What would it mean to really love our neighbors as ourselves? (You know, for real)
Mark 12:28-34
When a section starts out, “What is the most important commandment,” you can bet that this passage has a lot to say. Jesus literally lays out what he thinks is the most important thing to follow. There is a lot packed in his short answer, so let’s start to break it apart. Jesus is responding to a question from a scribe. Most of the questions from scribes up to this point in Mark’s gospel have been argumentative or meant to trick Jesus, but Jesus responds thoughtfully to this scribe and even tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God, once the scribe demonstrates that he understands this teaching. In this moment, Jesus demonstrates love of neighbor for the readers by treating this scribe with respect even after his repeated antagonistic treatment by other scribes in the book.
The idea that someone might not deserve help, love, or inclusion is antithetical to Jesus’s teachings.
The scribe asks Jesus what the first commandment is, and Jesus gives an answer that would have seemed familiar to the scribe because both love of God and love of neighbor are included in the laws of the Torah. Interestingly, though Jesus was asked which was the first teaching, Jesus answered with a first and second teaching. He states that the love of God is first and love of neighbor is second, and states that there are no greater commandments than this pair. It’s as if they are a package deal. Love of God and love of neighbor go together.
The passage also makes an assumption that is worth pointing out. It says, “love your neighbor as yourself.” It doesn’t say love your neighbor a lot or love your neighbor as much as your friends or family. It says love your neighbor as yourself, which holds within it the radical assumption that you are a person who is worthy of love to begin with. I know a great many people who might have a harder time with the love of self than love of neighbor. In saying it this way, Jesus creates a relationship of parity between the self and the other. I am supposed to love me, I am supposed to love others, and I am supposed to do both the same.
In this passage the scribe makes a statement that gives even more importance to these commandments. After repeating the commandments back to Jesus the scribe says, “this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices,” and the text says that Jesus found this answer to be wise. In other words, the important religious ceremonial work is less important than the simple commands to love God and neighbor. Treating people with love is more important than doing their duties at the temple. This is a huge statement for the time, and I think it would be analogous to saying loving God and loving neighbor is much more important than going to church. Not a message that you would often hear from a pulpit.
In a parallel telling of this story in Luke’s gospel, a lawyer attempts to pinpoint exactly who Jesus is talking about when he says “neighbor.” As a reply, Jesus tells the familiar story of the good Samaritan, in which a man is attacked and left for dead. He is refused help by multiple passersby until he is ultimately saved by a Samaritan, a man from another culture that the reader is meant to see as totally other from themselves. By using the Samaritan as the example of a neighbor, Jesus demonstrates that everyone is your neighbor. For Jesus, there is no person so strange or distant that we would not be called to love them as ourselves.
There are also countless instances throughout all of the gospels where Jesus demonstrates his parity of love for all people. For example, Jesus heals and teaches people who are considered “other” or even untouchable in his society. Jesus dines with tax collectors, heals lepers, and hangs out with sex workers. Radical parity is the term I use for this because in the gospels we see Jesus treat people equally, especially as regards status or pay. If you loved your neighbor as yourself, and everyone is considered a neighbor, I can only think of one way that you could treat them: equally. The message that God loves all people regardless of who they are, and that we, too, should treat all people with love probably does not seem like much of a revelation to anyone who has attended many church services. This message becomes truly radical when we decide to try to follow it in a modern capitalist society.
To actually follow Jesus’s teachings and act as if we love our neighbors as ourselves would call some of the most basic tenets of American society into question. We are taught that some people are worthy of help and some people aren’t. Some people are not our problem, and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The idea that someone might not deserve help, love, or inclusion is antithetical to Jesus’s teachings. Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Not just to love our neighbors, but to love them as ourselves. If we would not want to live in the conditions that our neighbors live in, then what would loving our neighbors as ourselves call us to do? If we would not want to live with the lack of resources or medical care that our neighbors live with, then what would loving our neighbors as ourselves call us to do? If we see power in the hands of one community that is excluded from another, then what would loving our neighbors as ourselves call us to do? Asking these questions, in a society that works as it does specifically because we don’t ask them, is truly radical.