What Does the Lord our God Require of Us
AM Psalm 95* & 40, 54 • PM Psalm 51
Deut. 10:12-22 • Heb. 4:11-16 • John 3:22-36
* for the Invitatory
Albert Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus claims that the central question of philosophy is Hamlet's question: “To be or not to be?” but for us who worship the one God, it is, “What does our God require of us?” In our reading for today from Deuteronomy, the author poses that question and then answers it. “What does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord...?” The word but near the beginning of this long rhetorical question implies that the requirements will be easy, but they get harder as we read it, until we reach “commandments and statutes,” of which there are more in the books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers than most readers today can remember or intend to keep. In Mark 12 and other gospels, Jesus paraphrases this sentence, condensing it and (in a way) making it easier: “You shall love the Lord your God with your heart and with your soul and with your mind and with your strength”; then Jesus adds, quoting from Leviticus 19, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The author of Deuteronomy gives us examples of those neighbors who need our active love: “orphans, widows, sojourners in our land.” Jesus in his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25) broadens those to all people whom we must not only love but act out our love by helping them, and John the Baptist, in the Gospel reading for today, shows us by example how to love God and our neighbor unselfishly when he tells his disciples, “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.” How to decrease on purpose for the sake of God or neighbor or our own soul is very hard, and figuring out how would require more morning reflectioning, so we might go back to Nick Cole's “Morning Reflection: Epiphany” of 6 January 2021.
We may be fulfilling the first of Jesus's two “Great Commandments” better these days in our prayers when we acknowledge our helplessness without God against the corona virus, but to fulfill the second, we should pray for the imagination and dedication in this time of isolation to find ways to encourage and help our neighbors.
Written by John Tabb DuVal
John asks for your prayers for him and his family on the loss of his much-loved brother, Frank, on 6 February 2021.