❤️ Love God
✨ You’re invited on a journey into one of the greatest commandments ever spoken. Together let’s explore how loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength opens us to loving one another. 🌍❤️
📖 Scripture Reading
Mark 12:28–34
28 One 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. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
You can listen to an audio conversation about this post by clicking here.
🕊️ The Shema: A Covenant Prayer
I’ve got a couple of newish words for you this morning. The first might be familiar: shema.
The Shema is the name of a prayer spoken by Jewish people in the first century. It was a covenantal prayer, much like our Lord’s Prayer, in that it bound people to one another. If you prayed the Shema, you were part of the faith family.
It comes from Deuteronomy 6:
“Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.”
🗝️ Key Words in Hebrew
Lev (heart): the center of will, thought, and emotion—not just feelings.
Nephesh (soul/life): the whole self, your life-breath, your person.
Me’od (strength/very muchness): often understood as “muchness” or “everything you’ve got”—resources, energy, capacity.
📚 Shema in Translation and Tradition
When translated into Greek (the Bible Jesus and Mark’s audience often knew):
Kardia = heart
Psyche = soul
Dynamis = strength/power
Dianoia = mind/understanding (added in some manuscript traditions)
This prayer, which began as an affirmation of faith among Jewish people, was interpreted through the years by different philosophers and scholars:
Philo (Jewish philosopher, 1st century): focused on intellectual devotion—study, learn, and respond with wisdom.
Qumran community (Dead Sea Scrolls): loved God and one another fully, but excluded outsiders. Loving “neighbor” meant only insiders.
Rabbinic tradition (later Talmud): taught that:
Heart = with good and evil impulses
Soul = even if it costs your life
Strength = all your wealth and possessions
All meant all. Nothing—desire, life, wealth—could be withheld from love of God.
🙏 Jesus Expands the Shema
No wonder folks have engaged with this text for centuries. Do we treat the Shema as an intellectual exercise? As an exclusive claim? Do we really offer everything—even the messy bits?
Jesus expands the Shema in today’s gospel.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart (not just emotions but the seat of will and conscience), with all your soul (the living being, self, life-breath), with all your mind (the capacity for thinking, reasoning, intention), and with all your strength (your ‘muchness’—your resources, energy, wealth…yes, even what we’ll be asking you about at Pledge Sunday!).”
Then Jesus adds from Leviticus 19:18:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
He links the two! A new commandment: love God by loving your neighbor.
Mark underscores this by noting the scholar substitutes understanding for mind—a nuance that still makes sense.
🏛️ Context in Mark’s Gospel
Remember, Jesus had been teaching in parables that infuriated religious leaders who hoarded God’s love. They tried to trap him with questions about taxes, resurrection, and covenant law—splitting hairs to exclude people.
So imagine his relief when one teacher finally asked a question that mattered.
And imagine the shock when the teacher agreed: loving God and neighbor is worth more than sacrifices.
🌍 Love for Everyone
Here’s the profound twist: this holy covenant isn’t just for insiders. It’s for everyone. Loving God is accessible to all and meant to be shared.
Jesus affirms a holistic love of God that engages our entire being. It challenges us when we say we grieve over violence but don’t act to reduce it. It calls us to integrate care for the poor into feelings, thoughts, and actions. It urges us to see God’s love in the stranger’s eyes.
✨ An Integrated Love
It’s not enough to memorize scripture, work tirelessly on missions, sit in prayer, or study theology. Jesus commands us to do it all.
The love of God requires every element of our lives—tethering us to the Holy, maintaining the covenant, and living the words of the Shema, the Lord’s Prayer, the BCC covenant of 1896, and the meal we share at the communion table.
To love God, we must bring our whole selves.
🚶 A Congregational Challenge
Striving to become integrated people is the goal. That means noticing what we lack and using our gifts to shore up those places. It may mean seeking out challenging books, engaging with people who scare us, checking in on our feelings, or reassessing how we share resources with neighbors in need.
🌟 The Love of Our Lifetime
I wonder how you will grow. I wonder what new insights that growth will afford you, and how you will share them with our community in the coming year.
And I wonder how your love of God will change the world, in Jesus’ name.
Loving God is an adventure of faith. It is a quest to grow closer to the Holy and to one another. It is the love of our lifetime.
🌟 “As you go into this week, consider one small way you might bring your whole self—heart, soul, mind, and strength—into love for God and neighbor. I’d love to hear how you’re discovering this love of a lifetime.” ❤️👥