Missed It by That Much!

In Get Smart, Maxwell Smart, aka agent 86, and an unnamed female agent, 99, fight against KAOS, an evil international organization. Maxwell Smart was not everything James Bond is! Everything he tried to do failed, and yet somehow, he overcame evil. His favorite cliché was, “Missed it by that much” (as he gestured with his fingers nearly an inch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwrodxghrw).

Sometimes, even a well-intended law keeper could miss God’s rule by that much. God's rule, among other things, includes a complete surrender to his guidance in one's life.

One by one, the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees have been questioning Jesus. Now, it was a scribe’s turn. When the priests returned from Babylonian Captivity and didn’t have a temple to serve, they dedicated their lives to copying, editing, and teaching the law. They were the scribes (in Greek, grammateus, or grammarians!).

He wanted Jesus to tell him which was the first (protos) of all the commandments (Mark 12:28). As if he didn’t know how to count, Jesus gave two commandments – first was the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4–6 (12:29–30).* The second was,

“You love your neighbor as [you love] yourself.” (12:31)

Jesus concluded that there were no greater commandments than these. The scribe wasn’t so satisfied. He had asked for just one. Jesus gave two and combined them as if they were one. So, in defiance, the scribe cited only the first command, the Shema, and added a line from a psalm: “To love one’s neighbor is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices” (12:32–33). He couldn’t say that the first and the second commandments were equally important. He went with an 80–20% principle – loving God was 80% important, and loving neighbors was 20% important. Jesus replied:

“You missed God’s rule by that much” (12:34).

Recently, someone asked if I believed in a social gospel. If I sounded like that, it was because of Jesus. He saw the foremost commandment to have two sides: first – love God, and second – love one’s neighbor. An atheist argued that Hebraic instruction to love one’s neighbor was still loving those of the same kind. That’s true. The scriptures seem to instruct people to love others, especially those of one’s family, clan, and tribe. But it didn’t end there. They were to host refugees, migrants, and aliens. That’s the core of the gospel – loving the unlovable, including the physically, mentally, and socially challenged, people of other races, colors, and castes. For the Lord Jesus, loving one’s enemy was as important as loving one’s neighbor.

The scribe found that a difficult lesson because, like in the story of the Good Samaritan, he was instructed to walk away from those injured and bleeding, those of unclean race. But Jesus was saying just the opposite. Loving one’s neighbor was as important as loving God. When that scribe learned to love God and love people, he understood the foremost of the commandments.

Even for us, we might excel in loving God. But if we fail to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we’ve missed God’s rule by that much!

* It’s called the Shema because the first words in the law are “Hear,” which in Hebrew is Shema.