FIND YOUR CENTER
Deuteronomy 6
1 Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates….
The Israelites had been nomads, then slaves and refugees. But now, finally, they were about to enter the promised land. But success had its dangers. The Dueteronomist was well aware of the risks of the good life. Without humility and gratitude, the spiritual life collapses into faux self sufficiency. They are warned “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…(Duet 8:11-14).
To counter these risks, the Israelites are told to remember their God above all else and to remember who they were when they met him. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” To this day, these words are repeated daily in the liturgical prayers. The ‘Shema’ gave the Israelites their fundamental religious identity and reminded them what it meant to be in right relationship with God. They firmly believed that if they lost their religious center, things would go badly for them. God’s good intention for them depended upon right relationship with God. So it was critical that they “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates….” The Dueteronomist used the Shema to provide clarity, ritual to provide repetition and story to teach and orient the people.
What is the center of our faith that we recite to our children? What are the sentences we want to teach? How do we maintain our central identity as we live in a multicultural society? While it has been true before Covid, it is particularly important in the midst of the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic that we take a hard look at what faith and ministry mean in today’s world. Familiar patterns and connections have been badly disrupted. Worship, grieving, visiting one another and sharing meals have all been curtailed. The absence of such ordinary contacts has begun to expose their importance. There is a reason we gather. We need each other. We need the support of others to live our faith. When connections are fewer, we are confronted with our limitations and dependencies. We can no longer maintain the illusion we can make it on our own. These are the times when it is particularly important to stay centered.
Unfortunately, even before Covid, we have often been not very good at articulating our center. It is pretty rare for most of us to identify ourselves as Christians in secular settings— much less articulate why. In the first place, claiming our faith is often done in the face of preconceived assumptions. There are lots of people who will tell us what we should believe, or worse, will tell us what we believe (without conversation with us, of course). Linda LeBron speaks of going on a yoga retreat with her son where the perceived assumptions about ‘what Christians believe’ made her hesitant to claim her lifelong profession as a church educator. Fairly frequently, I am asked if I am a Christian counselor. I answer: “I’ve been an ordained Presbyterian minister for almost 50 years,…does that count? Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. People make all kinds of assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. And secondly, even within the faith, there is enormous diversity about what we stand for. We don’t have a shared understanding of what we mean when we say ‘I am a Christian.’ We do not have a daily prayer, a Shema (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”) to remind us of our center.
While it is true most of us do not want to be lumped into someone else’s definitions, we each have to have some practical idea of what we mean when we say we believe in God if faith is ever going to actually make a difference in our lives. Each year the confirmands are asked to make a faith statement. It is an exercise that probably should be required of all of us. We can’t be very conversant about our faith if we cannot put it into words.
In FIRL, we spend a lot of time looking for such words. Here are the three faith claims that I hold dear.
Live like you are loved. When you feel safely and securely loved, you do not have to prove yourself. You are free to become fully who are. We can be proud of our children. We can be disappointed and angry without children, but hopefully neither changes the fact that we love our children.
Live like love matters. Our lives are nanoseconds in the history of time but we believe how we live matters. Ultimately it is what gives purpose to our lives. Every drop of kindness, mindfulness and regard matters.
Live like love will prevail. In a world where the vulnerable are routinely exploited, a world in which genocide is a common thread throughout history, where animosity and self righteousness characterize our public discourse and where the church is more often characterized as judgmental than loving, it takes courage and hope to live like love will prevail.
Using these principles as the center of living is my Faith in Real Life understanding of the command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is a direction for life that gives life. It is not a way to measure goodness. It is NOT ATTAINABLE. The spiritual life is not about what we do or accomplish, it is about the struggle to stay oriented toward God.
In real life, we yearn for clear directions. We want to know what is right. We want clear directions about how much we should give of ourselves—as parents, as friends, as spouses. We want to know how to love better. There have been hundreds of catechisms, commentaries, rules of conduct, and thousands of pages of self help books written to provide such guidance. But at the end of the day, we are all Israelites. We are all contending with God. We are defined by our willingness to struggle to keep God central in our lives. In the end, we do not get clear definitions but we do get a clear direction.
Borrowing from the book of Common Prayer:
Be of good courage.
Hold fast that which is good.
Render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the fainthearted.
Support the weak.
Help the afflicted.
Show love to everyone. Let it be so.
Vernon Gramling is a Parrish Associate at DPC. He has been providing pastoral care and counseling for over 45 years. You can find more about Vernon, the Faith in Real Life gatherings and Blog at our staff page or FIRL.
