiah is a descendant of David and therefore of royal lineage. But the Pharisees saw before them only the son of a carpenter. Jesus pushes the question of the Messiah's human origin into the background: the main thing is not so much His belonging to the royal house as the fact that He abides at the right hand of the Father and is the Son of God, the Lord of the world. The following words are a warning against hypocritical piety, when the outward does not correspond to the inward. At the same time Christ does not condemn the outward as such (compare Matt. 23:2-3). The main danger is when the outward becomes merely show. After what Christ said about the scribes, we can appreciate the significance of the widow's mite. Was she not one of those widows whom the scribes, devoted to hypocritically long prayer, were exploiting? On the other hand, Christ had just, in answer to the scribe's question, expressed the essence of the law in the twofold commandment of love. The scribe who questioned Him agreed with Him and, to confirm his agreement, also quoted the law. And yet love for God, inseparable from love for neighbor, was shown not by the scribe but by the poor widow: if we take into account that the subsistence minimum at that time was equal to one denarius, and a quadrans was 1/64 of a denarius, it turns out that the widow had almost nothing for her own sustenance, and this nothing, her last tiny bit, she gave to the temple, offering it as a sacrifice to God. In this episode the full significance of small deeds is revealed to us, deeds measured not by outward calculations but by the degree of self-giving to God in faith and love for Him.

The Savior's words about the teachers of the Torah ("scribes"), who love honor and attention while remaining, in essence, useless idlers, are often understood in a concrete historical sense, applying them precisely and only to the people to whom they were addressed. That approach is, of course, correct: if Jesus rebuked someone, He always did it quite specifically, addressing the people around Him. On the other hand, when Jesus rebuked someone, He usually had in mind a definite spiritual problem, one that is always larger than its historical context. In this case the problem was that, alongside genuine teachers, who as always were few, in the Synagogue of that time, as indeed in every other time, there were many who merely considered themselves teachers, or even were such in people's eyes, but not in God's. The main problem here came down to the eternal dilemma of spiritual life, and of life in general: to be, or to seem?

At the same time, "to seem" does not necessarily mean open hypocrisy or cynicism. Everything here is far more subtle, so subtle that even a person initially set on seeking and finding authentic spiritual life can sometimes be deceived. One of the main problems for such a person becomes the inability to be his true self, most often arising from fear. This is not ordinary fright, when a person is scared by something new, unusual, or unacceptable in someone's eyes, but that deep fear in which a person begins to fear for the self he wants to see himself as, fearing so much that for the sake of his own image he is ready even to sacrifice his real self.

Here, of course, man's fallen nature plays an enormous role. Seeing it as it really is is, at the very least, truly unpleasant, and the picture of himself that a person draws for himself becomes both the project he hopes to realize and his justification in his own eyes. Fallen man can hide behind this attractive picture of himself even from God: at the time of the fall in the Garden of Eden, man explained to God his wish to hide from Him by his nakedness, as if hinting that he only needed to put himself in order so as to appear before God in all his beauty.

Such a position is spiritually dangerous in any situation, but especially in the situation of a spiritual teacher or mentor: here it is especially important to be, not to seem. To be, however, is very difficult and by no means always advantageous, while seeming is simpler and more convenient. And one can always justify oneself by saying that, after all, we are all human, and therefore all imperfect, while I, supposedly, am doing what I can and trying for the sake of those whom God has entrusted to my care.

A person usually carefully hides from himself the fact that, in essence, there is no real care here, the care God wants, but only a profanation that destroys the spiritual life of those whom He has entrusted to the care of such a "teacher." Jesus, on the contrary, points to the main problem and danger of such "teaching," which may even please the students, but which spiritually destroys them. After all, He came to save people, not to watch them perish.

It is hardly accidental that Christ’s teaching about the Son of David and about Christ being the Lord stands beside the account of the poor widow. The widow gave very little to the Temple, a mere trifle, but that trifle was all she possessed. Christ, having humbled Himself, shared the lot of all who suffer and are poor, including people such as this widow. Yet it was precisely in this condition that He offered His whole self as a sacrifice.
It is entirely fitting that, at this point in the Gospel, the conduct of the scribes should be condemned: they devour widows’ households, and it is they who will send the Son of Man to His death.
As the Evangelist noted, many listened to Christ’s words with delight. This might seem to speak in favor of those who listened. Yet “delight” can be of different kinds, and it is easy to begin receiving the words aesthetically, admiring the speaker’s eloquence but not following what one has heard in everyday life. It is then that we become like the scribes just mentioned...

It may seem strange: why does Jesus, knowing that His death is near, enter into apparently unnecessary arguments and disputes, and allow Himself to be provoked? After all, the Pharisees and Herodians were not driven by a thirst to find the truth. Likewise, when the Sadducees asked how the law of levirate marriage, which they had so cleverly interpreted (Deut. 25:5-6), would be reflected in the life to come, they only wanted to laugh at Jesus, since they did not believe in the resurrection. We do not know whether Jesus' answers satisfied the Pharisees and Sadducees, but they undoubtedly made an impression on a scribe standing nearby. The question of the greatest commandment in the law certainly troubled this man, and Jesus' answer drew from him a sympathetic response. Jesus reduces all the commandments of the law (not only the Ten Commandments, but all the rest as well, which the scribes counted as 613 in the Old Testament) to the two most important ones: love for God and love for neighbor. This is also the answer to the previous questions and to every later question throughout Christian history: how should one act rightly in this or that case? Christ answers us with precisely these words. And when, reading the Gospel, we see that here we are on Jesus' side, when we answer with the scribe's words, "Well said, Teacher; You have spoken the truth," that means that Jesus' words apply to us as well: "You are not far from the Kingdom of God."

Today's passage is devoted, as we will soon see, to the theme of Tradition and to how differently different people can make use of it depending on their intentions. This passage consists of three dialogues that the Savior conducts with different interlocutors.

The first of them (vv. 13-17) is plainly provocative in character. The question of whether it was permissible to pay taxes to the Roman authorities, under whose rule Palestine then was, was usually raised by representatives of the most radical part of the Synagogue of that time, whom the Gospel calls "Zealots," that is, "the zealous." These people held views of the Kingdom of God not very different from those that were generally accepted in the times of Joshua and the Judges. For them, the Kingdom of God and Roman power in Palestine were incompatible things. They considered armed struggle against Roman rule a religious duty for every believing Jew, and the payment of taxes to Roman authority a violation of the Law. To all that has been said, one need only add that all who looked at things less radically, even if they were their fellow believers, were considered by the Zealots to be apostates and enemies of the faith, deserving death. The question about taxes, asked of Jesus publicly, in a crowd where both Zealots and secret agents of Roman power were certainly present, placed the One answering in an obviously losing position: to answer "yes" meant bringing upon Himself the wrath of the Zealots; to answer "no" was equivalent to a state crime in the eyes of the Romans, for under Roman laws public calls to refuse payment of taxes to the lawful authority were treated as rebellion.

The second question (vv. 18-27) most of all resembles a problem from a theology textbook, or one of the traditional "hard questions" of its time that opponents of faith in the resurrection used against believers. Of course, to this question, as to all similar questions in all times, there existed an answer, and perhaps more than one, well known to everyone who had received the corresponding education. But what was known about Jesus was precisely that He had not studied theology, and it was all the more interesting to those asking the question what this, as it appeared to them, ignorant man from Galilee would answer.

The third dialogue (vv. 28-34) was caused, evidently, not by a desire to catch the Teacher in His words, but by a real desire to understand what He thought about the Law. Apparently the questioner understood that this astonishing Man truly had to understand something important and central in the Law, and he wanted to learn what it was. And Jesus, in reply, refers him to those traditional answers that were perfectly well known to the questioner himself. It is interesting that in this answer only the first part, speaking of love for God, has a direct correspondence in the text of the Law (Deut. 6:4-5). The second part of the commandment is a formula of rabbinic tradition that in Gospel times had already become generally accepted. And in this case Jesus confirms Tradition by His own authority.

In neither the first nor the second dialogue does He do this. Of course, in these cases too the questioners appeal to Tradition, but here the matter evidently has more to do with abuse of Tradition than with relying on it. This is no surprise: authentic Tradition always reflects the experience of real, living communion with God preserved in the memory of the community. But if the goal turns out not to be communion with God but something else, for example the desire to catch an opponent in his words or to assert oneself at the expense of one's interlocutor, the spirit of Tradition disappears, and only its empty, dead form remains, giving nothing except support for equally empty, dead religiosity and human pride.