A long day today. This is my Course of Study weekend. Course of Study is when the local pastors in Indiana get together at the University of Indianapolis for a variety of classes in their on-going training to do the job most of them are already doing. My job is to teach preaching. I’ve been doing this for many years now, and every year I’m amazed at the passion and dedication of the local pastors. I enjoy this task, even though it takes time that I sometimes don’t think I have. But I make space for it because it is important. Important because I think preaching is one of the most important tasks that we do. Important for the life of the community, important for the growth of each disciple and the whole family together. But it is also important for me to do because I have spent a lot of time reflecting and learning and studying about this unique thing that we do called preaching. The main reason I do it is because I love it. I love learning about it, studying the history of preaching, listening to other preach and talk about preaching. It is my thing. But it’s not a thing to keep to myself. This gift of knowledge and experience is not a gift to the recipient, but a gift for the community. We are given gifts from God in order to share them. Gifts of the Spirit are designed to build up the church, not simply to build up individuals.
Sorry, I usually give you a little more warning before I climb into the pulpit. I usually try to sneak it in when you aren’t looking, when you’re laughing at the goofy stuff or puzzling over the obscure stuff. Here I just blurted it out. Share your gifts. There, done, time to watch college football.
Except there is a little more to it than that. A little more that we are trying to explore, to examine. At Southport UMC we are launching a new take on ministry. Specifically student or youth ministry, but all ministry in the end. It’s called Family Ministry, and on one level it means that we are trying to equip families to do the task of discipling their young people. It isn’t something that the church can do in the limited time we have contact with them, it is something that families need to do all the time. Need to be in the business of sharing faith with their own kids, grandkids, neighbor kids, kids at church and kids out of the church. There’s an urgency in sharing this faith. And it comes not from a fear of institutional collapse, but from a passion for the Word of God.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Now this is the commandment-- the statutes and the ordinances-- that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The heart of this passage is the heart of the Jewish faith. It is called the “shema” because that is the first word in Hebrew, and is the word for hear. Hear O Israel. It is a command and a hope. It is the desire of all the people of God to live in love with the God of salvation, the God of their ancestors. It is the summation of the law. All those long lists of statutes and ordinances - it isn’t just the ten, those are only the start - are summed up in this statement.
So, the “shema” follows an introduction and a promise. Pay attention, the people are told. Pay attention to all the statutes and ordinances, and to help you pay attention, let me put it in an easy to remember format. Pay attention so that it will go well with you in the land we are about to occupy. So that the nation we are about to become is a nation worthy of God. Pay attention, otherwise we will fall back into slavery, to self, to sin, to the things which divide us. Pay attention to this: Hear O Israel. Love. Love with everything in you. Love with your whole being. Love with that spark of God that dwells in you. Love with intentionality. Heart - Soul - Strength.
Notice, as an aside here, that Jesus changes it a little bit when he presents the summation of the law. Jesus says Heart and Soul and Mind and Strength. Where does the mind come from? Is Jesus more concerned than the ancient Jews were about thinking? Well, no. When a Jewish thinker or teacher says heart it was never to be interpreted as a strictly emotional aspect. To love God with all your heart is to love God with all that makes you human. It meant emotions and intellect. It was all wrapped up together. But by the time Jesus came along, the Greeks had influenced thinking in such a way that heart and mind were seen as different things. Even things that could be separated. According to the Greeks, you could become a being of pure intellect, divorced from feelings which only get in the way. That’s the Stoic line of thinking. Other Greek thought schools were less harsh on the emotive side of our humanity, but definitely still saw it as a lesser aspect of who we are. Jesus, aware of all this thinking, wanted to put back in harmony heart and mind and so when He sums up the law He includes both as equals. Like His Jewish ancestors he puts the two back together.
Your soul, then, is that aspect of divinity within you. We were all, Genesis tells us, created in the image of God. Soul is that image, that part of us that God-breathed. And here’s an important point, you can’t ultimately separate those things. Our humanness and our divine spark, or our heart and our soul together is what makes us what we are, who we are. This is not a way of separating us into component parts, but a way of describing us - the singular us - in different ways. Then strength is the doing. It’s one thing to love in heart or mind or soul, but it is only real when it comes out in our actions. How do we live our love of God? To love God with all our strength is to do something because we love, not just think something.
Having presented the “shema” our text then turns to a call to do something with it. And what do we do with this law, this understanding? We talk about it. We bind it to us. We write it on the doorposts. Do you get the impression that they thought this was important? That they wanted to be sure that this wasn’t forgotten?
In the next couple of weeks we’ll look at the tying the law to us, and then the writing on the doorposts. This first week it’s just the talking about it. Look again at verse seven. Recite them to your children. Talk about them at home and away, when you lie down and when you rise. Talk about them. Especially to the children. Recite them, over and over. And then talk about it. Talk.
What do we talk about? We talk about a lot of things. Researchers tell us that on average people use in the neighborhood of 16,000 words a day. Some much more, some much less. What they haven’t studied yet is what do we talk about. How much of our words are used for trivialities? Stuff that doesn’t ultimately matter all that much? And how much of our 16,000 words are used for what matters the most? We have gotten to the point where faith is one of those things we don’t talk about. We don’t want to force our views on anyone, even our children. We want them to be able to make up their own minds. But if we never talk about faith before them, upon what will they base their decisions? Who would choose faith if you didn’t grow up in an atmosphere where faith mattered? We are losing a generation because we haven’t listened to Deuteronomy 6. We haven’t talked. And it is perhaps time we started.
Family ministry says we are going to help families talk about vital issues of faith. We plan to equip parents and other family members to do better in sharing their faith. In talking about what matters when they are home and when they are away. To help them talk about deep matters of the heart when they lie down and when they rise.
How’s this going to happen? Well, come and see. And help us figure out ways to continue the conversation of faith. Help us do this thing called making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Shalom,
Derek
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