The Fellowship of the Hair Net

“One of the teachers of the law... asked Jesus, 'Of all the commandments, which is the most important?'” (Mark 12:28)

What is most important? What a question! Isn't that what we all want to know—what is most important?

It was during Jesus' last week before his crucifixion (though only he knew it was his last week before his crucifixion). The religious officials were steeped in suspicion about this renegade rabbi from Nazareth, so they were trying to trap him with his own words. It didn't work, though, because Jesus could see through their ruses.

There was one person, though, who seemed genuinely impressed with Jesus. And so he came up to Jesus and asked, “Of all the commandments, which is most important?” It was a good question. It was a question that went straight to the heart of how Jesus understood the law of God.

Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

You see, if we can discern that which is most important, then we can, in contemporary parlance, “make the main thing the main thing.” When you know what is most important, you understand where your focus should be, and how your priorities should be aligned. What is most important?

The answer that Jesus gave is simple yet profound: “The most important one 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 are no commandments greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

During the season of Lent, I am inviting the members of Georgetown Presbyterian Church to consider this teaching as the central creed that Jesus believed, and taught, and lived. Every good practicing Hebrew of Jesus' day recited the first commandment daily—it was their affirmation of faith in God (See Deuteronomy 6:1ff). Jesus, too, affirmed its centrality to his own faith, but he added another command, given in Leviticus 19:18. By appending the command to love our neighbor to the command to love God with all our being, Jesus lets us know that we cannot love God with all our being if we are not, in fact, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

In February of this year, our church held an event with the non-profit ministry, Rise Against Hunger (formerly Stop Hunger Now). We gathered in the fellowship hall on a Saturday morning, and in less than three hours we assembled enough packets of rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and vitamins to feed 10,000 people. Because we were handling food that would be shipped overseas to places where hunger is a constant struggle, we were required to wear gloves and—to the chagrin of those of us with even a trace of vanity—hair nets.

The truth be told, the humiliation of having to wear hair nets quickly gave way to pride at what we were doing. It was a morning in which the two most important commands were clearly operative and at work in our hearts. What I witnessed as their pastor on that day was a group of people who have a joyful, passionate love for God; and on this particular Saturday morning, they were demonstrating their love for God by loving neighbors around the world whom we will likely never meet.

And so today when I read about the expert in the law who truly wanted to know what was most important, and when I read Jesus' answer to that man, I have a new picture in my mind of at least one way that the two love commands take on flesh-and-bone.

What is most important?

Two things.

And you can do them both while wearing a hair net.