Loving, A Command?
Mark 12:28-34
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I’ve loved this text for as long as I have leaned into a more liberative reading of the bible, asking questions about how it may be experienced from “the bottom up.” But this time, reading it in a season of grief and Lent, I found myself disturbed by what should be “good news.” I think it is the word “commandment.” Yeah, that’s what it is. Commandment.
In 1991, I had a close friend deployed in Operation Desert Storm. As he was preparing to leave, we talked several times a week. In one of those “I want you to come back whole” conversations, he asked me: “If you weren’t afraid of God, what would you do?” I quickly answered, “But I’m not afraid of God. I do whatever I want. But because I love God, I respect our relationship and try not to do anything that would harm it.”
And that’s the story I thought about as I came to this text again. I don’t love God out of a commandment, but out of relationship. But these “traps” set for Jesus in Mark 12 are all about “keeping the rules,” in ways that love relationships don’t require. Honestly, are our relationships with our lovers, our partners, our children, and our friends, more based on making and keeping the list of rules or else? We actually work through trauma, good and bad memories, mistakes, missteps, and so much more with people we love. We don’t “keep score,” even if our bodies do. We forgive; we forget; we mis-remember.
Maybe because Jesus was in theological arguments that day it made sense to answer the scribes that way, as they were listening to the disputes about paying taxes to Caesar (12:13-17) and whether there is such a thing as resurrection (12:18-27). They were, after all, theological debates, and debates always come with rules. Jesus answered the disputes, the scribe thought. And maybe that debate was a perfect lead into the questions about the most significant commandment, the meaning of the “first of all.” Reciting the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4 was expected of someone practicing Judaism. It seems weird to have to type that Jesus was a Jew, but it seems Christians forget that. So here we are, trying to determine this Lenten Tuesday whether loving God is an obligation, or whether we experience loving God as a relationship. The answer to that question is important because it also affects the second of all commandments, “love your neighbor as yourself.” It seems to me that we struggle with loving ourselves; which makes loving our neighbors near impossible without a lot of caveats.
Among her definition of a womanist, Alice Walker included the following for her third description: “Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.” It’s the “regardless” that always gets me. Do we love ourselves when we have failed? When we’re bigger or smaller than we wish we were; when we don’t have the job we wish we had; when everything in our lives is a “hot mess”? Do we? Do I? While it is the “second of all” ‘commandments,’ this notion of loving ourselves can’t be an obligation either, for my take. It has to be born from our sense of worth because we exist, not because of anything we do or receive. Regardless.
To love God has to have the “regardless” connected to it because we can’t love God, ourselves, or our neighbors without it. According to 1 John 4:18, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” Of course, “perfection” seems like another never to be reached goal, but I think the focus ought to be on love casting out fear.
Commandments (and not keeping them) seem to invoke fear, the waiting on the lightning bolt, or lash, or rejection from God. So do obligations in loving neighbors, family, friends, and so on. So does the demand to love yourself. All of these loves have to arise from somewhere else. From the “regardless.”
As we barrel towards the horror of Friday and the hope of Sunday in this Easter week, I wonder whether we can embrace loving God as loving the dance of creation, as loving the songs of nature, as loving the moonlight on the lake, as loving Spirit that upholds us, as loving love itself. I wonder whether we can embrace loving God as loving food and roundness and even the struggle to grow, expand, and be free. I wonder whether we can embrace loving God as loving the Struggle for the liberation of all the world and as loving ourselves. Regardless. To love me is to love the God who created me. Regardless.
And perhaps we will note that love draws us very near to the habitation of God because to love freely is to meet all the commandments, without being forced into fear. Regardless.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, as well as
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at Methodist Theological School of
Ohio. She also is founding president and CEO of WomanPreach! Inc. —the premiere
non-profit organization that brings preachers to full prophetic voice. She has been in
licensed or ordained ministry since 1977, and will be received in the United Methodist
Church as an Elder in full connection in June 2024.
Dr. Bridgeman is active in several professional academic guilds and has been inducted
into the Society for the Study of Black Religion and the Martin Luther King Jr.
Collegium of Scholars and Preachers at Morehouse College.
Dr. Bridgeman earned her Ph.D. in biblical studies (Hebrew Bible concentration) with
secondary studies in ethics from Baylor University. She earned her Master of Divinity
from Austin Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, and was named a Distinguish
Alumna of the institution in 2018. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with a double
major in Communication and Religion from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
She is a peace activist and advocate for human rights.
