“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” -Deuteronomy 6:4-5

The Shema is one of only two prayers that are specifically commanded in the Torah (the other is Birkat Ha-Mazon — grace after meals). It is the oldest fixed daily prayer in Judaism, recited morning and night since ancient times. The first part of the Shema begins with one of the best-known, most fundamental expressions of Jewish belief, and the one from which this prayer gets its name: Shema Yisra’el… (Hear, Israel).

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה ׀ אֶחָד ׃
Sh’ma Yisra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ׃
V’ahav’ta eit Adonai Elohekha b’khol l’vav’kha uv’khol naf’sh’kha uv’khol m’odekha.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
(Source)

While Ron was in Vietnam, I was living in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, and on Friday nights I sang in the reformed Jewish synagogue choir and on Sundays, the choir at St. Paul’s by the Sea Episcopal Church. Nowhere was the liturgy more similar than the beginning of the Shabbat service and the beginning of the Rite I Eucharist service. During that time, I grew to appreciate the historical context of our worship and to understand it in a new and deeper sense.

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all they mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. Thou shalt love the neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
-BCP pg 324

Holy One, help us to recognize the richness and history of our liturgy. Bless us as we seek to live a life filled with your love and grace. Amen.
-Cathey Frederick

Many people are surprised when they find out that I am a convert to Christianity. Apparently, I give off the vibe of being a lifelong Christian who was raised in the faith. That could not be farther from the truth. My parents and brother are varying degrees of agnostic, and my extended family is largely the same way.

What changed things for me? A woman named Lou Ellyn Griffin.

Lou Ellyn had lived in my neighborhood since before my parents bought the house where I grew up. My mom remembers her making an effort to welcome them to the neighborhood, and her daughter Page would come over and help my mom out with my twin brother Sean and me when we were babies. My parents got two kittens from them when Sean and I were a few months old, and one of them, Ben, was with us for close to 16 years.

When Sean and I were in first grade, she invited the elementary school kids in the neighborhood over to her house to bake cookies. After the other kids left, she sat down on the couch with a book of Bible stories and read us the Christmas story. Having been raised by a mom who read to us every night from an early age, we thought this was pretty cool and asked her to read more stories to us. She agreed and read all of the stories about the miracles and parables, the crucifixion, and the resurrection.

Sean and I ended up being cat sitters for their family throughout our school years and engaged with them for various things. When I was ten years old, she started having me help her teach English and American customs to groups of exchange students that would come. She and her husband Gerry were never pushy about their faith, but she made sure I knew that I was loved and that she would be happy to tell me more if I ever wanted to know. The seed was planted in me, and I did eventually take her up on talking about faith issues. She rejoiced when I accepted Christ as a teenager, and she is very much my godmother. She and I are still in contact, and she is one of the first people I contact if I am ever in a situation when I seriously need prayer.

Thank you, Jesus, for the people you put in our lives who bring us closer to you. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” -Leviticus 19:34

Generally, when I think of Leviticus, I tend to think of abhorrent rules that hardly seem in keeping with the Gospel Message of Christ. But as Jesus himself proclaimed in Matthew 5:17 (KJV), “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” (v.17) In the case of this injunction, however, Leviticus is the last word in empathy.

At the risk of verging on the political, it hardly goes without saying that this passage should resonate loudly with our country. After all, we were all foreigners at some time in our American sagas — unless, of course, you are an indigenous person. Issues of who is and who isn’t an American are a source of deep ideological divides in our country. But we should not give in to those who would deny not only our historic embrace of “the foreigner” (despite a checkered past in doing so) but our calling as Christians. We cannot let them prevail, and in our struggle against we should keep in mind the final verse in this reference to Matthew: “For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (v.20)

Lord, give us the sight to discern our fellowship in Christ with all who seek our land in their flight from bondage to freedom. They are not “the other” — they are us. Amen.
-Michael Boss

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” -Leviticus 19:18

Leviticus 19:18 states “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

When I choose this verse, I did not realize that we would be renewing our baptismal vows on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, January 12. The presider read “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” We responded with, “I will, with God’s help,” and I had a flashback to one of Father Paul’s 2019 Inquirer classes when the question was asked, “who is our neighbor?” There were quite a few responses: the nice folks next door who wave and say “hi”, or the church lady delivering chicken soup after you have had surgery; but what about the neighbor with the obnoxious barking dog? The smelly homeless person with their whole world in a shopping cart begging for money? Those who committed the horrors of September 11th? A parent starving their child to death? Races of humans persecuted because of the color of their skin or their religion? The answer is that they are all our neighbors.

Last Monday, we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and scholar who led the civil rights movement, and was “deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.” In one of his sermons, he wrote “in the 5th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, verses 42 and 43, we find these pressing words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: ‘ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

I’ve used the word “neighbor” several times, which reminds me of Mr. Fred Rogers, the gentle person whose quotes are the perfect antidote to the hate and helplessness that seems to be all around us:

“Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life’s important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives”

Thank you Mr. Rogers for always starting your show with a song with the famous line. “Won’t you be my neighbor.” I will, with God’s help.

Heavenly Father, we pray that different cultures will be able to care for one another and that we all could be loving and compassionate to all our neighbors. Amen.
-Mary Ann Taylor

“In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.” -Exodus 15:13

During my formation years as a Benedictine Sister, I have studied theology rather thoroughly. It is written that Moses led 600,000 Israelites out of Egypt and he was 120 years old! God gave Moses the instructions and directions and Moses obeyed each and every one of them even though it was with great difficulty.

Every day, God shows us, guides us and directs us but we don’t seem to obey, even with little or no difficulty. We have it so easy… yet we don’t always feel and accept God’s steadfast love.

When times are tough; poverty, war, depression, homelessness, we gladly open up to God. Pharoah’s slaves, the Israelites, opened up to God when they needed Him the most. Yet, they seemed to do so with conditions.

We need to know God and accept His love and guidance on divine terms, not our terms. He is always available to us. All we have to do is listen and obey. His strength will guide us always.

Holy Father, help us to listen with the ear of our heart, to trust, follow and exalt you in every step of our journey on earth. Amen.
-Sister Katharine, OSB

To impeach or not impeach. To strike Iran or not strike Iran. To testify or not to testify. To criminalize or to rehabilitate. To welcome or to deport? Shootings—the challenge of those experiencing homelessness—addiction—racial tensions. We live in a time of great public anxiety, deep divisions getting deeper, and fractures in society growing wider. And then there was Lent! Time to go around with sad faces, displaying a holy anxiety about the intensity of one’s sacrifice, hoping against hope that it will be sufficient to garner the mercy of heaven! Well, no, not exactly. We have (thank God) left that medieval way of thinking behind. And yet we all know grumpy people during Lent, whose disciplines have deprived them of their favorite comforts. They are no fun to be around, and I can’t see how they are much good for an anxious world.

Whatever you choose to do as your Lenten discipline (and we will love you even if you are grumpy,) as a church, we are going to look at ways to live un-anxiously in an anxious world. How do we keep the chaos outside from becoming chaos within?

The theme for these Lenten meditations is agape, that kind of self-giving love that we see in Jesus. Jesus truly gave himself for the world, and yet we also see him grounding himself outside the anxious world of his day, going regularly into the mountains to pray. He shows us that we cannot give what we do not have, and that agape love does not come from the world but from beyond it. Ours will be a discipline of detachment, of looking at ways of attending to the needs of the world without getting sucked in. If we, as a community of faith, can do that, then we truly have something to offer our world.

O God of peace, your Son, Jesus Christ, promised us peace unlike that of the world. Bring that peace to flower in our hearts and lives, that we may help lead the world out of the darkness into your glorious light, through the same Jesus Christ, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, we lift our voices in endless praise. Amen.
-Fr. Paul Moore