Significant Questions: Love (Mark 12:28-37)
Rev. James Barton
02/28/24

I need to give credit to Concordia Publishing House for the title and helpful basic thoughts for this sermon, as part of a series from CPH on “Four Significant Days.” I did rewrite parts of the sermon, though, and included some things of my own too. CPH is not responsible for those changes. I also need to give credit to R.C.H. Lenski’s Commentary (Augsburg Publishing) for some of the comments on the 613 commandments of the Jewish Scribes of that time.)

Let us pray: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

We have been looking, this Lenten season, at what happened in the last days of Jesus’ life, after he rode humbly into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. Last week, we heard how He came again to Jerusalem on Monday and cleansed the temple for a second time as He had done earlier in His ministry, chasing out the sellers and moneychangers and animals. This time He emphasized that the temple was not to be a place for greed and robbery, but a place of prayer for all nations, that all might hear of God’s Good News.

The next day, Tuesday, Jesus came again to Jerusalem and to the temple to teach people. This time, the religious leaders were ready for Him, challenging Him about why He thought He had the authority to cleanse the temple. He didn’t answer them because they wouldn’t answer His own questions. He then told a parable that showed that He knew just what they wanted to do to Him - to kill Him. He taught about paying taxes and even showed the Sadducees, the religious liberals of the time, why they were totally wrong to think that there would be no resurrection of the dead. A resurrection was certainly coming!

Then a scribe, an expert in Jewish law, asked Jesus a sincere question: “Which commandment is the most important of all?” This was a significant question that Jewish scholars argued about all the time. They had developed a list of 613 commandments. 248 were positive -what you should do. 365 were negative - what you should not do. Some thought all the commandments about animal sacrifices and other sacrifices were most important. Some thought that the many Sabbath day laws were most important. Others thought that the rules about circumcision were most important. On and on the arguments went. But there was a general sense that you needed to keep all 613 commandments very well to be acceptable to God. And some thought they really did that.

Jesus simply took the scribe back to Scripture, to God’s Word in the Old Testament reading we heard tonight, from Deuteronomy. “The most important,” Jesus said, was: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. (There is only one true God, whom we are to follow.) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And then Jesus said, quoting from Leviticus, said, “The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus had taught the same thing on other occasions - that love for God is a summary of the first three commandments and that love for our neighbor (anyone around us) summarized the seven other commandments.

The scribe agreed with Jesus about loving the Lord and loving our neighbor as most important, even more important, he said, than “all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus told the scribe that he was “not far from the kingdom of God.” But he was not there yet, because he and others were ignoring that no one could ever obey all these commandments as he should. 

If we could love our Lord 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, then we would be keeping the first three commandments and never be putting anyone or anything above God. But who can really do that? All too often we put our own ideas and desires before those of God.

And if we could always love our neighbor, we would always love and respect our parents and others in authority; we wouldn’t kill others, but also wouldn’t become unjustly angry or ever hurt others with our words; we wouldn’t have any bad thoughts; we wouldn’t shoplift or steal, but we also wouldn’t waste time and would always do our best in every job we are assigned; we would never speak falsely about anyone; and on and on. And who can or does do all that? We try, but we don’t do so well.

And besides all that, many of the 613 commands that the Jewish scribes listed were not even in the Scriptures, but were man-made rules, like how far one could walk on the Sabbath day without breaking God’s command about resting. You find no specific rule about that in the Scriptures. We run that danger, still today, even as Christians, sometimes loading humanly made expectations upon one another and adding guilt we don’t need. Years ago, when we still had a number of Christian bookstores in our community, I received an advertising brochure from one of these stores and noted these things, that I included in a newsletter. On just three pages, I saw ads for “Christian” books like:

• Five Ways to a Healthier, Happier, and Creative Life
• Ten Keys to Extraordinary Success from Proverbs
• Eight Critical Lifetime Decisions
• How to Weather the Five Winds in Your Marriage
• Twelve Ways to Add Zest to Your Marriage

I was already worn out, thinking about remembering these 40 keys to Christian life, without even getting to another popular Christian author who had books like The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork and on and on. Another company pushed a book on Graduate to Greatness. Some chapter titles were: “Achieving Greatness through …,” “Gratitude for All Blessings,” “Reliability in All Circumstances,” “Enthusiasm in All Opportunities,” and on it went. I’d already decided that I would never be “great” according to such standards. Do you know anyone other than Jesus who is reliable in every circumstance?

That is why Jesus himself, on that Tuesday of Holy Week, also asked two very significant questions, as He continued to teach in the temple. The first was: How can the scribes, the religious authorities, say that the Christ (the promised Anointed One and Savior) is the Son of David? That was an easy question, because many Old Testament Scriptures said that the Christ would be from the line of King David. But then Jesus quoted also from Psalm 110, a psalm of David himself, and said, “David himself, in the Holy Spirit (inspired by Him), declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’” David himself calls this Promised One the Lord - equal with God. So how could this Promised One also be David’s son?

There was no answer from the religious leaders or anyone else. The only true answer was in Jesus himself, standing right there in the temple that Tuesday. He was a true man, born of the Virgin Mary, from the line of King David. And he was also Lord and God, the Son of God, sent from the right hand of God the Father. This God/man came to do what none of us can do - perfectly doing His Father’s will for us, in our place, for our sake, as a kind of second Adam. He perfectly loved God and loved His neighbor, where we so often fail.

As a true man, son of David, He was tempted as we are yet never sinned and kept all the true Commandments of God in perfect love for God and for us. And as the Lord of David, truly God the Son, He was able to make a sacrifice big enough and great enough to forgive all our sins and count us acceptable to God. And He is big enough and great enough, as true God, to bring us to trust in Him for our life and eternal future, though we cannot fully understand it all. 

We still try to love God and our neighbor, but now in gratefulness for His overwhelming love for us. We love Him and others because He first loved us. And we know that the most significant question for our life and future is already answered for us in Christ our Savior, without any merit or worthiness in us. We trust Him alone, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for His perfect love. 

Let us rise, now, and praise our loving Lord with the Canticle and Magnificat.