This week I've been thinking about how easy living a life of Christian discipleship can seem, compared to how difficult it is to do it. Many of us like to say that Christian discipleship is "all about love" - which can make it sound so very easy.  "If we just love each other more, everything would be great," my students will often say in response to some tough ethical questions.

 

At first glance, today's gospel reading (Mark 12:28-34) might make it seem a bit easy. The scribe who comes to Jesus has a delightful conversation with Jesus. Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, and the scribe quotes back and they both seem to understand each other. Jesus admires this scribe for "getting it".  

 

And yet, these quotes about loving God and neighbor are conversation stoppers. No one else in the crowd seems to know what to say after this. That's partly because what else could be said after "love"? There's nothing higher or greater, which both Jesus and the scribe acknowledge. There's also nothing that is more difficult to do. "You are not far from the Kingdom" Jesus tells the scribe, and yet I think: how very very far being not far can seem!

 

I am confronted by the difficulty of loving others every day - with my kids, my spouse, the bus driver, my students, my colleagues.  For example, my three year old has different needs than my six year old. I don't always know the best ways to respond to their concerns or complaints, or how best to love them and show them what love means - to say nothing of people with whom I am not biologically connected, like my colleagues at work. How do I love each of them well? How do I not let the fact that I didn't get enough sleep, or I don't feel well, or they just plain annoyed me, NOT get in the way of being loving? I fail, sometimes often. Nevertheless, I am called to be a disciple of Jesus, to love my neighbors, even when I don't know them well or at all.

 

In the face of this realization, today's first reading (Hosea 14:2-10) exhorts us to return to God. We realize in all kinds of ways that, often without meaning to, we don't do what we need to do to be loving. God offers mercy and forgiveness and love himself. 

 

Today, let us know God's mercy and forgiveness for us, and let us strive to be lovers of God and others because we have received that mercy.

 

- Jana M. Bennett