pentecost 22 Year B

Ruth 1: 1-18                     NRSV text
Psalm 146                         NRSV text
Hebrews 9: 11-14             NRSV text
Mark 12: 28-34                 NRSV text

Once again the Lectionary has ruined a very powerful story, cumulatively built to engender the final conflict between Jesus and the authorities in Jerusalem that results in his death. Look at v34b: “After that no one dared to ask him any questions”. It’s the closing verse of the section that began in 11:27: Jesus, after entering Jerusalem, goes to the temple. This is the scene of a series of set-piece debates and arguments with “the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders” (11:27). The disputes range around the question of Jesus’ authority. What emerges clearly is two things: firstly, Jesus’ authority, and secondly, the increasing determination of the authorities to get rid of Jesus (see 12:12 – the conclusion of Round One).

Round Two consists of the attempt to trap Jesus over the issue of paying taxes, and Round Three the question from the Sadducees about the resurrection (which, incidentally, is not so much a theological question as an ideological one over the maintenance of a patriarchal structure that uses women as objects and baby machines in order to maintain property lines!). And then we get to today’s passage: Round Four. It’s the final one and is the last attempt to trap Jesus into wrong-footing himself badly enough to justify a public arrest. By dropping us suddenly in this part of the gospel, the Lectionary compilers have broken the flow of the story and we miss much of its power.

Jesus vs the temple authorities: Round Four
It’s important to read this incident in the context of Mark’s narrative. I hope by now you’ll have realised just how creative a writer he is. The problem with using the Lectionary is that the compilers clearly seem to hold to the classic view that Mark’s gospel is a set of self-contained incidents that are loosely stitched together. It’s the old “pearls on a string” theory of Mark. If all he has done is to collect a series of stories (pericopes in his gospel) and strung them together, then it’s not only possible but entirely appropriate to read each pericope as an isolated incident. It follows, then, that you can “dot around” in the gospel and examine each pericope as a self-contained unit.

It was Morna Hooker who perceptively remarked that only a man could assume that there isn’t an art to stringing pearls! Stringing pearls requires careful selection and choice. It matters which pearl goes where – it alters the shape and feel of the necklace. Mark, however, is far more than a pearl-stringer. He’s a craftsman when it comes to story-telling and theology. He has taken the stories and woven them into a compelling narrative theology. “Weaving” is a very different – and far more apt – image to use. You can’t separate the strands without tearing or spoiling the cloth.

What’s the pattern in the cloth at this point? This is the last of Jesus’ appearances in public. The opposition is hardening. They are running out of time and opportunity to silence Jesus openly because of his popularity. His whole ministry and message has been a challenge to their authority because Jesus challenges the status quo with his proclamation and enactment of the new messianic community and the kingdom of God. The radical upheaval required in social, political, religious and economic norms because of the “first-last” inversion can only happen at great cost to those whose well-being, power and authority is invested in the present system. From the end of this incident onwards, the frustrated authorities will have to move to take Jesus by stealth (see 14:1). Jesus and the band of disciples will have to go underground.

This exponential shift – this sudden raising of the stakes – happens as a direct result of the series of disputes that take place in the temple. The debate about the greatest commandment is the final round in this particular war, and seeing it in this way substantially alters how we read Jesus’ response to the scribe in verse 34: “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.

Jesus, you will remember, has cleansed the temple (11:15ff). He says that it has been made into a den of robbers. This whole section is a sustained attack upon the temple system – not the temple per se, but the way in which the system is administered and structured in terms of power. This is why the series of disputes opens with the question of Jesus’ authority (11:27ff). And here, in the last of the series, Jesus takes on the scribal authorities over the key issue of the greatest commandment.

The shortcomings of scribal piety and authority
Today’s incident is intriguing. It is the only place where Jesus’ interaction with a scribe is not wholly negative. But it is shot through with ambiguity (as Ched Myers points out so compellingly). In the first instance, we expect a classic conflict story. The temple authorities have wheeled out their big guns by turn: the Pharisees and Herodians, the Saducees, and now, lastly a scribe. Yet the scribe is clearly not straightforwardly hostile. He has seen Jesus “answering his opponents well” (v28). Whereas the Pharisees, Herodians and Saducees are clearly out to trap Jesus, the scribe simply “asks”. He is genuinely interested in what Jesus has to say. We ought not to take his positive response to Jesus in v32 as flattery – not least because Jesus is impressed by his answer (v34).

However, the question about the greatest commandment is also a question that tests Jesus’ political allegiances. The answer to this question cuts to the heart of theology and therefore also to socio-political arrangements. What the scribe is really asking is, “Tell me how you understand God. Help me to make sense of this kingdom of God that you preach. Why are you so hostile to the way things are?”

Look at Jesus’ answer. It is entirely “orthodox”: he quotes from the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4f). But suddenly he adds Leviticus 19:18 – the commandment to love neighbour as self. He concludes, startlingly, that “No other commandment is greater than these”. Why startling? It is not that the Rabbis would have disputed the importance of the Levitical injunction. The point is that these were widely separated: it is Jesus who uniquely brings them together as the two regulative principles that sum up human duty.

It is this conflation of the two commandments that makes sense of all that Jesus is saying. If, like the Rabbis, you hold both as important but separate, then you can conceivably have a situation in which the two commandments conflict with one another. It is possible to conceive of helping one’s neighbour as being in conflict with due worship of God, in which case, the commandment to love God takes precedence. This is precisely what we see in the conflicts over Sabbath observances: if healing someone on the Sabbath breaks the laws of proper Sabbath observance, then healing must be left until the next day! What Jesus is insisting on so powerfully is that there is no love of God without love of neighbour. In an apparent conflict between love of God and love of neighbour, we will love God properly by loving our neighbour. Time and again in the gospel tradition, Jesus is in conflict with the Pharisees because of his insistence on holding these two laws together.

We need to note further that the Levitical tradition defines love of neighbour in terms of non-exploitation. The verse that Jesus cites is the culmination of a list of commands prohibiting the oppression and exploitation of Israel’s weak and poor. It is important to realise that the conflicts over the Law in the gospel narrative are occasioned by Jesus’ gracious treatment of the weak and the poor. In other words, Jesus sees the scribal insistence on the priority of the law to love God over neighbour as a thinly-disguised excuse for exploitation and oppression. If love of God takes precedence over love of neighbour, then it is possible to continue to leave weak people exposed and vulnerable; to claim orthodox piety and continue to oppress and exploit the poor. This is the heart of Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees. It is a struggle for power. The kingdom that he proclaims – and the God who rules – isn’t like that.

Surprisingly, the scribe agrees with Jesus! He goes further and alludes to the prophetic tradition that gives priority to obedience over the temple cult (Hosea 6:6; 1 Samuel 15:22). The scribe, in other words, is prepared to go this far with Jesus. But it is intellectual assent only! Mark tells us that Jesus recognises that the scribe is “thoughtful” (nounechōs). This is a hapax legomena – the only time this word appears in the Greek bible. It is therefore an important word. Its root is nous, meaning “mind”. In other words, the scribe is right “in his mind” (intellectually). Jesus commends him as being “not far from the kingdom of God”.

Yet it’s a case of “close, but no cigar”! The rich man in chapter 10 was similarly “close”. He “lacked only one thing”. “Go and put that right,” says Jesus, “and then come, follow me” (10:21). Here, however, there is no invitation to the scribe to follow. Instead, it leads to Jesus’ denunciation of the scribes (vv38ff). Why? The answer is because it is not enough to give intellectual assent to love of neighbour only. Orthodox theology, if you like, is not enough. What is required is the concrete practice of justice to one’s neighbour – in Jesus’ terms, to the poor and oppressed.

We need to note something sobering here. Mark presents this story (with no call to discipleship) with an apparent awareness of the impossibility of scribal discipleship. Why is this? Because however committed to biblical imperatives the scribe may be (and clearly is), he is part of a system that oppresses and exploits. There is no room within that system for discipleship, even as there is no room for the rich man to hang on to his possessions. To repudiate the system – to live by the two commandments – would mean to stop being a scribe within it!

Jesus’ “better way” (Hebrews 9: 11-14)
Jesus takes the Law and reconfigures it so as to create something radically new and revolutionary. This is what makes the former things “old”. They have been surpassed – by something more true and faithful. This is the same dynamic that we see in the book of Hebrews. Jesus fulfils and goes beyond the “old” (cf 8:13). Here, in 9:11-14, the writer speaks of Jesus as the high priest who enters the Holy of Holies in a once-for-all sacrifice of himself. The point is that it is a better sacrifice than the old system. Because Jesus is a high priest who is without sin (and therefore needs no sacrifice to be offered on his own behalf), he can be both priest and sacrifice!

The yearly offering by the high priest inside the Holy of Holies was the pinnacle of the sacrificial system. And it was a system – an annual cycle. Jesus, in offering himself as a perfect sacrifice, makes the whole system obsolete. It “will grow old and disappear”. In Jesus, both human sin and, with it, the need for sacrifice, reach their end. His sinlessness means that he has become the possibility of a new humanity, no longer imprisoned under the Law. The writer goes on in vv15ff to use the image of a covenant which is inaugurated by the death of the covenant-maker. The new covenant is a covenant of Life, and it has “come into force” with the death of Jesus. Jesus is the once and for all atoning sacrifice for sin. The final offering has been made.

Its effect is utterly transformative. Whereas the “old” sacrifices purified “defiled flesh”, the new sacrifice “purifies our consciences from dead works”. This is Hebrews-speak for John’s “being born again” and Paul’s “new creation in Christ”. It uses the image of atoning sacrifice to say the same thing: that, through his death on the cross, Jesus has made possible a renewal in human beings that is nothing short of recreation!

“Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me” (Ruth 1: 1-18)
Reading Ruth 1: 1-18 in the context of today’s Lectionary readings draws us to the contrast between the scribe’s intellectual following and the cost of true following that is the Way of the Cross. The scribe gives intellectual assent to the cost of Jesus’ way only. He is not prepared for the cost of the practice of following Jesus – the transformative practice of kingdom-style justice. To do that would mean giving up being a scribe, losing his place in the system and all its advantages. It would mean becoming a “stranger in his own land”.

Ruth, in her speech to Naomi, is an archetypical disciple, because (a) she loves Naomi and (b) she is prepared to pay the cost of following “to wherever Naomi dies”. Read against the gospel stories of the Way of the Cross, we see immediate and poignant parallels: “I will not turn back”; “Your people will become my people” (cf “Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother and my brothers and my sisters”); “Wherever you die, I will die too”.

“No more to be said”
Ironically, this passage in Ruth ends up with Naomi “saying no more to Ruth”, just as the Markan passage ends with “no one dared to ask him any more questions”. There is no more to be said. The way ahead is determined by the exchanges in both passages. For Ruth, it is the unfolding story of the rest of the book. For Jesus, it is arrest by night, a kangaroo court, beatings and brutal execution.

But at this point, the close of the debating section of the Jerusalem narrative ends in decisive victory for Jesus. Mark tells us that no one has the courage to ask hi further questions. In this public arena, Jesus has gone head to head with his opponents – the temple hierarchy – and defeated them. He has ransacked the temple, throwing out the commercial interests. And in argumentation, he has “ransacked” the theological heart and power base of the “robbers”. He is in the temple, acknowledged as “teacher”. It is his authority and vision of God that has prevailed. He has challenged the position and power of the temple authorities, exposing it as being built upon privilege and exploitation. He has silenced his opponents on their own ground.

The loss of nerve of his opponents is not only Jesus’ theological and debating skill. He has publicly exposed the system for what it is, showing it in the light of his own vision of God and the kingdom. He has shown what true love of God entails, and true worship. He has exposed the system as hopelessly compromised and corrupt. He has, in Ched Myers’ terms, “bound the strong men and ransacked their house”.

But at what personal cost? In defeating his opponents publicly in the temple in broad daylight, Jesus has willingly, open-eyed, entered into the night of the Way of the Cross.

Amen.