Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Breathing new life into familiar texts is arguably one of the most difficult tasks set before the preacher. Unfamiliar passages can capture a congregation’s attention because of their novelty. Lectionary preaching has the ability to keep things fresh, as many assigned texts fall outside of the typical cherry-picked canon that many know from Sunday School. However, every so often the lectionary offers a reading that is so familiar, so well-known, that the preacher has to find a new way to present something her people have heard countless times before.
This is the problem for any sermon focused on Deuteronomy 6:1-9. First, the passage is familiar to many as the shema, the central assertion of faith in the Hebrew scriptures: “Hear O, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” Modern scholars and commentaries have an abundance of information on this single phrase, specifically how to properly translate the Hebrew and its nuances. For a fresh take on these textual and linguistic issues, The Bible Project has some excellent teaching videos on the Hebrew imagery of this text.[1] In the writings of the ancient church, comments on this passage often diverged into theological reflections about the Trinity. Those who prefer the historical-critical approach will probably cringe at drawing such connections, but oddly enough this is the most historical approach throughout the earliest commentators and preachers of the faith. For a sampling of perspectives in preaching this text from a Trinitarian perspective, see the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Old Testament Vol. III). [2]
A second tried-and-true preaching path for many in the Wesleyan tradition has been the call to love. An excellent resource for preaching this text along those lines would be Don Dunnington’s “Holiness as Love of God” found in Resources for Holiness Preaching: From Text to Sermon (Vol. 1).[3] While it is a well-worn approach, the call to love is certainly at the very heart of the good news of God for the world, and many excellent sermons on loving God can be cultivated from such a rich text.
But the text can be approached in a less familiar way for the preacher hoping to strike a different chord than the ones so often used to approach this text. Regardless of how one interprets the oneness of God or how one fulfills the call to love this God, Deuteronomy 6:1-9 at its core calls God’s people the task of faith formation, especially the hearts and minds of the children. Deuteronomy 6:2 invites its hearers to understand this message is for God’s people in perpetuity. It belongs to “you, your children and your children’s children.” The call to faithfulness to Israel’s one God and to love God will not be abrogated, amended, or recalled. As long as God’s people continue, so long as Israel and those grafted into Israel, Christ’s church, have generation after generation, this call to know and love God endures.
Like almost all of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic history, God promises to bless his people in response to faithful fulfillment of this command. Israel’s one Lord pledges long lives, general well-being, large families, and a bountiful land to his people – the Hebraic dream. Without venturing into the realm of a gospel of prosperity where nothing bad or tragic ever occurs, Deuteronomy offers direct assurance that the best way to live with the best life to offer happens when we are committed in love to the one God that we follow. The good life we all want does not occur by accident, nor does it happen when we chase the other gods that are in abundance today just as they were in ancient Canaan. The gods that lure us to unfaithfulness no longer go by the ancient names of Baal, Asherah, and the like, but make no mistake that the gods of greed, lust, power and others still sink their hooks into many of God’s people who worship them. Moses’ grand final speech in Deuteronomy proclaims that the good life, the blessed life, becomes a reality for those who live with faithful love for the God who delivered them from Egypt.
And just as everyone, whether ancient or modern, wants the best that life has to offer, so everyone with children wants this for their little ones as well. Most parents would probably say that they would even prefer for their children to have better than they did. Parents want their children to be more educated, more successful, and more gifted. This passage does not discourage such hopes and dreams for our children, but it wants us to include their faith and faithfulness to God as part of our hopes and dreams for our little ones. Serving as a children’s pastor, I have witnessed firsthand the beautiful and obsessive love of good parents. Parents who spend exorbitant amounts on their children’s education. Parents who devote countless hours to see their children excel in athletics. Parents who sacrifice their time and sanity to ensure their kids experience childhood as happy and carefree. Moses’ words invite those who hear the Word of the Lord from Deuteronomy to invest in the spiritual lives of their children with the same passion and tenacity.
To take on such a momentous task, Moses calls God’s people to keep and recite these words, talking about them as families lie down each night for bed and as they get up to rise with each new day. Moses is not simply going for a sentimental recollection of God’s words or simply rote recitation. Instead, Moses’ words invite us to be disciplined, methodic, and habitual about spirituality in our homes. These commands, stories, and promises are not gifts meant to be received only Sunday, dispensed only by members of the clergy. Faith is a skill, a habit, something that requires practice for one to become adept and proficient. So we recite these words, we read them, tell them, recall them, speak them aloud to our children every day, so that they become as ingrained in them. Just as the words to Goodnight Moon or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? can be recalled almost verbatim by the children who hear these stories each night before bed, Moses wants God’s call to faithfully love him, along with God’s other promises and stories, to be just as familiar and comforting. God’s words in the Deuteronomic text are meant to be an unforgettable lullaby for God’s children as they lay down to rest each night.
But it’s not just enough to say these words over and over again. Moses continues to escalate the invitation, telling God’s people to take these commands and promises and bind them, fix them, and copy them down over and over again. Moses imagines a people who invest in creating things that decorate the lives of children and help them see these promises and stories with their own eyes. In the world of Rabbinic Judaism, phylacteries and mezuzahs were concrete ways God’s people creatively followed this Deuteronomic word.[4] The words of this scripture would be nailed to the doorposts of their homes or worn on their bodies as living reminders of this instruction.
But Moses’ injunction is not just some ancient advertisement for Hobby Lobby so that God’s people have lots of pretty verses scattered around their home or screen printed on t-shirts. Instead, Moses invites God’s people to find ways of ensuring that their children see and hear the Word of the Lord as often as possible so that the command and story of God become a part of their identity. Children are amazing in their love of stories. Check out this site https://www.irishpaving.ie. Ask any child to explain the plot of their favorite movie, and they can recite the most complex plots and narratives. They know the songs by heart, mimic the movements and words of the characters, and reenact the drama in their play together. Moses calls God’s people to make sure that when children do this, the stories of God are just as familiar, just as deeply known, just as passionately loved.
This does not equate to call for banning Star Wars or My Little Pony in homes and only opting for Christian media. But it cannot happen without some creative and intentional means of telling, teaching, and visualizing faithful love in front of children so that these stories and commands can become their own. Only when Christian children know and love the stories and commands of their faith well can they begin to understand them in relation to other stories. In response to glorified stories of violence, the Christian story teaches love of enemies and forgiveness. In response to tales of fame and wealth, the Christian practices of almsgiving and fasting serve as strange foils. The goal is find a good, healthy balance so that the stories and commands of God help the next generation navigate the other cultural tales that describe loyalties to other gods. The hope of Moses’ words in Deuteronomy is that through the constant, creative repetition of these stories and commands,God’s people will continue to find new ways of following Him with faithful love into the future.
May God bless you and the next generation of His people as you preach this Sunday!
[1] The Bible Project, https://thebibleproject.com/explore/shema-listen/. [2] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Old Testament Vol. III), ed. Thomas Oden, InterVarsity: Downers Grove, 2001, pgs. 282-285. [3] Don W. Dunnington, “Holiness as Love of God,” Biblical Resources for Holiness Preaching (eds. Dunning and Wiseman), Beacon Hill Press: Kansas City, 1990, pgs. 193-206. [4] J. G. McConville, Deuteronomy, InterVarsity: Downers Grove, 2002, pg. 142.