Jesus has just clarified the question of resurrection (that they were asking him to trap him) to the Sadducees. The Pharisees now wanted their turn to try to catch Jesus out by asking an impossible question: Which of the 613 commandments of the Law is most important? If Jesus said the wrong thing, he would be in serious trouble.
Jesus’ answer is brilliant in summing up the entire Law! Jesus says, ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5). and “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD” (Lev 19:18).
The Pharisees have no answer. What other question could they ask? However, to know the Law is different to following it; that is more difficult. To love God is hard enough and requires the gift of faith. To love God with all my heart, soul, and mind is something a lot more. What is the magnitude of my God-given gift of faith to do this?
With a sense of God as being distant and ‘up there’ remote and shaking a punitive finger, would I commit my whole being in love? I would need to come to know a very different God than that. So often, our image of God comes from our parents or significant carers or teachers in our early years. What is my image of God? Where has this been formed? To what kind of God would I commit myself in love, not duty or fear?
Thinking of those that I love, what is it about them that is important to me? God is that and so much more – love itself! How did I come into these relationships? What nurtured them? In Jesus’ answer in our Gospel, we see that relationship is the most important thing about religion. How, then, might I grow in my relationship with God?
God is a restorative God of love. What will I do to come to know this God, to receive the gift of faith that God is longing to give me? How will I lovingly commit myself to God, heart, soul and mind? God always desires to shower us with love and waits for us to give our ‘yes’ and open ourselves to the gifts of love, faith, compassion and joy. Will I invite God into my life in an intimate relationship? We may ask for many things,
but our greatest prayer is for God’s presence within us.
With these gifts from God, who loves us more than we can ever love, we can respond with the wholeness of our beings to “love the Lord your God with your heart, soul and strength.”
How will I open myself to receive God’s outstretched hand
today?
Reflections by Kath Knowles
