Deuteronomy 6:1-9
June 9
David A. Davis
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In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus answers the question about the greatest commandment in the context of getting grilled by the religious leaders. It is part of a conversation that Matthew introduces by telling the reader “the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said.” Their first try was the question about taxes and whether paying them was allowed by the commandments and the law. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor and to God the things that are God’s”, Jesus said. Next some Sadducees came to Jesus and asked a complicated question about a woman who married seven times and all of her husbands died. They wanted to know who her husband would be in the resurrection. Part of Jesus response? “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
If was then that a Pharisee who was a lawyer asked about the greatest commandment in the law. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You love your neighbor as yourself.” There had to have been a follow-up question that didn’t make it into the print edition. There are always follow-up questions. “Excuse me, Teacher, did you say mind or might? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind or might? Moses was pretty clear as recorded in the Deuteronomist’s history. I’m pretty sure Moses said might as in strength. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Might. M-i-g-h-t. Not Mind.”
No, that part of the conversation isn’t here on the page. But one cannot listen to a reading from Matthew 22 and reading from Deuteronomy 6 without hearing the difference. Strength or mind. Might or Mind? Sitting in a Presbyterian church in a university town, being part of the Reformed tradition that includes an historic affirmation of an educated clergy, in a congregation that has always valued the life of the mind, always trying to remember that “might does not make right”, knowing that Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”, there is little doubt which of the two we would prefer, which of the two our ears prefer to hear, which of the two are easier for us to grasp. Love the Lord your God with all your mind.
Loving God with all your strength, all your might. Is it a reference to just loving God more, love God with more passion, loving God harder, more intensely? One of the letters to the churches in the Book of Revelation laments that the people had abandoned the “love they had at first”. It is as if one’s love for God should have that feeling of a first crush with all the butterflies, excitement, and spinning of the head.
Did Jesus say might or mind? “You have heard it said ‘you shall love God with all your might, but I say unto to you, you should love with your mind.” Would that it were that easy for those among us who would prefer to keep all conversations about God and Jesus and faith and discipleship and forgiveness and grace and righteousness and loving neighbor all safely academic and intellectual, tucked far up in the church’s own ivory tower. Heat, soul, and mind safely shrink-wrapped and sanitized, kept at a safe distance from reality, day to day life, our life in the flesh, and our life out in the world.
Matthew, Matthew, Matthew. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus answers the question about the great commandment like this: “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.” Mind and strength. In Luke? Luke places the Great Commandment on lips of a lawyer. The lawyer asks Jesus, “”What must I do to inherit eternal life.” Jesus responds, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus then says, “You have given the right answer; do this and you will live” Moses, Jesus, is it mind or strength? And the answer, of course, is yes!
Loving God with heart, soul, strength. In Hebrew, the word carries the connotation of force, exceeding force. Love God to the highest degree. One word included in the Hebrew dictionary definition is “muchness.” Love the Lord your God with all your might, all your strength, with exceeding force, with full abundance, with all of your muchness. As one paraphrase puts it, love God with all you got! Love the Lord your God with everything that you are, with everything you have. Out of your abundance, love the Lord your God. With heart and soul and with the full force of everything that defines you, love the Lord your God. There is no part of your life that is free from God’s expectation and God’s command. All is in service to your love of God. All of your muchness, all of your earthy, fleshy, day to day, muchness. Write that on your doorposts!
Not just on your doorposts. Not just on your forehead or on your hand. Keep it all close in your heart. Recite it all to your children. Talk about it all when you are home and when you are away, when you go to bed at night and when you get up to start the day. Don’t just write it on the doorposts. For that matter, don’t just write it up here in the chancel. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Live it like you mean it. How you live it, how you live out in the world, how you serve, how you learn, how you give, how you love and how your faith seeps into every nook and cranny of life. Live it with all you got.
When I was a seminary student now four decades ago, my campus job was working in the Speech studios. Back then they were crammed on the third floor of a classroom building. The technology for recording was all reel to reel. The job included recording preachers in chapel, guest lectures all over campus, and providing classroom support. In a class where students learned stuff like baptizing babies and doing burial services, we would pump the sound of a crying baby or traffic noise into the room eventually making it so loud no one could hear a word. I remember the day I was taught how to load the reel to reel machines and edit and splice tape. The person in charge said to me, “I am not going to say anything but I want you to watch my hands very carefully.” His pedagogy was a sort of forerunner to putting together something form IKEA with only pictures. But I learned by watching.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached about not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing when it came to giving alms and when you pray you should go into your room and pray in secret. It was Jesus warning against the public display of one’s piety that was more show than substance. An attempt by the overly religious to impress others rather than be faithful to God. A religious leaders version of a politician playing to the base. When Jesus welcomed the children everyone noticed. When Jesus broke barriers and talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, the disciples saw it. When Jesus stopped to heal the woman who reached out to touch his clothes, the crowds watched. When Jesus shout down death and called Lazarus out of the tomb, Mary and Martha were right there. When Jesus forgave those who were killing him from up on the cross, all who came to see that spectacle, they saw forgiveness too. When Jesus healed and liberated and took down and comforted and cared and loved and forgave, the disciples, the crowds, the church and the world ever since watched. You and I watch Jesus and only by his grace and the work of the Holy Spirit and with a whole lot of help from God, hopefully we have learned something about loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
This week the Overseas Mission Study Center over at the seminary invited area pastors for an afternoon tea. It was a smaller gathering and most of us there had a relationship with the Center and the visiting scholars the last few years. The purpose was to thank us and our congregations and to brainstorm a bit about ways to build more pastoral and community support for the international guests. The staff members pointed out the primary mission of the OMSC is to provide space for rest and scholarly work. They shared the challenges the global partners face from loneliness, to transportation, to language, to learning more about America. At one point, Easten Law, the associate director shared something I can’t get out of my mind. One of the reasons the Center staff want to nurture relationships with local congregations, Eastin said, is that these faithful servants of World Christianity only know the American Church by what they see and read from media coverage around the world. We want them to see a different side to the Christian life in America. He was inviting us to help them learn and see a church and congregational life different from the one that dominates the news. How will they learn if without a congregation full of people striving to follow Jesus and love the God with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their strength?
When you love God with all of your strength, might, being, how you live your life out in the world becomes an act of worship itself that gives glory to God. Love the Lord your God with everything that you are, with everything you have. Out of your abundance, love the Lord your God. With heart and soul and with the full force of everything that defines you, love the Lord your God. There is no part of your life that is free from God’s expectation and God’s command. All is in service to your love of God both here in this place and out in the world. Lover the God who created you, the God who saves you, the God who loves you, love that God with the whole of your earthy, fleshy, day to day, self. With all the muchness you can muster.