The answer Jesus gives according to the passage is one some of us don't want to hear. The Hebrew word "shema" means to hear, to do, to act. The question is: How do we love God? The answer we don't want to hear: By loving our neighbor.
Take note of the "this" (singular) in Jesus's exchange with the scribe (in the Markan version) and the lawyer (in the Lukan version). The scribe says to Jesus, "THIS is much more important..." Jesus says to the lawyer, "do THIS and you will live." Loving God is loving our neighbor. THIS is more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus observes that the scribe is not far from the Kingdom of God.
To love God is to feed the hungry, to offer drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoners, to care for the sick, to welcome the stranger.
To justify 75 years of violent and oppressive occupation of Palestine as a "God-given right", to redtag faith communities who serve the most vulnerable, to dispossess and disenfranchise indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands and ethnic identity, and to feed the insatiable greed for wealth and power while millions are dying and tens of millions find themselves barely surviving from one day to the next is the complete opposite of loving God.
Finally, the "loving" in loving our neighbor is "agape." Agape is not based on emotions. (That is "eros." ) Nor is it based on relations. (That is "filia.") It is and will always be based on decisions. Every moment of our lives, we decide for the other. We choose the least, the last, and the left out. We choose to follow Christ, to love our neighbor, and to serve the people!
We choose and we act.
*art, "Love for One's Neighbor," (detail from a choir screen, National Museum of Scotland), from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.
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