What does it mean to be a Christian? How do you pick one out from a crowd? Is it by the way they act? Is it how they dress? My father used to work at Warner Lambert as a salesman. He sold Rolaids and other over the counter pharmaceuticals. During his meetings that he would go to, he would tell me that people would actually turn to him after they had sworn and apologize. He didn’t give people dirty looks about swearing. He didn’t try to make a big deal about his faith. But people knew from his demeanor and from his own language what he was about. And so, when they were having a conversation with him and a swear word slipped out, they would actually apologize to him for it. Basically, they acted differently around him because of the way he acted. Somehow, his lifestyle spoke to them in a way that didn’t need words and they knew he was a man of faith without him having to make a big deal about it. But again I ask, what does it mean to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus?
As good evangelicals it usually is defined by our having a personal relationship with Christ. It involves having asked Jesus into our heart, probably when we were children and most likely at camp. It involves trying to follow the commandments and live good lives.
These are all good things, but are they really the center of what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Christ? Maybe there is something else that better defines being a Christian than a prayer you said as a child or what you wear or whether you have a fish on the bumper of your car. Maybe the center of Christianity is actually found in today’s scripture, when Jesus tells us what the greatest commandment is: we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are called to live lives that center around these commandments. This is the center of what it means to be a Christian.
1. A Good Jewish Boy
Jesus grew up as a good Jewish boy. This is something that we sometimes forget. He was raised with a religion and with habits that those around him shared with him. He traveled to Jerusalem as a child for Passover. He participated in the holy celebrations of his day. His parents brought him up to go to synagogue every Saturday and even they were surprised by his religious fervor when, during his twelfth year, he got so caught up in discussions going on at the temple that he missed the train home. Jesus followed the religious customs of the day. We later see that he picked and chose certain rules and laws that he would follow, making a point that the Old Testament laws, like the celebration of the Sabbath, were for our good, they weren’t just things we had to follow.
But one of the habits that Jesus most likely did follow was the recitation of the Shema multiple times through the day. The Shema was recited aloud when you rose and when you retired; when you woke up and when you went to sleep. And it came from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. It began with the Hebrew word, Shema, which means “Hear”, thus it’s name. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
The Shema. It was the first “prayer” that Jewish children would learn, and it would be spoken at least twice a day by those who took their faith seriously. Jesus took his faith seriously. We can expect that Jesus participated in the strange custom of repeating this aloud each morning as he awoke and then to saying it again at night when he prepared for sleep.
I can hear the questions already. “Why repeat the same thing over and over again? Isn’t it just going to become vain repetition?” Or “that isn’t even a prayer, it’s a command from God. What’s the point of repeating it on such a regular basis?”
Well, I think there was something healthy that happened when people of Israel repeated this to themselves each morning and each evening. It helped them set their minds on the right path for the day. It wasn’t a prayer designed to get them in contact with God. Rather it was a communication from God designed to help them focus right away in their day about what was important… Loving God with all their being. The Shema reminded them what was important in life. Love God and pay attention to his commandments.
Jesus grew up with this. Those around him grew up with it as well. His disciples did, the Pharisees did, the teacher of the law who asks him a question in today’s reading did. I’m not sure about Matthew, the disciple who had been a tax collector. He had probably fallen away from his faith as a Jew when he became a tax collector, but I would imagine that when he began following Jesus he probably started up again. The disciples didn’t see their following of Jesus as an end to their Judaism. Rather they saw him as a completion of what they believed and did as Jews. And so the Shema was important to them. It was a center of what they understood their faith, their very way of life, to be about. It was the true center of what it meant to be Jewish. And so, of course, Jesus came in and amended it.
II. Jesus’ Amendment
In today’s scripture we are told that one of the teachers of the law came and heard Jesus, the Pharisees and the Sadducees debating. This teacher of the law was probably the equivalent of a seminary professor. Here is someone who knew his Torah or first 5 books of the Bible. Here is someone who definitely recited the Shema on a daily basis. It must have been central to his life, for it was what he studied and taught. And we know that he took it seriously because he was dedicating his life to fulfilling it. As a teacher of the law, he was making sure that the commandments were being taught to the coming generation. And so the teacher of the law asks Jesus an important question. “Which is the most important of the commandments?” This was a very important question for the people of the day. They knew that God commanded them to keep the commandments. They also knew how difficult this was, so they would argue over which ones were more important and which were less, so they could have their important commandments that they paid closer attention to. We do the same. We think of the commandment not to murder as more important than the commandment not to bear false witness against our neighbor. We think using vulgar language is worse than taking the Lord’s name in vain. That one doesn’t totally make sense to me. There are certain swear words that Christians are just not allowed to use, but if you want to exclaim, “O God” it’s okay. It has been okay to take the Lord’s name in vain on television at least since the late eighties, though there are still vulgarities that are not allowed. This teacher of the law basically was asking Jesus to rank the commandments for him. But Jesus wanted to do something much greater than just ranking the commandments. He wanted to redefine them. And so he answered the teacher of the law by stating the obvious, and repeating the Shema to him, but then he amended it. He added another commandment, not from Deuteronomy 6 but from Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is a big deal. Jesus took the center of Jewish life and practice and changed it. This is like someone coming to you and telling you that the Lord’s Prayer needs to be re-written. And we’re not just talking about what word we use to talk about sins. I’m talking about total rewrite. I’m talking about taking the first couple phrases in the prayer and keeping them and then finding a different prayer from the Bible and making that just as important. It’s a big deal. It’s earth shattering. And yet, the teacher of the law doesn’t call Jesus out on this. Instead he thinks about what it is that Jesus has said and he agrees with him. Scot McKnight, in his book The Jesus Creed, points out that putting these two Old Testament commands together is something that is unique to Jesus. Jesus isn’t taking someone else’s idea and just repeating it. The other records we have of Jewish life of the time do not connect these two scriptures in any way. And Scot McKnight goes a step further in saying that by putting these two scriptures together; Jesus is defining the heart of Christianity.
III. The Center
Jesus took the center of Jewish faith and faithfulness and changed it. He took the extreme importance of loving God and putting God first and tied it together with the idea that we need to love those around us. And when you begin to look closely at the teachings of Jesus throughout the parables you notice something quite amazing. All that he teaches about involves one of the two of these. The Ten Commandments are the same way. The first four commandments are about loving God, the last six are about loving others. Jesus has given us a center of our faith that, unfortunately, we have placed to the side and mostly ignored. Maybe we need to do as the Jews of Jesus’ day did. Maybe we need to do what Jesus did and recite this updated Shema to ourselves on a daily basis. Maybe we need to take this Jesus Creed and use it to remind ourselves as we wake up and as we go to bed what our faith is really about.
But many of us don’t like to repeat things over and over again. We live in fear that by repeating them we somehow rob them of their meaning. How many of you actually pay attention to the words of the Lord’s Prayer when you pray it on Sunday morning. In all honesty, I really don’t, I’m more worried about whether I’m going to get the “debts” part right. But when I’m praying on my own, I do say the Lord’s Prayer, and I do take the time to pay attention to the words. And the same can be done if we focus on this Jesus Creed in our lives. I’ve gotten in the habit of saying it when I put my watch on in the morning and again when I take my watch off. It helps because it is tied to something physical. I don’t say it out loud, Lisa might look at me weird, but instead mouth the words silently, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.” And after saying this to myself I make myself promise to live like that today. I ask God to help me live up to such a great commandment. And then, in the evening, while I remove my watch, I ask myself whether I lived up to the great commandment today. Usually the answer is no. Most of us are built to love ourselves more than we love our neighbors, most of us don’t naturally put our love of God first, above all else, in our lives. But then I ask God to help me do better tomorrow.
This is not something that I do because I am a pastor. This is something I think many Christians could make a part of their lives, and I think it would help us to grow in our faith in a powerful way. Scot McKnight, who is a professor at North Park University wrote a book about it. He is the one who has named this updated Shema “the Jesus Creed” and he is the one who is encouraging God’s people to take up the habit of repeating this creed on a daily basis and watching ourselves be transformed by it. I’ve got one copy and if you’d like to borrow it let me know. It’s got a lot in it, and opens your eyes to how revolutionary this great commandment is. But I challenge you, this week, starting tonight as you prepare for bed and continuing in the morning, to recite the Jesus Creed. You can write it down and tape it to your bathroom mirror. You can have it sitting next to your bed. Eventually you will have it memorized. I always get the heart, soul, mind and strength out of order. It doesn’t matter. Just try it. It’s not going to change God. It’s not going to affect how well he hears you when you pray. But it will affect you. It will put you on the right path each day. It will focus you in the right direction.
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.” Amen.
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