Chaplain's Chat - Tricking Jesus

One of the most famous passages in the Bible is where Jesus draws the ten commandments together into two simpler commandments. Simpler is often what we are all looking for.

The new NRMA advertisements about unworrying, the ANZ ad where people have so many things above their heads, point clearly to the need for us and our society to take a breath, look backwards, look forwards, look around ourselves, and see what we can do to make life simpler.

The story in Mark has Jesus being asked a question about which commandment was the most important. This should have been a definite winner of a question for the Saducee, as whichever commandment Jesus chose there could be an argument and he could be shown to be wrong.

Jesus, instead, responded with a different answer. He said to love God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus said that all the commandments were in fact tied up in these two simple commandments.

This proved to be an unreturnable shot by Jesus.

He de-cluttered the commandments and suddenly made things accessible. This was quite a change for the religious leaders who had hundreds of commandments to be followed.

It is thought that there were approximately 613 in total - divided into 365 prohibitions (one for each day of the year) and 248 positive commands (to represent each of the bones in the body). I think that is just amazing.

Jesus also challenges the thinking by implying a question of How can we love an invisible God when we cannot show love for our neighbour, the visible?

I see this as a primary question for all of us: in the visible we can approach the invisible, in the seen we approach the unseen, in those in need we approach the life giver.

There is a wonderful little poem that goes:

I sought my soul and the soul I could not see,

I sought my God and my God eluded me,

I sought my neighbour and found all three.

Jesus, in distilling the commandments, also offered a challenge for us to see our neighbours and not hide from them. We could always take the easy road and love our neighbours by choosing our neighbourhood carefully, or we could see our neighbours everywhere.

If you will excuse the non-gender inclusive language, Desmond Tutu once wrote We are not called to be our brother's keeper, but our brother's brother.

May grace and peace be yours as you see your neighbours every day and in every place.

Rev. Andrew