Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time – November 3, 2024
On this Sunday before Election Day in the United States, the Lectionary gives us a blessing in disguise. Today’s pericope of the greatest commandment is so familiar that we might miss the grace that the Spirit presents.
Whenever most of us hear about the scribes or Pharisees, we automatically ascribe malice to their motives, setting up an “us versus them” dynamic. In that scenario, we’re in the “us” category with Jesus and therefore on the “good” side, while whoever debates Jesus is on the “bad” side.
Throughout Mark’s Gospel, and in particular this twelfth chapter, the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians engage in verbal battle with Jesus as they plot to entrap him. So we on the “us” side are ready for a fight as soon as the scribe steps forward.
In a society where it has become normative, expected, and popular to demonize “them”—whoever they are—can we break the cycle?
Yet it’s this very scribe who breaks the cycle. He praises Jesus’s response, treats him with respect, and, in an act of honor for any rabbi, builds upon Jesus’s answer to deepen his understanding of a core question of Jewish identity and practice.
In a society where it has become normative, expected, and popular to demonize “them”—whoever they are—can we break the cycle? What can each of us do to engage in respectful dialogue that seeks not to be right but to be enlightened even by those with whom we disagree?
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