At the end of the basketball
game, I could tell that my son was not as enthusiastic as he had been at the
beginning of the season. I asked him how things were going with the team, and I
mentioned that he wasn’t hustling quite like he had before. He responded,
“Well, I guess my heart’s just not in it right now. And, besides, I was
thinking about that writing project that’s due tomorrow.” He was in the
game—physically. But that was not enough. To play well, to have an impact on
the game, he needed to have his head and heart in the game as well. Sometimes,
we’re the same way with regards to our faith…
Before we read the passage for
today’s sermon, we need to back up and say a few words about our Old Testament
reading this morning—the reading of the Ten Commandments (see notes below). Many
folks suppose these commandments were all about setting a moral code for the
people of Israel. To be sure, there are moral issues here—murder, adultery,
lying. But, keeping Sabbath is not moral…nor is the call to have one God. More
than providing moral guidance, these commandments were established as community-forming
standards. One God, one day of rest, particular ways of dealing with each
other, boundaries of behavior, expectations: the Ten Commandments provide the
foundation of what will become Torah—the Law (613 commandments!)—the framework
for individual and community life and faith for Israel.
With that foundation laid, let’s turn
now to Deut. 6:4-9:
4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I
give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about
them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down
and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your
foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Perhaps we recognize the first
two verses as something Jesus says during his ministry. Of course, our story
today and through the rest of this year leading us towards Christmas is focused
on the Old Testament, but we cannot help but remember Jesus’ response to the
‘greatest commandment’ question:
28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.
Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the
commandments, which is the most important?”
29“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O
Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark
12:28-34 (NIV)
While Jesus speaks only the first
few lines of this passage from Deuteronomy, in all likelihood he was employing
a literary device or element of speech we call “synecdoche” (syn·ec·do·che |
say: ‘sin-ECK-doe-key’). Synecdoche is “a figure of speech by which a part is
put for the whole (such as ‘fifty sails’ for fifty ships), the whole for a part
(such as ‘society’ for high society), the species for the genus (such as
‘cutthroat’ for assassin), the genus for the species (such as a ‘creature’ for
a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (such as ‘boards’ for
stage).[1] By
bringing out the opening lines of this passage, Jesus calls to mind the whole
passage for his hearers (and subsequent readers of the Gospel). And if Jesus
thinks this is one of the greatest commandments and passages, we need to sit up
and take notice!
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one—
This is a reminder to the people
of Israel who have been living in and are not walking out of a polytheistic
world that they did not need a myriad of gods and goddesses to care for them.
The ONE God of Israel was enough. And, we need not think that the ancient world
was the only world dealing with multiple gods. Of course, in some Asian
cultures today, various or many gods are worshiped. In our own world, we, too,
are torn between the gods of our making and the God of our religious
faith—trusting at one moment the power of our money to fix our problems,
confident in another moment that modern medicine or technology will correct our
ills, faith the next minute in a political process to make our stresses go away.
When all of these gods of our making fail, perhaps we fall to our knees before
the One God. We, too, need to be reminded that there is one God—One in whom to
place our trust, confidence, and faith.
5 Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength—
Lip service was not enough. Love
of God needed to be expressed through the whole being. Our love of God should
be evident in how we live our lives, every facet of our lives. Our love of God
would be evident in ‘heart matters,’ ‘spiritual matters,’ and the very living
out of our daily lives and daily work. When we worship, we worship with our
hearts, our souls, and our bodies. When we pray, we pray with heart, soul, and
strength. When we serve, we serve with heart, soul, and strength. When we
minister, we minister to the hearts, souls, and bodies. This passage seems to
indicate that we are ‘all in’…or we really aren’t in.
6 These commandments that I
give you today are to be on your hearts—
For the ancient near-eastern
world, the heart was more than simply emotion or the organ that moved blood.
“‘Heart’…occurs over one thousand times in the Bible…denotes a person's center
for both physical and emotional-intellectual-moral activities….”[2]
These commandments were and are to be a part of and impact our physical life,
our emotional life, our intellectual life, and our moral life. In other words,
vs. 6 is a reiteration of vs. 5 – let these commandments and your love for God
permeate your lives. We need to let these community forming foundational
directives permeate our lives if we’re going to be people of the one God.
7 Impress them on your
children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the
road, when you lie down and when you get up—
These commandments are not an
individual, “personal” thing—they are to be shared with family, impressed upon
the children. These commandments are to be a part of daily talk. How different
was that world from our world—a world where spiritual issues are often
discussed rarely (if at all) outside of the Church. This passage encourages the
people to be thinking about the community-forming commandments of God when they
go to bed and when they get up…on the way to work and on the way home. How
different our lives might be if we were to think of the things of God at the
end and beginning of each day, throughout the work day, if we were to tell our
children these things daily. We probably wouldn’t even need reminders in
courthouses and schools…
8 Tie them as symbols on
your hands and bind them on your foreheads—
Here, Moses (see notes below)
speaks symbolically…even though some groups have taken this part rather
literally at times so that members of the groups wore little boxes with a small
parchment of the commandments (phylacteries; see Matt. 23:5) on their heads and
tied copies on their arms. Understood metaphorically, the commandments are to
guide what we think (on your heads) and what we do (on your hands). Again, this
passage urges the hearers/readers to make this faith thing a part of our whole
lives, to allow the Scriptures and the life of faith to guide every part of our
lives.
9 Write them on the
doorframes of your houses and on your gates—
These are not just about our ‘interior’
lives—these commandments are about our community life…the life of family and
the greater life among neighbors. When I was in high-school in Decatur, GA, one
of my best friends was Neil. I recall going home with him after school, and
every time got to his house, he would reach out and touch a small brass
‘do-dad’ that was nailed a bit off center and slightly twisted to the door
frame of his front door. Around the second or third time visiting his house, I
asked him, “What’s that?” He explained that there was a small scroll of the
commandments in that brass box and that many Jewish people practiced this
tradition of having these at the entrance to their homes. Older now and after
much reflection, I wonder if it’s not so much about being at the ‘entrance’ to
their homes but rather at the ‘exit’ from their homes…something to remind
people who they are as they step out of the safety and openness of the home
into the world with all of its unpredictability and temptations.
In the end, we have to come back
to Jesus after all. We’re Christians, right? So, we can’t preach a Sunday
sermon and not bring in Christ. Jesus was asked which (of the 613) commandment
is ‘the most important,’ the greatest. He does not go back to the decalogue
(the Ten); rather, he selects this passage from Deut. 6 with all of its
significance and connection. Perhaps his intention—as was Moses’—was to call
people back to a faith and a trust that was all-inclusive. What we hear and
‘amen!’ on Sunday must be lived out in our lives on Monday and Tuesday. What we
affirm in Sunday worship must impact our relationships at home and at work on
Wednesday and Thursday. The love we claim we have for God must be reflected in
what we trust, what we put our confidence in, on Friday and Saturday. The
commandments of God must be a part of our conversations with our children, a
conversation too often wrapped in movies, sports, culture…or simply
non-existent thanks to smartphones and other devices. To live as God’s people,
God’s words and God’s Word must suffuse our lives, must be all in our
lives—individual and community.
When we’re ‘all in’ and allow
God’s Word to be ‘all in’ our lives, we know how to make decisions, we know how
to guide our families, and we know how to live, to work, to vote, to serve, to
lead in this society. When we’re ‘all in,’ our lives speak through our merely
living. Our actions and words become hope and healing for a sometimes hopeless
and hurting world.
My son finished his writing
project, watched Hoosiers that weekend, and was the star player at the next
game. He was ‘all in.’ What about us with regards to our faith? What about our
commitment to God, to the Church, and to our neighbor? Yeah, that was the other
part of Jesus’ response, right? Love you
neighbor as yourself. Are we ready to be ‘all in’ today?
Amen.
-----------
NOTES:
While some may be tempted to take
an either/or approach to the readings for this week—either the commandments of
Deut. 5 or the Shema of Deut. 6, really both of these passages need to be read.
Deut. 5 is too ‘big’ to preach on one Sunday, and we can’t really understand
Deut. 6 without being reminded of Deut. 5.
I find the Ten Commandments a bit
too much to try to preach in a single setting. This would be a good series for
the summer when we can tackle one or two commandments at a time, each Sunday.
We could have sermons of depth addressing these important directives that form
the basis of much of Western society. So, I would not try to preach the
Commandments this Sunday.
Some folks may be tempted to talk authorship, about “J, E, P, D” writers (if you don’t know
what this is, no worries!) Tradition indicates that Moses is the author (though
that’s rather improbable.) Even so, I can promise you that our congregants are
not going to be edified or encouraged, changed or more committed, for knowing
about the theories of possible authorship of this book. For simplicity, I
simply refer to Moses as the author. The sermon time is not the moment to drag
up our seminary knowledge. Don’t be tempted by such a distraction…unless you
find a way to use this information to somehow strengthen the faith of your
hearers and encourage them towards discipleship.
Happy Preaching!
[1] From
the Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synecdoche
[2] See
more here: https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/heart/
