Love And Social Justice

(Part One in the Two Greatest Commandments series.)

Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

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“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)

Our reading this week is the story of an exchange that takes place after a series of exchanges in Mark’s gospel that we covered in the past few weeks. This is a positive conversation between Jesus and one of the Temple State’s teachers of the law.

It’s important for us to understand Jesus’s answer to the question “Which is the most important commandment” was not unique. Any faithful follower of Hillel would have given that answer. Hillel was a generation or two previous to Jesus, and this was one of the central areas of agreement between the two teachers. Jesus differed from Hillel in his teachings on debt cancellation, but in regards to summing up the Torah in terms of love, Jesus shares Hillel’s interpretive lens. The summary is simple: There is no love of God without love of neighbor.

The second half of Jesus’ response quotes Leviticus:

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

We must note that the context of this passage in Leviticus defines love of neighbor as what we would call today social justice:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD. Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:9-16)

In Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz quotes Jose Porfirio Miranda, who said: “One of the most disastrous errors in the history of Christianity is to have tried — under the influence of Greek definitions — to differentiate between love and justice.” (In Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century, p. 122)

As is often said, justice is what love looks like in public.

So closely is love connected to justice that even in the texts of the Johannine community, it is impossible to claim you even have love if you disregard social justice for one’s neighbor:

“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:17)

We’ll unpack this further in Part 2.

(Read Part 2)

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