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Shema yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad. \xa0
Ve'ahavta et Adonai eloheykha bekhol-levavkha u'vekhol nafshekha u'vekhol me'odekha.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.\xa0
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

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This text is known as \u201cThe Shema.\u201d It is so named for it\u2019s first word in Hebrew which is, \u201cshema,\u201d the Hebrew word for listening and obeying.\xa0 Jews of later years would recite these words twice every day\u2014once in the morning and then again in the evening.\xa0

You will also recognize these words, of course, as that \u201cfirst and greatest commandment\u201d that Jesus gives in the New Testament.\xa0 How can he name the Shema as greater than any of the Ten Commandment Words we just looked at, you may wonder.\xa0 Well, it\u2019s because in some way, this command to love the Lord firstly, only, and completely is the inverse, positive version of the \u201cyou shall nots\u201d that began the Ten Words of the Covenant in chapter 5.\xa0

The Ten Words, aside from the command to \u201cobserve the Sabbath\u201d and \u201chonour parents\u201d are all negative commands\u2014prohibitions that tell us what not to do.\xa0 Once our life and heart have been swept clean in this way however, it\u2019s important that something positive and constructive comes in.\xa0 The Shema is just that sort of command.\xa0 In the ever-growing absence of covetousness and idols from your heart and life, a positive love for the Lord your God is to take up residence instead.\xa0 Indeed, if Jesus is to be taken seriously, this positive love for the Lord may in fact be that thing that drives the lusts and the idols from our hearts.\xa0 This positive force of love for the God who has first loved us is the power that enables us to keep faith with the Ten Words of the Relational Covenant.\xa0

It really is fascinating what Jesus does here by naming the Shema as the first and greatest of commands.\xa0 There is a sense in which the Shema is simply a summation of the Ten Words.\xa0 In that case, we might say that Jesus is simply naming the Covenant with its Ten Words as primary to everything else.\xa0 But there is also a sense in which the Shema differs from the Ten Words.\xa0 A sense in which a positive command is different from a negative one.\xa0 A sense in which a proactive love is more significant to shaping the direction of a life than a limiting prohibition.\xa0 It may be too much to say, but I do wonder if the difference is like unto the difference between the negative, limiting law which brings death, and the positive, constructive force of the Spirit that brings life.

Think of it: pruning and growing.\xa0 Emptying and filling.\xa0 Deconstructing and Reconstructing.\xa0 Both are part of the rhythm of life, and both necessarily have their place.\xa0 But life is no life at all if the \u201cpruning\u201d itself is the ultimate goal for the plant.\xa0 No, the pruning, the cutting back, the emptying, the prohibitions always serve a goal other than themselves\u2014namely the goals of life, growth, filling, and flourishing relationships.\xa0 The emphasis does not finally fall on the limiting prohibitions of the law, but on the gracious growth enabled by the Spirit.\xa0 Both the pruning prohibitions and the imperatives to growth have their place, but Jesus places the emphasis finally on that growth imperative of love: The Shema.\xa0

At times we pit these two impulses against each other, as if one must win out at the total exclusion of the other.\xa0 Many of our present church conflicts and culture wars revolve around such false dichotomies.\xa0 But the scriptures always hold these two in a dialectic tension.\xa0 The two impulses have to remain in dialogue with each other, as they do in Deuteronomy 5 and 6.\xa0 Neither can be flattened nor excluded.\xa0 And yet, Jesus reminds us that one impulse is to be the leading partner in the dance\u2014the impulse to whom the other defers.\xa0

\u201c\u2019Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.\u2019\xa0 This is the first and greatest commandment. \xa0And the second is like it: \u2018Love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.\u201d\xa0 \xa0\xa0

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