In Deuteronomy we hear-
Hear, O Israel Shema Yisra'el
The Lord is our God Adonai Eloheinu
The Lord is one! Adonai ehad!
The context for this verse in Deuteronomy reveals that it is uttered in a dramatic, interactive situation. The first phrase ("Hear, O Israel") is spoken by God to Israel; it carries no message, only the fact of being addressed by God, the experience of divine attention. Israel responds to being addressed by proclaiming that "the Lord is our God!" In English this sounds like a redundancy, but Hebrew differentiates between Adonai, which is the particular and proper name of God in the Bible (itself already an avoidance of the unpronounceable sacred name), and Elo¬heinu, which is the generic term for gods or divine beings.
God is One so Israel's response has the force of declaring that God, alone of all the claimants to divinity, is He Whom we choose. The last phrase, Adonai ehad, is understood by some interpreters to stress the exclusivity of the choosing of God (reading ehad as "alone"; "The Lord our God, the Lord alone ) and by others to introduce a further concept: the oneness of God. Exclusive fidelity to God and God's unity are the two major concepts of the Shema. The first demands that no system of value--not just another religion but an ideology, art, success, or personal happiness--be allowed to replace God as the ultimate ground of meaning. God's unity, conversely, asserts that all experienced moments of beauty, good, love, and holiness are not in and of themselves; they are scattered signals of the presence of the one God. Now, if this is the "message" of the Shema, the continuation of the passage from Deuteronomy, which completes the prayer's first paragraph, mandates what to do with the message: how to be loyal to it, how to transmit it, how to remain mindful of it.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Love
By using the term love, the text implies that these truths can be fulfilled less through cognitive affirmation than through relationship. This is a relationship that passionately transcends legal obligation and demands the mobilization of all the dimensions and resources of one's being. The question now becomes: How is this love preserved and guaranteed? The answer: by intentional, structured mindfulness. Children must be actively taught and rehearsed in the truths of God's ways rather than being left to the vagaries of nature. The adult, too, must not trust his or her nature; one must purposefully undertake to recall to mind God's unity within the coordinates of everyday life: morning and evening, at home and on the road. Symbols play an important role in this mnemonic regimen. The tefillin, the phylacteries, on hand and forehead, and the mezuzah affixed to the doorpost, are in themselves the source of no totemic powers. They are concrete signs that remind one of larger truths. The function of the commandments as spurs to consciou sness is elaborated in the third paragraph of the Shema (Numbers 15:37-42), which mandates and describes the wearing of tzitzit, fringes on garments. The middle paragraph (Deuteronomy 11:13-22) is monitory in tone: it warns that the enjoyment of God's grace, especially material prosperity and secure residence in the land of Israel, is absolutely contingent upon obedience to God's will as expressed through the commandments.
Mark: Discipleship Everywhere-Kingdom Priorities
The scribe rightly noted that loving God and loving our neighbors is more important to God than the extravagance of burnt offering or sacrifices. How do personal priorities or congregational priorities measure against the simple list that Jesus gave?
I. Put God first
• The vertical relationship.
• Do we know how to teach our children to love God?
• We see how Hebrew parents were able to transmit their faith to their children through stories, conversations, visual aids on the doorposts and other means familiar to their culture (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). But, how do we teach modern children and grandchildren to love God? Christian history proves that we have done an adequate job of teaching new generations to fear God or even to ignore God.
II. Love God with all your
A. Heart
• the center of the total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion: In your heart you know I'm an honest man.
• the center of emotion, especially as contrasted to the head as the center of the intellect: His head told him not to fall in love, but his heart had the final say.
• capacity for sympathy; feeling; affection: His heart moved him to help the needy.
B. Mind
• the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
• Psychology . the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities. • intellect or understanding, as distinguished from the faculties of feeling and willing; intelligence.
• a particular instance of the intellect or intelligence, as in a person.
C. Soul
• The spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come: arguing the immortality of the soul.
D. Strength
• The quality or state of being strong; bodily or muscular power; vigor.
• Mental power, force, or vigor.
• Moral power, firmness, or courage.
• Power by reason of influence, authority, resources, numbers, etc.
• Number, as of personnel or ships in a force or body: a regiment with a strength of 3000.
III. Love your neighbor as yourself
• Who are you?
• Do you love yourself?
• Do you love others?
• In Luke the man ask’s “who is my Neighbor?” When the man then wants to know who his neighbor is, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in the verses that follow.
• The hippie in the 60's said “I love everybody!” (But who do you love?)
• How do you demonstrate your love for God and others. Go Ye therefore.
The effect of Mark’s gospel today is to show that everyone, from the radical Jesus to the most conservative scribe, agrees about how basic this teaching is. And indeed, everyone agrees on what it means, concretely: Love of God with one’s whole being and love of neighbor as self is more important that the entirety of the ritual system. This is a remarkable statement for anyone to make anywhere. It is even more remarkable when made by a scribe standing in the ritual center of Judaism, the temple.
• But do you agree?
The destruction of the temple would decisively end the Jewish ritual system. Love of God and neighbor, however embodied ritually, and not the ritual system per se, is the necessary and sufficient center of Jewish and Christian life. But note the scribe does not say that the ritual is irrelevant. It isn’t. The ritual was and would remain the major public means by which the People of the Covenant express their love of God as the center of their values with their whole bodies and attentive minds. So the point of the commandment is not to reject the value of the community’s worship and acts of charity as part of that worship. Mark’s point was to note how ritual was necessary but not sufficient to fulfill God’s expectations of us. What happens symbolically in the gathered life of the worshiping community needs also to be happening concretely in the daily life of those who gather. The daily devotion to God and neighbor enlivens the worship of the gathered community, and the worship of the gathered community reconnects us to love God and neighbor daily.
• I hear today from people - “I am not religious, I am spiritual!”
It is simply not possible to be spiritual and not religious, nor religious and not spiritual, if we are to live out the great commandments of our Lord. It must always be both.
My father wrote a satiric poem-
I’m a Saint, a real live Saint, and no one here can say I ain’t.
Come to church most every day, pay my tithe and I’m ok.
Coming to Church won’t save you, but if you are saved, you will seek worship opportunities. Putting money in the offering plate won’t save you, but how you treat those less fortunate than you matters to God. Jesus only gave two other commandments in his whole ministry. “Feed” My Sheep and the Great Commission.
Hear, O People of God: The Lord our God [is] one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. . And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Benediction
You have seen the Savior. Go now in peace. And the blessing of God, One in Three and Three in One, go with you. Amen.
www.gbod.org/lectionary
www.myjewishlearning/shema
www.onlinedictionary.com
