Jesus had to put up with a lot of challenges to His teaching. Not only was He constantly badgered about His credentials, He also sustained, often, the third degree from the religious experts of the day. Today's reading from the Gospel for Mass is yet another example. The scribes and Pharisees sidle up to Him and ask, "Sooo, teacher, what's the greatest commandment?" By this they were hoping He'd say something they could latch onto, some disputed point of sacrifical law, some vague point of kosher, something, anything finally to bring Him down to their level.
Never one to disappoint for a brilliant turn of teaching, Our Lord gave what we now call the two great commandments, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind," and, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus made this the two sources for every command, every admonition, every prophecy, every expectation. Certainly, at least SOME of His listeners had to be wowed by this teaching.
Jesus then did something sort of expected, but not at the same time. By now these religious authorities should have expected a volley from His side of the court that He would want them to answer, and He does not disappoint. However, His question puzzles everyone. "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" When they answer that the Messiah must be descended from King David, arguably one of the greatest figures from Israel's national history, Jesus throws that expectation on its ear, "If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" Queue the sound of crickets.
Jesus often fired questions at the religious authorities that they could not, or would not answer. This one totally stumped them and according to this Gospel reading put them off from asking Him any more questions. Why? Because they could not figure it out? Or because they would not figure it out?
The Church has taught from its get-go that this prophecy denotes the Messiah is of a higher order than just any mere human descendant of David. Indeed, in teaching that Jesus is the Incarnation of the Word of God, Jesus has a rank higher than his ancestor according to biology and is worthy to be referred to as "my Lord" by the King of Israel. So when the psalm quoted in the reading says, "the LORD said to my Lord," the inference is that the God of Israel is bestowing great power and authority to the one anointed to be the Messiah of Israel. This level of elevation made the religious authorities uneasy, its implications dangerous to their concepts separating human from Divine. Add to it the implication that this Jesus might be the Messiah and their discomfort rockets off the charts.
What of us? In this day where we equate Jesus with friend, or companion, have we too lost the sense that Jesus is more than all that? Have we lost the sense that our human messiah is also Divine? Or are we uncomfortably aware, but suppressing it, and like the scribes and Pharisees not daring to ask anything more of Him?
