THIS HAS TO BE one of the weirdest Lents I've ever had, I don't remember ever feeling so listless before. Can't seem to put my mind to one thing. Well, when all else fails, go with today's texts. But first, here's a little starter.
MS. TIPPETT:
So we’ve named this modern problem with creeds and some of the problems with the way we’ve addressed that. But there is this tension between the creeds. And as you point out, I mean, even the oldest creeds we have did not come out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, right?
DR. PELIKAN:
The only creed that came out of His mouth was the creed of Judaism.
MS. TIPPETT:
Right. OK.
DR. PELIKAN:
The Shema.
The Gospel for today in the Catholic lectionry is Matthew 12:28-34 a story of a Jewish intellectual, and legal expert, a Scribe, asking Jesus which of the many commandments is the greatest, Jesus answers him with the closest thing to a creed in his religion, the requirement to love the One God with all of our hearts, souls, mind and strength. He adds that the second one is to love others as we love ourselves.
I'm kind of listless, as I said, and tired so I'm going to just rely on today's National Catholic Reporter commentary on this Gospel called Jewish Jesus:
The prayer, found in Deuteronomy 6 and Numbers 15, is part of Moses’ instruction to the people as they are about to enter the Promised Land. It is the foundation, centering text and organizing principle of the Covenant that places God first in their lives. It contains the whole Law. It is the basis for “right relationship” and the moral code that governs the people’s lives with God and one another. A Jew who obeyed this first commandment need not worry about offending God or straying from the intimate web of beliefs and practices that defined and protected Jewish identity.
The scene concludes as Jesus tells the exhilarated scribe that he is “not far from the Kingdom of God.” To suggest that he was incomplete may seem an affront, but Jesus is telling him that he is still on the threshold of an even deeper relationship with God. To know and recite the Sh’ma was less than to live it, and living it was only the penultimate step to surrendering oneself to the intimacy Jesus was offering by virtue of his Incarnation, the gift of divine mutuality, true friendship between a human being and the divine Being that is God.
The stunning implications of what is being offered by Jesus and through Jesus may be the reason the text ends with the curious statement that “no one dared ask him any more questions.” The scribe has experienced human solidarity with Jesus but also knows he has just experienced a theophany.
The point made by Pat Morrin goes farther than the text of Jesus's version of the Shema (however of the many ways that gets transliterted) as I've used it for prayer-meditation to living it and even that isn't to reach the end in "surrendering oneself to the intimacy Jesus was offering." It's interesting that in the interview at the first link that the scholar of creeds, Jaroslav Pelikan seems to unite the Jewish and Islamic practice and understanding as opposed to the Christian understandings with our may, at times contradictory creeds that people have felt strongly enough over that Christian unity has been fractured through one or two words. I think that to surrender to what Morrin talks about has to get beyond the discourse of rational cogitation and authoritative declaration. But that's for another time. It's no wonder that no one dared discuss it more with Jesus at that time.
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