This discussion built on the comments from Stephen Travis, The Bible in Time, section 20, pp. 48-50.
In what follows we will observe that the Shema is:
- responsive, that is, it articulates concisely our response to God's initiating provision
- comprehensive, that is, summoning us to respond with all we are and all we have
- abiding, that is, valid for all of God's people at each stage of the unfolding narrative from creation and into the new creation
The Command Itself
Hear = Heed
Their are two parties involved in this passage.
- The Lord (YHWH), who is our God. Note the possessive our, which is full of significance. He and he alone is God.
- Israel, a term used for the people of this one God. If you recall the story to this point, Israel we know is beloved, liberated, drawn near by God to himself, and blessed with the Torah (God's instructions) and the tabernacle (God's special presence).
What is Love?
The summons to love God displays a pattern we have seen throughout our exploration of the OT: God's provision elicits and directs our response. Though our response can be described with multiple, complementary terms (e.g., worship, fear, trust, obey), the writer here employs one that may well include them all: love.
Is love just a feeling? Is it just a belief? Is it only a private, internal affair? It's best to answer no on all three accounts. Love as here described is more than emotion, though it will include emotion. It is more than belief, though it requires belief. It is more than a private affair as it requires an interdependent community to function properly. This passage, and Deuteronomy in its entirety, serves as an antiodote to misconstructions of Christianity that portray it in only these reductionistic terms.
Love here is well captured by the concept of loyalty. Loyalty to God, to his person, to his people, to his project. It's a package deal. You can't very well love God and despise those whom he adores and dismiss his project as irrelevant. No. To embrace God is to join his community, the community with a commission.
We are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. See Professor Travis' definitions here. Love is comprehensive. One easy way to sum up these three (heart, soul, and strength) is to say that we are to love God with all we are and all we have. Such a holistic response undercuts the misleading teaching that we are to put God first, the family second, the work third, etc. God here is not first among competing claims. He is all in all. Our love for God is to include and encompass our love for family and work. He is not at the top of the list, but rather is the circle in which everything else is situated. To love family is to love God. It's not like we can say, "Oh I've loved God. Now, what's next on the agenda?" Such compartmentalization is disallowed.
A Marital Metaphor
A primary metaphor for this kind of responsive, comprehensive loving loyalty is that of marriage. You can see hints of this already in Exodus (19:4; 20:2-3; 34:14-16). Before we unpack this further, let's review the essense of the Mosaic covenant, the central motif of Deuteronomy that shapes the historical passages which follow (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings).
Loyalty leads to blessing
Disloyalty brings a forfeiture of blessing
The prophets, God's spokesmen, employed this motif as the basis for their critique of wayward Israel.
We are to love God with all we are and all we have. This is the vertical dimension.
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the horizontal dimension.
Violations of the first were tantamount to idolatry, or infidelity, or adultery.
Violations of the second were seen in the abuse of the vulnerable: immorality and injustice.
Speaking of covenant infidelity as marital unfaithfulness is prominent in the prophetic books of Hosea and Jeremiah. Hosea spoke God's word to the northern Kingdom in the decades leading up to their exile in 722 BCE. Below are the insights of Professor Walter Brueggemann, from his book The Theology of the Book of Jeremiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
The tradition of Hosea exhibits remarkable innovation that will subsequently be taken up by Jeremiah. Most spectacularly, Hosea articulates the covenant of Sinai in terms of deep interpersonal imagery of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. While the personal experience of the prophet is often given considerable attention in scholarship, the more important gain, in this judgment, is Hosea's daring capacity to extend this imagery to Israel's covenant with YHWH. This interpretative memory, now casting covenant in interpersonal categories, keeps the covenant from being a mere formal transaction and marks it instead by pathos and pain, deep infidelity and betrayal, and the capacity for newness. The prize articulation of this act of prophetic imagination is the long poem of Hosea 2:2-23, a poem that David J. A. Clines has shown has remarkable artistic symmetry. In verses 2-13, the wounded, betrayed, angry husband YHWH terminates the marriage with fickle Israel. In these verses, albeit cast in patriarchal rhetoric, YHWH is presented as a demanding sovereign. The poem turns, however, in verses 14-15 to evidence YHWH's pathosfilled yearning for reattachment to Israel, a yearning that becomes a full renewal of the relationship in verses 16-23. The sweep of this poetry is breathtaking; it voices the rich complexity of the covenant and the daring vulnerability of YHWH, who adjudicates between YHWH's own righteous wrath and YHWH's most elemental yearning for relatedness. This capacity of YHWH, as given to us by the poet, is paralleled in the remarkable poem of Hosea 11:1-9, wherein YHWH again moves from anger to seeking love that makes newness possible. This poetic articulation positions the covenant of Sinai in a radically new and different way…
In a variety of prophetic speeches of judgment (or judgment-speeches), Hosea assumes that Israel has violated the covenant with YHWH and is therefore under threat. Given the pathos of YHWH in Hosea 2:14-15 and 11:8-9, however, even in the midst of harsh, ferocious divine judgment, the rhetoric of the prophet continues to summon Israel back into the covenant. Evidently, in the horizon of this prophet, a broken covenant did not necessarily signify termination; the prophet (and perforce YHWH) continued to hope for a restored relationship. For the most part, the possibility of a return to YHWH is mentioned only to declare that Israel has refused to turn. Israel has been wayward (6:1) and is invited to return (14:1), but does not in fact do so (7:10). Thus, even the utilization of the motif of restoration characteristically attests to Israel's failure.
It is to be noted that in the initiative taken by YHWH mentioned in Hosea 2:14-17 and 11:8-9, echoed in the text of 14:4, the restoration does not depend on Israel's repentance but only on YHWH's singular initiative grounded in the reality that YHWH's seeking love for Israel overcomes even YHWH's legitimate wrath. At the end of the Book of Hosea, in a verse that is situated beyond judgment, it is affirmed that Israel does return, does draw close to YHWH, and so prospers:
They shall again live beneath my shadow,
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine,
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon. (Hos 14:7)
It will be evident in what follows that themes adumbrated [that is, foreshadowed] by Hosea become the primary staples of the Jeremian tradition. Hosea, well situated in the Sinai tradition, exercises his immense poetic imagination to give the covenant depth and richness beyond the presentation of the Sinai Pericope [that is, passage] in Exodus 19-24. In so doing, Hosea makes the covenant tradition pertinent to his own eight-century BCE crisis in a way that is profound and even electrifying.
(To see how the imagery of Hosea influenced Jeremiah, see Dr. Brueggemann's comments in our Insights section).
The Abiding Nature of the Shema
The lessons of the Shema apply to the people of God in the OT times, in the NT times, and in our times. The Shema has abiding value. Though it is transcultural, its expression will change as cultures change and as we move through the unfolding narrative. Remember how the Decalogue assumed the cultural of its day, assenting without comment to slavery and patriarchy. We'll see below how Jesus drew on the Shema to communicate where the chief responsibility of humanity lies.
Excursus: The Shema makes it plain our relationship with God is front and center. Such biblical teaching gives some credence to the expression that Christianity is not a religion but is a relationship. But is that true? You'd have to contort the definition of religion to exclude Christianity from its parameters. In what department at the University is Christianity taught? The religion department. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Christianity is a religion, the center of which is a relationship, both with God and with others. Ours is a religion--we are a gathered community that worships an unseen deity, reveres a sacred text, and practices sacramental rituals. The expression of our relationships has inescapable marks of religion. The etymology of the word religion, after all, means re-connection. Isn't what we're all about? Reconnecting with God, his people, and his project?
Jesus and the Shema
Mark 12:28-34
One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
The teacher of religious law replied, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth by saying that there is only one God and no other. And I know it is important to love him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law.”
Realizing how much the man understood, Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.
So, the Shema, first articulated on the verge of entry into the land in the 13th century BCE, is picked up by Jesus in the first century CE and made the center of his teaching. The Jews in his day voiced the Shema as their daily prayer and we might do well to follow suit. See McKnight's book (above).
The Shema is responsive, comprehensive, and abiding. How might it shape our relationship with God and each other? How might it shape our religion?
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