Proper 26 | Ordinary Time 31, Cycle B
As we near the conclusion of another Church Year, we see that the texts selected for us for next Sunday emphasize priorities for our lives. The major texts, Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Mark 12:28-34, boldly proclaim that God is and must be Number One in our lives and that we must remember this at all times. These two texts, in which the most important of the 613 commandments of God in the Torah for Israelites and all Jews and for the Jesus of history as a Jew are highlighted, are used only this one Sunday in our three-year series in The Revised Common Lectionary.
It is unfortunate that in many congregations, other than Roman Catholic congregations and perhaps Episcopalian congregations, All Saints Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in November rather than on November 1 and the texts selected for All Saints Day are used instead of Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Mark 12:28-34. Also, some Lutheran congregations still celebrate Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday in October and use “Reformation” texts rather than the texts of Proper 26. If we cannot succeed in bringing our congregations together on a weekday on November 1 this year, or on a weekday on October 31 for those of us who are Lutheran Christians, I strongly urge that we use the powerful texts Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Mark 12:28-34 on the Sunday between October 30 and November 5 this year and call the day “All Saints” Day and, if Lutheran, “All Saints” Day and “Reformation Sunday” as well if we wish. These Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Mark 12:28-34 texts are strong enough to carry double or even triple emphases! If we must have All Saints Day and Reformation Day as primary emphases, let us schedule worship services this year on November 1 and, if Lutheran, also on October 31, if these are weekdays, and hold meaningful worship services with the people, even if they are few in number, who come on these weekdays to worship God with us.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
This powerful text speaks specifically to the ancient Israelites, and to all Jews since antiquity, to urge them to remember that God, the Lord God of Israel, the God of their Fathers, is and must always be Number One in their lives. In addition, since the Hebrew word echad that is used in Deuteronomy 6:4 is both a cardinal and an ordinal number, God is and has been proclaimed joyously by all Jews every day to be both “One” and “Number One.” All Jews, as well as all of us as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, and others, are urged in Deuteronomy 6:5-9 to respond with complete and unconditional love to God, to teach our children these things about God, and to teach them to love God with no reservations, with their total being. Deuteronomy 6:4 is the great confessional statement, “Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is Number One!” that in terms of priorities — if not in every respect in terms of terminology — remains the primary statement of faith for all of the religious groups mentioned above, well over half of the people who are living on this planet earth. If we use this text next Sunday, it will be a day in which we can joyously invite our Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Baha’i, and other monotheistic friends to worship God in our congregations with us.
Psalm 119:1-8
The theme of this entire extensive hymn is that those who conduct their lives in accordance with the Torah, the “Word of God,” will be blessed. The Torah as “Word of God,” therefore, is to have priority in their lives. And it is through the Torah that that the Lord God is known. For us as Christians, God is known through the scriptures that reveal God’s love and grace, especially in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ.
Hebrews 9:11-14
For the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and for us, Jesus as the Christ, by entering once and for all into the Holiest Place of all and offering his very own blood accomplished an eternal redemption for all of us who draw near to God through him. Consequently, it should obviously be the top priority for us as Christians to draw near to God through Jesus as the Christ.
Ruth 1:1-18
The obvious connection to the other texts selected for next Sunday of this text in the story of Ruth is the statement to her mother-in-law Naomi by Ruth in 1:16 that “Your God, Naomi, will be my God.” If God is indeed perceived as the one and only God, as we see in Deuteronomy 6:4 in our Bibles, the change in the faith and in the religion of Ruth was perhaps not as major as we may have thought. If there is indeed only one God, Ruth was changing her name for the one God, but not her basic faith in God. What implications does this have for us today in terms of “conversion” terminology, especially within Christianity?
Psalm 146
This beautiful “Halleluia!” psalm is an expression of praise to God as the Creator of the heavens and of the earth and as the One who is Active in Our Lives, doing in us and with us what we ought to do, establishing justice for the oppressed, providing food for the hungry, and lifting up those who are bowed down. The psalmist urges all who will listen to trust in the Lord and not to put their trust entirely on human rulers who all too often support the wicked rather than the oppressed and who themselves soon die.
Mark 12:28-34
Because the careful study of this text and of its parallels in Matthew 22:34-40 and Luke 10:25-28 provide for us some of the best access we have to the Jesus of history, let us analyze them exegetically. Comparison of these accounts within the Synoptic Gospels indicates that quotations by Jesus of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and of a portion of Leviticus 19:18 are the central core of these texts. Each of the three Synoptic Gospels’ traditions has a different introduction (Mark 12:28, Matthew 22:34-35, and Luke 10:25) to the central core saying of Jesus (Mark 12:29). Neither the Matthean nor the Lukan redactors use Jesus’ quotation of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is Number One!” most likely because this statement was considered to be too Jewish to be used in the extended Markan communities in Antioch and Ephesus when the Matthean and Lukan redactions were made. It is important to note also that the Matthean and Lukan redactors did not use the pleasant exchange of theological insights between the Jewish scribe and Jesus that we have in Mark 12:32-34ab, probably because these redactor-writers and their communities were no longer themselves having pleasant theological conversations with Pharisees and other Jews who were continuing to be thoroughly Jewish and not joining these developing Christian communities. Therefore, they did not wish to portray Jesus as they understood Jesus as having the pleasant theological conversations with another interested and intelligent Jew as Jesus had been portrayed in Mark 12:32-34ab. We see also that the Lukan writer reshaped the materials from the Markan account to make them serve a different purpose, as the Lukan writer’s introduction to the Lukan parable of the Good Samaritan.
With regard to genre, Rudolf Bultmann in his The History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. by J. Marsh (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 51, called Mark 12:28-34 a “pure scholastic dialogue” (Schulgesprach) and noted that Matthew and Luke transformed the genre of the account into a “controversy dialogue” or “conflict story” (Streitgesprach). Actually, with additional study, we today can say that already in the Markan account when the Markan writer added the adversarial introduction (Mark 12:28) and the very adversarial conclusion, “After that, no one dared to ask him any more questions” (Mark 12:34c), which is certainly a very strange conclusion to provide after a very pleasant conversation between Jesus and another interested and intelligent Jew, the Markan account is in a transition from a pleasant Schulgesprach to an adversarial Streitgesprach. At the pre-Markan level of development, basically the central body of the text in Mark 12:29-34ab, the material was still a pleasant Schulgesprach. Earlier in the development of the tradition, the material had been an important reminiscence by followers of Jesus in Galilee of what Jesus had said many times about the most important commandments in the Torah during pleasant and respectful conversations with a variety of other interested and intelligent Jews. Still earlier, during the lifetime of the Jesus of history as we can reconstruct it from this and from similar texts, the genre of the material was “a discussion about the most important and basic commandments in the Torah.”
Parenthetically, we may postulate that it is likely that many of Mark’s other controversy dialogues, especially in the series of such conflict stories that we have in Mark 2:1–3:6 and in Mark 11:27–12:37 and parallels in Matthew and in Luke, originated in discussions that the Jesus of history had with other intelligent and interested Jews about the commandments in the Torah. Many of these were repeated as followers of Jesus after his death reminisced about what Jesus had said. Increasingly, these followers of Jesus came to see Jesus as their teacher and they as students (disciples) of Jesus. If we are interested in the reminiscences of followers of Jesus after his death and in what the Jesus of history said, we will focus our attention on the “pure scholastic dialogue, the Schulgesprach preserved and accessible to us in the main body of the text in Mark 12:29-34ab.
When we focus our study on the main body of this text, Mark 12:29-34ab, we can identify three interrelated themes.
1) God is Number One (verses 29-30). Every other person and one’s self are number two (verse 31), and by implication, all other things, even our most important religious rituals and practices, are number three.
2) Good theology (that God is Number One) and good ethics (loving one’s neighbor as one’s self) are more important than religious rituals (verses 32-33).
3) When themes 1 and 2 (i.e., that God is Number One and that good theology and good ethics are more important than religious rituals) are affirmed, a person is “not far from the kingdom of God” (verse 34ab). In other words, then a person is not far from being ready to let God rule that person’s life. These themes provide the basic materials from this text that we can use for personal, pastoral counseling, didactic, and homiletical applications, on applications that are firmly grounded in this text.
