The Bible Tells Me So

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Deuteronomy 6:4-7

Leviticus 19:18

Matthew 22:34-30

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad. Every day observant Jews across the globe chant this Scripture from Deuteronomy 6:5. Twice daily, in fact. It is called, as is traditional in Jewish custom, by the first word of the sentence as it is written in the Hebrew language: “Shema,” which means “to hear.” Observant Jews across the globe teach this Scripture to their children from generation to generation. They say it together as a bedtime prayer, reciting regularly what is—for all of us—the greatest command, which I translate from the Hebrew in the following manner:

Listen! Pay Attention! You are the people with whom God has chosen to persevere!

Don’t ever forget how special you are. Don’t ever forget the great lengths God has gone to in order to claim you as God’s own. Don’t ever forget that God is with you, always, even until the end of the age.

The Holy One is your God. The Holy One alone.

Meaning that the unnamable, unpronounceable, invisible God who created you from the waters of chaos, and redeemed you through the waters of the Red Sea, and sustains you through the waters of the mikvah (the ritual baths of purification) or the baptismal font is all that matters, ever! No matter what lesser god would demand your allegiance. No matter what lesser god would claim your very life. So, in response, you shall:

love the Holy One your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength.

And there is nothing you can do that is more important than this!

Now let’s be honest. How many of us walk around with a working knowledge of Deuteronomy fresh on our minds? Not many. We who are Christian have inherited an unfortunate Pauline distaste for the Law of Moses. We write off the so-called “God of the Old Testament” as vengeful and violent and vindictive. We even go so far as to mistake the origin of this “Great Commandment”—the Shema—with Jesus, himself. For we who are Christians, the command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind comes directly from Christ in the Gospel Lesson from Matthew that is before us today, in response to a testing from the Pharisees, on the last Tuesday of his earthly existence, in a Temple showdown over the heart and soul of what it means to be faithful in the midst of empire.

But the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the disciples, literally everyone around Jesus in first century Judea—including Jesus, himself—would have chanted this beautiful Scripture from Deuteronomy—from the Law of Moses we too regularly disdain—every day of his or her life, from the time of childhood to the present moment. First century Judeans would have experienced the Shema as a deep wisdom dating all the way back from the Exodus, shaping their people through good times and bad for over a thousand years (depending on when you date the Exodus).

And they would have been taught over and over from our Leviticus reading not to exact vengeance against those who have wronged them, but “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is not instituting a new great commandment in this text from Matthew. He is simply reminding the Pharisees what they should already know: that the whole point of the Bible as they know it—the Old Testament—is to teach them how to love God and neighbor. And I would say the whole point of the Bible as we know it, is the same thing. It is not just a book of memory that tells us what people long ago thought about God. It is a present-day book of hope, holding forth the possibility that someway, somehow, if we just repeat these words long enough, maybe someday we will get them right.

Shema Yisrael, Jesus would have chanted over and over and over again throughout his life, as the core teaching of his own sacred Scriptures. Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad. And the meaning of that chant would have seeped into the very fiber of his being, granting him a deep reservoir of courage to remind him who he really was—and to whom he really belonged—no matter what he will face from the chief priests and the Roman guards just a few days after the exchange with the Pharisees that is our Gospel lesson for today. The Shema would have kept Jesus grounded in the love of God for better and for worse throughout the entire ordeal that is to come.

The point I am trying to make here is that the words we say in worship, the songs and prayers we teach our children, the symbols and Sacraments we point to as often as we can, it all really matters! According to scholars who study the impact of ritual on the human psyche, we literally form a “ritual body” in our life together on Sunday mornings. We literally form neurological pathways through our brains that shape our consciousness and train our reflex reactions in moments of stress. Our rituals become integrated into the very fabric of our lives beyond conscious thought. And so we who perform these rituals must be very, very careful in how we enact them, as you are in your presentation of God’s gifts.

For Christians, our rituals focus on gathering around a baptismal font and a communion table and a pulpit and lectern from which we remember the ways in which God has spoken to God’s people throughout the ages and trust God to speak to us again today. And then here, at Madison Square, we also say, “Welcome home.” And I don’t have to tell you how much these rituals really matter, do I?

Esta es la fuente de identidad we say every Sunday, over and over, and we make sure our children are present in worship to hear these words. This is the font of identity, we say. And the sound of water splashing among these stones seeps into the cultural lining of our minds, and the assurance of God’s grace that comes along with it. To the point that whenever we hear splashing water, whenever we touch this miracle of life that forms ¾ of our bodies and ¾ of the earth’s body, whenever we taste the sweet blessing of water on our lips, whenever we bathe, whenever we swim, even whenever we cry we have the chance to float again in the font of our identity, to remember our baptism, to glimpse for one brief moment the grace of the God who has claimed us from the beginning of creation . . . and will not ever . . . ever . . . ever . . . let us go!

The waters of baptism are, I would suggest, the Christian version of the Shema. Because the Sacrament does not end with this particular font and this particular sanctified water and this particular child on this particular Sunday. We may be baptized only once, but we touch water every day. Ad with every touch and taste and even smell of this precious gift we take far too often for granted we have the chance to chant our own daily prayer in the spirit of Shema:

Esta es la fuente de identidad, we could say every time we turn on the faucet. This is the font of identity. I am a child of God’s blessing, we could say every time we bathe ourselves or our children, a child of God’s promise. And so I will love God with all my heart and soul and mind . . . and my neighbor as myself . . . because my neighbor is also a precious child of God’s blessing . . . a precious child of God’s promise . . . swimming in the sacred waters of baptism right along with me . . . and so anything I do or say to my neighbor I also say and do to myself.

If we remember our baptism daily with the simple touch of water, the simple taste of water, the simple sound of water, then we, like Jesus, will have a deep reservoir of courage and hope to remind us who we really are—and to whom we really belong—whatever we may come to face from our version of the chief priests and Roman guards who seek to steal our identity from us.

If we remember our baptism daily with the simple touch of water, then we, like Jesus, will have a deep well of hope for the entire human race to which we have been sealed. If we remember our baptism daily with the simple touch of water, then we, like Jesus, will hand back to God—remit is the word that comes to us from the Latin—every fault and failing, every insecurity and infidelity that would separate us from the covenant commitment we have in Christ.

This is the gift of grace and assurance and protection we have just given Nathan, child of blessing, child of promise, child of God’s covenant with humanity. This is the gift of grace and assurance and protection we claim again for ourselves.

So gather together again in God’s grace, people of God: the ones with whom God will always persevere. Gather at the overflowing fuente de identidad, splashing with delight in these sacred waters that wash over you, chanting forever that God has claimed you as God’s own, and demands nothing in return but to be loved with every part of who we are. And demands nothing in return but to be loved through our love of our neighbor. And demands nothing in return but to be loved through our love of our selves.

This is the font of identity, dear friends. Receive this gift of grace as it comes to you unbidden: with adults who respond gratefully to God’s wholly outstretched arms; with adolescents who are just opening up to God’s eternal grace; and with children whom God claims before we even know how to ask.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.