Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.

Throughout the Bible there is a struggle between the false gods and the one true God. This goes back to the entry of the People of God into the promised land. The God who had led them to the new land was understood as a desert God, good and trustworthy in the wilderness but not in the green land, flowing with milk and honey, they now enter. It would make more sense to leave the desert God in the wilderness and turn instead to the agricultural gods of the land, those who are called the Baals.

What ancient Israel has to see and accept is that the one true God isn’t just the God of the desert but the God of everywhere, even the agricultural land. And time and again in their history, they succumb to the lethal seductions of the false gods, with prophets like Hosea calling them back to the real God who gives life, not death.

It is to this God that we, no less than ancient Israel, have to listen. The words of Deuteronomy echoed by Jesus are recited every day by the Jewish people: ‘Listen, the Lord our God is one’; and the same words are addressed to us on our Lenten journey. If we listen to them and act upon them, we will, like the scribe in the Gospel, come close to the kingdom of the one God.