11/03/2024 ~ Proper 26 ~ Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost ~ If All Saints not observed ~ Ruth 1:1-18; Psalm 146; Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Psalm 119:1-8; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34 ~ Communion Sunday.

VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/1026595148

The First Commandment

“Hear, O Israel: Yahweh, our God, Yahweh alone, is one. You are to love Yahweh, our God / with all your heart, / and with all your soul, / and with all your strength.” — Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

In a recent writing Baptist Pastor Allyson Dylan Robinson suggests we, as a society, are addicted to certainty. Certainty is like a drug, she says. It can comfort us, buoy our spirits as it blocks out questions, doubt. Like any addiction, it does that only for a limited time.

Certainty will wear off; questions will reassert themselves eventually. When questions reappear that is exactly when we start searching for a new fix because the very questions, themselves, make us nervous. Again, like any addiction, certainty dehumanizes us as we become driven by that fix.

Questions, you see, arise naturally in the human mind, a function of the God given gift of reason. So in order to grab for the certainty to which we are addicted, we must renounce God’s gift of reason. When renounce the gift of reason, the fix certainty gives us demands we migrate to a place called ‘willful ignorance.’

This is clear: certainty, willful ignorance, presents a theological problem. By definition God can never be fully known. Certainty is, hence, the ultimate heresy since it presumes the revelation God has given us is exactly identical with a whole knowledge God. — these the words of Allyson Dylan Robinson. (Slight pause.)

It seems to me society is not just riddled with and addicted to certainty. It is often downright crippled, immobilized by certainty. You can see the effects of certainty in our sports, in our politics, in our religion.

In all these areas the addiction of certainty insists only one side, one way of seeing things can be right. Since this ultimate heresy is a reality, you need to wonder if people even know certainty about God is a heresy since certainty means being willfully ignorant about this God Who cannot be fully known. (Slight pause.)

Perhaps there is one very human attribute which leads to an insistence on certainty. It’s that we humans have more than a slight tendency toward egocentricity. Each of us— myself included— each of us likes to think we are at the center of the world. And if we are at the center of the world we are right. And we are certain of that.

When an individual displays egocentricity that one person can be placated or ignored. But when a social group, a collective, a whole society displays egocentricity that is hard to ignore.

Egocentricity on the part of a group presents many problems, dangers, challenges. Indeed, certainty within a group gives voice and action to social ills like racism, sexism, classism, imperialism, even fantasies— fantasies like the apocalyptic age is upon us.

Let me unpack that just a little. Racism makes the sometimes tacit but clearly egocentric and ethnocentric claim that one race or one group is superior.

Sexism says one gender is superior. Classism and imperialism make similar claims: one group is superior for various reasons so the rules of that group must abide.

Then there is fantasy, a fantasy like the apocalyptic age is upon us. This may be the most egocentric, self-centered claim of all. Why?

The real claim being made is the people of this time, this age, are so privileged, so special, that God will see fit to allow them to witness the apocalypse. Given all who have come before and were not witnesses is to say they were and are less than those alive now. That is both the height of egocentricity and the epitome certainty. (Slight pause.)

All that brings me back to the words from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh, our God, Yahweh alone, is one. You are to love Yahweh, our God / with all your heart, / and with all your soul, / and with all your strength.”

In Hebrew this is identified as the Shema— Shema a word which means to hear. And in the Gospel reading Jesus, asked to name the greatest commandment, repeats the Shema. If that’s the text Jesus chooses, there should no question about this: the Shema, this text and no other, is central to all Scripture.

Now, when the reading from Deuteronomy was introduced you heard about 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures, the culturally popular if mislabeled 10 commandments and the two commandments cited by Jesus. [1] Let me be clear about this: anyone who is says they are certain that the 10 commandments are central to Scripture is Biblically illiterate. Biblically literate people understand the Shema is central.

As to the Shema, I need you to note there are three components in this first commandment. Let’s take a look at them in reverse order. The last component is love God. Theologically, love cannot exist without God, since God is the source of all love. That love is a result of the two previous statements of the Shema.

What are they? The middle component says God is one. In ancient times many people believed there were multiple gods, each with their own duties. Hebrew theology counters that idea. God is one— the God of all things, a God of the universe.

The first component offers instruction on how one is empowered to love God. This is where we find the word Shema— ‘hear.’

You see, in order to truly be in love with anyone you need hear and to hear you need to listen. If you do not listen you will not hear.

So we need to listen to God. In short, the commandment tells us we need to listen to God before we can understand God loves us. And it tells us how we can be empowered to love God— this commandment tells us how we can be empowered to love God. (Slight pause.)

I want to suggest listening to God is the hardest part of the Shema to follow, the hardest thing we will ever do. Why?

Listening demands humility. Humility understands that relationship, that love, depends on hearing a voice other than our own.

Listening to God requires we employ the discipline of self-surrender, requires us to renounce certainty, abandon egocentricity. Listening requires modesty.

Last, a prime issue being addressed by the first commandment is not the listening done to God by each individual. These words are not addressed to an individual. The first commandment does not say, “Hey you— Joe! You and only you need to listen.”

This is addressed to the community. (Quote:) “Hear, O Israel.” So it is, first and foremost, no specific individual but the whole community who needs to listen. We all need to listen together. We are all in this together.

It is we, the community, not just individuals, who need to listen to God, listen for God speaking in our lives. You see, listening to God as a community gives us an opportunity to banish the addictive certainty which afflicts so many communities. If certainty can be banished it follows that its cousins racism, sexism, classism, imperialism and fantasy can be banished. (Slight pause.)

Jesus clearly tells us to love God and love neighbor. I believe the path to loving God and neighbor starts with being humble enough to listen to God. Hear, O Harpswell. Hear, O Elijah Kellogg Church. Amen.

11/03/2024
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “Earlier I said the whole community, the collective, but therefore each of us needs to listen to God. You might say, ‘Fine, but suppose we all hear different things?’ I would say, ‘That’s the way it supposed to be. And then we need to listen to one another.’ You see, the two commandments are placed together. And they are love God and love neighbor.”

BENEDICTION: Go now, go in safety, for you cannot go where God is not. Go in love, for love alone endures. Go with purpose and God will honor your dedication. And go in peace for it is a gift of God and the Spirit of God to those whose hearts and minds are in Christ, Jesus. Amen.

[1] This was the introduction to the Scripture reading.

When people talk about the Ten Commandments as if they were, pardon the pun, set in stone, one reaction to that should be which set of the three sets found in the Hebrew Scriptures, all somewhat different we talking about? Indeed, some Christian traditions actually count eleven commandments. Of course, in the strict sense there are really 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures. On the other hand, many who adhere to both the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition would claim there are but two: love God and love neighbor. Most scholars say there is but one commandment and it is the starting point of all Scripture. That one commandment is the one called great commandment— the Shema. We find that commandment in this passage from the Torah in the work known as Deuteronomy.