31st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

“Which is the first of all the commandments?”

Mk 12:28b-34

Taken from Nineham

v. 28. One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”

We know of a number of attempts by rabbis before and after the time of Our Lord, to sum up in the shortest possible form the fundamental principle, or principles, of the Law, the most famous being that of Hillel (c. 25 B.C.): 'What you yourself hate (to be done to you), do not do to your fellow; this is the whole law; the rest is commentary; go and learn it.' Cf. also Gal. 5:14 and Rom. 13:9.

But as Abrahams points out the aim of all such rabbinic attempts was to formulate the basic principle from which the rest of the Law could be deduced as a corollary (cf Matt. 22:40), not to isolate certain commandments as being vital, in contrast to others which were less important or could be ignored.

According to the rabbis, all the commandments must be kept (cf. James 2:10), and because the rabbinic formulations just described tended, despite their authors' intentions, to conflict with this principle, they became suspect and unpopular in many quarters. And Abrahams thinks that what the inquirer in our passage really wanted was 'an opinion as to whether Jesus did or did not share this fear of reducing the Law to fundamental rules'.

The answer he received was clearly entirely satisfactory to him as an orthodox Jew and for that reason we should not perhaps too easily assume that by formulating the ‘first of all commandments’ (v. 28) Jesus implied any more than contemporary rabbis implied by their formulations.

No doubt the importance of the episode from the standpoint of the Evangelist lay precisely in the fact that the Christian Church had drawn the inference which Judaism refused to draw, namely that provided the spirit of the Law, as thus summed up, were kept, all else might be ignored. But how far such an attitude went back in its entirety to Jesus is a further question, and one too far-reaching to be decided here (such. passages as Matt. 5:17-20, Luke 16:17, Matt. 23:23, and James 2:10 would have to be taken into account, as well as on the other side, Mark 7:19).

v. 29-30. Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

The first part of the so-called Shemah (Deut. 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Num 15:37-41) which every pious Jew recites daily and which played a great in late-Jewish piety and rabbinic discussion.

St Mark is the only Synoptist to include v. 29b, so it must remain doubtful whether the early Church saw in it the profound significance. Perhaps in a Gentile milieu, such as St Mark's, an emphasis on the strict monotheism of Christianity was particularly necessary; cf. 1 Cor. 8:5-6.

And with all your mind:

This does not occur in the Old Testament text, though “dianoia” (mind) is often used in LXX as an alternative translation for the Hebrew word here translated heart. The addition no doubt emphasizes the all-embracing character of the required response.

v. 31. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Strictly speaking the inquiry concerned only one commandment (v. 28); perhaps the two Old Testament passages are thought of as constituting a single supreme command.

Neighbor:

Love for one's neighbor is a complex concept. In Lev. 19:18, where the concept stands in contrast to 'taking vengeance or bearing any grudge' against one' neighbor, the idea is clearly of a tender regard for others and a promoting of their good, as active as our promotion of our own. Probably Jesus interpreted the command in the same sort of way, except that, whereas in Leviticus neighbor meant simply a fellow countryman, Jesus gave it the wider connotation it was generally taken to have in his time.

Whatever the meaning of the word in the original Leviticus passage, it seems clear that by Our Lord's time it was taken to include at any rate the resident aliens in Israel as well as the Israelites themselves; whether it was interpreted more widely still is disputed.

Christian commentators almost always assume, on the basis of Luke 10:29-37 that Our Lord here understood it in a completely unrestricted sense, but perhaps caution about this deserves to be considered.

A further point which is often stressed is the essential interrelatedness of the two commandments; true love of the neighbor springs from the love of God, and on the other hand there can be no true love of God which does not express itself in love of the neighbor. Wellhausen goes even further and sees the grounding of the whole matter in the monotheism proclaimed in v. 29b: 'Monotheism is no theory; it is a practical conviction; it is the spring of inward character and of our conduct to our neighbor. It is in other words, the motive of morality'.

vv. 32-34a. The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, ‘He is One and there is no other than he.’ And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.And when Jesus saw that [he] answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

These verses are found only in Mark and their presence produces the unusual result that the decisive saying of Jesus does not form the conclusion of the pericope. Those who think that in the original version of the story the decisive words were spoken by the scribe see in these verses a reminiscence of it, and they point out that Jesus' strong commendation in v. 34 would be most natural if the scribe had said something strikingly novel and bold. If we accept St Mark's version as the original one, perhaps the best explanation is that these verses were retained as driving home the complete identity of view between Jesus and this representative of orthodox Judaism.

Wellhausen comments: '(morality,) according to ... the scribe, belongs to the service of God and is the true way of worshipping him; it is of more value than all sacred actions which are specially rendered to God and are of no use to anyone else.'

Such ideas are by no means novel - cf. e.g. 1 Sam. 15:22 and Hos. 6:6; and there are rabbinic parallels. The words do not exclude ceremonies and sacrifice, and just how much they meant would have depended on the tone of voice in which they were uttered. Jesus clearly found them acceptable, though the precise terms of his answer raise a problem.

Taken at their face value they seem to represent the Kingdom as something already present. J. Weiss points out that there are other New Testament passages where we find the image of the kingdom as a goal towards which men must make their pilgrimage—some being neater to it than others. But he adds that does not alter the fact that in its basic idea, the kingdom of God is something which comes down to men from on high.

The present passage should not be pressed against the general impression of Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom which St Mark gives. We cannot be sure that we are dealing with Jesus' precise words, and even if we are, they may easily mean: 'You come near to possessing the qualifications requisite for entry into the kingdom when it comes' .

Despite their negative form, the sense of Jesus' words is no doubt to stress the scribe's nearness to the kingdom and we probably should not ask what he still lacked which kept him from a still closer approach. If,  however, St Mark did have any such question in mind, no doubt his answer was that 'what is lacking is the acknowledgement of Jesus, imitation of him, arid admission to the company of his disciples (cf. Mark 10:21 and Matt. 11:11 // Luke 7:28).

29th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

 Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?

Mk 10:35-45

v. 37. They answered him, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”

The positions on either side of a ruler or host were the most honorable.

In your glory:

St Matthew, probably rightly, takes this to refer to the future messianic kingdom (Matt. 20:21). If so, and the story is authentic, it perhaps points to a time when the disciples were expecting the imminent arrival of the kingdom.

But the request could envisage equally thrones of judgment (cf. Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:30) or the glories of the messianic feast (14:25) and we cannot rule out the possibility that the disciples expected Jesus on his arrival at Jerusalem to inaugurate a temporary earthly paradise and that the reference is to this.

vv. 38 – 39. Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” They said to him, “We can.” Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.

As we have seen, there are a number of Old Testament passages which might have made the equation [cup and baptism = suffering] intelligible, and there is a second-century papyrus in which 'baptized' is used to mean 'overwhelmed with disasters'.

However, the Old Testament contains no really exact parallels, and the imagery here seems more likely to have originated with early Christians reflecting on Christ's life and death as a whole in the light of such sayings as 14:36 and Luke 12:50.  

In St Matthew's parallel version, 20:23, the reference to baptism is missing, and St Mark may have added it to his source to make the saying correspond more closely with the sacramental practice of the Church. The idea would be that, in the conditions of St Mark's day, to accept baptism and become a partaker of the eucharistic cup is to take a step which might well lead to martyrdom; let would-be converts count the cost!

As for the reason for the insertion of these verses into the original story, the usual assumption is that they were added at a time when the martyr deaths of the two apostles were giving rise to reflection in the Church. 'They were known to have been ambitious for high honor. Their wish is now fulfilled, but quite differently from the way they had intended ... and the actual terms of their request have been recast in such a way as to correspond with this fulfillment [i.e. they now ask only for pre-eminence in the next world]. The narrator, by making Jesus say you do not know what you are asking, means us to understand the apostles' request as an unconscious prophecy of their own death, but Jesus interpreted to them how it would be fulfilled' (J. Weiss).

This is a perfectly possible explanation, though it has to reckon with the difficulty that Christian tradition, while reporting the martyr death of James (Acts 12:2), ascribes to John a ripe old age and peaceful death at Ephesus. However, this tradition is not unanimous and may be inaccurate.

But the difficulty is avoided by the ingenious suggestion of Lohmeyer, who thinks that the verses were inserted in the course of controversies over the leadership of the early Church. In view of the way things had developed and of such a tradition as Matt. 16:18, it seemed impossible that James and John were meant to be the leaders. This passage was seen as evidence that this was in accordance with the will of Jesus. But though he had not been able to offer these two primacy in the Church, he had prophesied for them the honor of a martyr death very like his own. This interpretation is very much strengthened if we follow the MSS. which punctuate the end of v. 40 differently (allois instead of all'ois), so that it means: it has been prepared for others.

v. 45. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The Greek is a little stronger than R.S.V. suggests. The Son of man himself ... (who is by nature the greatest in the kingdom and therefore the example of what greatness in the kingdom implies).

A ransom:

The Greek word has a variety of meanings in the Greek Old Testament, among the most important: a monetary compensation paid for a crime (e.g. Num. 35:31-32), or for a life that would otherwise be forfeit (e.g. Exod. 21:30), the money paid for the release of a captive or slave (e.g. Lev. 25:51-52, Isa. 45:13), or the equivalent accepted instead of certain sacrifices (e.g. Num. 18:15).

The kindred verb and verbal noun (redeem, redemption) are used of God 'delivering' his people without any special emphasis on the idea of ransom in the narrow sense. In view of all that, it is probably wrong to press the word here as meaning more than 'means of deliverance' or 'redemption'.

For:

The Greek word (anti) normally means 'instead of'; 'in place of', and some commentators find that meaning here. The word 'suggests that in the act of deliverance "the many" not only benefit, but receive what they cannot effect'.

But there are passages where the word means no more than 'on behalf of' and it is doubtful how far we should press the more exact meaning.

Many:

A semitic use of the word which does riot necessarily envisage the exclusion of some.                

28TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!

Mk 10:17-27

v. 17. As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

The first phrase, by setting the incident in the context of a journey, provides a formal link with the surrounding material.

Good:

Such an address was quite contrary to the Jewish convention. As Lohmeyer says, it would almost have been tantamount to 'holy' or 'divine', and like the accompanying gestures would have seemed altogether too much for one whom the man thought of, after all, as no more than a Teacher (i.e. rabbi).

Life:

The kingdom of God to come'

Inherit:

Or 'gain entrance to' were current usage among the rabbis.

v. 18. Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good?* No one is good but God alone.

Undeniably a very puzzling verse which has never been wholly satisfactorily explained; it has caused difficulty to Christian readers at least since the time of St Matthew, who felt obliged to alter it radically (Matt. 19:17).

The suggestion has often been made - e.g. by the Jewish scholar Montefiore - that the words testify to a sense of sin, or at any rate sinfulness, on the part of Jesus, but even if that were true, it would not explain how, or in what sense, the words came to be included by St Mark; for certainly he, and those from whom he got the tradition, believed in the sinlessness of Jesus.

How did they understand the words? One popular line of approach has been to stress that Jesus was looking at the matter from the questioner's point of view, and saying, in effect: '(Though I am good) you have no right to call me good, for, as far as you know, I am simply a man.' Though that puts the point too crudely, there is probably some truth in it, and, bearing in mind what was said about the word good in the last note, we shall 'perhaps get nearest the truth if we suppose that what alarmed and offended Jesus was the indiscriminate bandying about of divine or quasi-divine titles.

 Any serious religious quest must be based on the recognition that the one God is the sole norm and source of all goodness, even of the goodness of Jesus in the days of his flesh. It sorts well with this that Jesus immediately goes on to point the man to the Law as the expression of God's righteous will.

v. 19. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.’”

As shown in the exposition, Jesus did not suppose that the Law could supply the full answer to the man's question. His words are a challenge.

The commandments cited are a rough summary of the so-called 'Second Table' of the Ten Commandments, the Fifth Commandment being placed last, and the Tenth summarized in the words Do not defraud, perhaps because fraudulence is a special temptation of the rich. No doubt these commandments were meant to typify the Law of God as a whole, but it is perhaps characteristic of Jesus' emphasis that those actually quoted deal with man's duty to his neighbor.

v. 21. Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Loved him:

That is the normal meaning of the Greek word (agapao), but here we should perhaps think rather of some definite outward gesture of affection - 'caressed him' or 'put his arms round him'.

Will have treasure in heaven:

The phrase is rabbinic, and so, in one sense, is the whole saying which precedes it. According to the rabbis, God would reward righteousness with treasure in heaven,

and in later Judaism almsgiving, for those who could afford it, come to be regarded as a - if not indeed the - principal ingredient of righteousness.

On the other hand, it is one thing to give regular alms out of one's income (no doubt the man did that already) and quite another to be asked to give up the sources of the income itself. And, as we have seen, even the latter demand does not stand by itself; it is the prelude to the further demand: come, follow me.

v. 24. The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

Some MSS. (the 'western text') have v. 25 before this verse, and this s probably the original order. The disciples' growing astonishment  (cf. vv. 24 with 26) then corresponds to the way Jesus' insistence on the difficulty of salvation grows and widens its scope. In the R.S.V. order, v. 25, referring only to the rich, is something of an anti-climax after e general statement of v. 24. If  R.S.V. order is right, the words for “a rich man” in v. 25 may be an interpolation, but there is no MS. authority for such a suggestion.

In v. 24 the western text includes the words relegated by R.S.V. to the margin. As the exposition has shown, they are a perfectly sound comment on the difficulties of the rich. If they are genuine, the passage as originally concerned exclusively with riches as a barrier to salvation, but a number of extremely important MSS., followed by the majority commentators, omit them, and R.S.V. is no doubt right in doing so.

v. 25. It is easier for a camel to pass through [the] eye of [a] needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Sayings of other Jewish teachers have survived which speak of the possibility of some vast object (e.g. an elephant) getting through the eye of a needle, so the comparison was clearly proverbial, and there is no substance in the suggestion that camel (camelos) is a mistake for amilos (' cable'), or for the medieval fancy that there was a gate in Jerusalem, known as the needle, through which a camel might just squeeze. The fact that such minimizing interpretations have been brought up is itself an eloquent comment on the passage! The expression is of course a hyperbole meant to be memorable by reason of its very grotesqueness, but it would be a mistake on that account to ignore the utterly serious truth it expresses.                ,

27th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife]. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.

Mk 10: 2-12 

v. 2. The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him.

Pharisees:

The reference to them is omitted by a number of important MSS., probably rightly. In that case the verb is an impersonal plural of the type so common in Mark, and we should translate: 'the question was put to him….'

Test:

The Greek word (peirazein) can mean simply to 'test' in the sense of seeking to elicit the truth about something or it can mean 'tempt', i.e. test in the hope of eliciting some damning admission. St Mark no doubt understood it here in the second sense. Jesus was to be brought into open conflict with the Law or discredited in the eyes of Herod. But just possibly the question which gave rise to the incident in its original form was a quite straightforward one designed to elicit Jesus' views on a much-debated question in contemporary ethics.

On the content of the question it will have been a particularly pertinent one in Rome, where divorce was easy and constantly occurred. But the wording suggests that in the present form of the question it originated in Jewish-Christian circles, for it does not seem to contemplate a woman divorcing her husband (contrast v. 12). This was possible according to Roman Law, but not according to Jewish Law.

v. 5. But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.

Hardness of heart (sklerokardia):

Some commentators take “hard” here to mean 'rough' or 'coarse' and think of 'the rude nature which belongs to a, primitive civilization'. The implication then is that the words express a merciful concession for the woman's sake. But perhaps we should think rather of unteachableness, stubborn refusal to obey God's will as revealed in Genesis. The implication is that the Mosaic Law was in certain cases a kind of second best. The highest law could not, or would not, have been obeyed. So there was a concession made to human weakness or 'hardness'. The divorce enactment was not a law but a dispensation.

Did Jesus suppose that with his coming this dispensation lost all its validity, or did he think that where men - even the sons of the kingdom - failed to live up to the divine will in its fullness, some such dispensation was still the best way of dealing with the situation? It is difficult to say how far his view may have been influenced by his belief that this world of 'marrying and giving in marriage' had only a very short time to last (9:1). Much will depend on whether we regard vv. 11-12 as detailed legislation or whether we take it as a vivid way of expressing God's absolute will in this matter.

v. 7. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife].

For this reason:

Refers in Gn. 2:4 to the woman's origin from Adam's rib, but by a piece of exegesis reminiscent of the rabbis Jesus makes it refer to something different - the fact (in Gn.1:27) that the human race was created from the beginning in two sexes. It was because God originally made them male and female that a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh. There is reason to think that Gn. 1:7 was currently quoted in support of monogamy, as opposed to polygamy. But it appears to have been original to Jesus to see it as prohibiting divorce. His argument no doubt was that if marriage makes a man and his wife one flesh, it clearly creates a relationship between them as real and as indissoluble as that which binds a man to his relations by blood (v. 8b and cf; Gen. 29:14).

v. 9. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.

Man:

In antithesis to God, this could mean simply any human authority. But in fact is is no doubt the husband who is contemplated, for neither in Jewish nor in Roman law were the parties divorced by any extraneous authority. In Jewish Law the man divorced his wife, in Roman law either party could divorce the other.

vv. 11-12. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

St. Mark probably understood these verses simply as crystallizing in clear-cut terms the truths inherent in vv. 2-9, though strictly interpreted they add something new. To divorce your wife is a sin, but it is not adultery. If in addition to divorcing her, you marry another woman, then you add the sin of adultery to the sin of divorce.