Creeds are foundational for preserving and maintaining personal expressions of faith. Creeds provide a stable, tested, tried-and-true reference point for the inevitable challenges that arise in one’s faith-journey. Historian Jeraslov Pelikan writes,

A faith that is completely personal and subjective has its ups and downs. You can’t count on having only ups. Therefore, what’s needed is some kind of continuity both within the faith life of an individual from month to month and year to year, and for that individual with the community of believers from previous ages. The fluctuations of personal belief need to be protected from going off the page by some kind of assertion, a shared faith which provides a floor and a ceiling.[1]

The shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) is the foundational creed of Israel. Prayed twice daily – in the morning and evening – by faithful Jews, it is the basic confession of belief in and devotion to God.[2] Though Jewish in origin, it is also the basis for all Christian creeds and confessions. The New Testament equivalent to the shema is also the most fundamental Christian creed: “Jesus is Lord.”

Shema Values

Every word of the shema is important in establishing the fundamental beliefs and guiding the formative behaviors of faithful Israelites. The shema highlights the importance of attentive listening, community, covenant loyalty, monotheism, and personal transformation through holistic expression of one’s faith.

The importance of communication: “Hear.” The most fundamental command of the shema involves attentive listening. We are called to hear the truth in order to respond appropriately. Because faithfulness to God’s self-revelation demands openness and receptivity, we are called to place ourselves in an active stance of attentive listening. We are not called to discover the truth, but merely to receive the truth that God has revealed. We are not invited to invent the truth, but simply to be open to what God has personally spoken. This stance of open receptivity through active listening is at the heart of a personal relationship with God (or with any other personal being, for that matter). Though there is always a danger of “merely hearing” we must begin at this point or we will possess no capacity to faithfully respond to God’s truth.

The importance of community: “O Israel.” The shema is a prayer of the entire faith community. It is not simply an individual expression of faith; it is a shared corporate value. In contrast to individualism, which values the individual and his or needs above the community, the shema calls us to put the community and its values above our own. Indeed, it calls us to own the community’s value through shared confession. The personal is not the priority; the community and its values are.

The importance of covenant: “Yahweh is our God.” Israel was a people possessed by God. It was their covenant relationship with God that was at the heart of their corporate identity as the people of God. Yahweh – the covenant name of God – was theirs and they were Yahweh’s. The Song of Songs romanticizes and personalizes this relationship: “My Beloved is mine and I am his.” Even though Israel had been given rules to guide her relationship with God, it was her personal relationship with God and not simply rule-keeping that was intended to be at the heart of her experience.

The importance of monotheism: “Yahweh is one.” Israel’s God was not simply one god among many. Israel’s boast was that the one and only God – the Creator of heavens and earth, the sovereign over all – was their God. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul applies the Greek term (kyrios) used to translate Yahweh in the Septuagint to Jesus and declares “Jesus is Lord” as the foundational Christian creed. In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 he expands the shema to incorporate God’s revelation in Christ, practically placing Christ within the unity of the Godhead: “we know… that there is no God but one… for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.” In Ephesians 4:4-6 he expands this “oneness” to include the Spirit as well: “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

The importance of whole-hearted commitment: “And you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Israel was called to more than a cognitive affirmation of the oneness of God. They were called not simply to know, recount, or believe; they were called to love. Their loyalty was to be expressed by obedience, yet obedience did not encompass the whole of God’s required response. God wanted their love – their loyal devotion, their undivided attention, their unyielding affection.

The importance of personal transformation: “And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.” God’s revelation was to penetrate below the surface of the exterior and influence them from the core of their being. They were not simply to obey tablets of stone. God intended his people to be tablets of flesh upon which God’s commands would be permanently etched: “these words… shall be on your heart.” They were to be living expressions of God’s Torah. They were not supposed to look for loopholes in the law in order to fulfill its minimum requirements (“How little can I do and still fulfill the law?” The Christian equivalent: “How little can I do and still get to heaven when I die?”). Instead, they were to consider how to express perfect loyalty to God from the depths of their soul.

The importance of holistic expression: “and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Israel’s faith was meant to be expressed in every aspect of daily living. They were given a faith that was meant to be shared. They were not only to “walk the talk”; they were to “talk the walk.” As they communicated their faith and its significance in all areas of life they would advance in their understanding of faithfulness. They were not simply passing on words but a way of life. God intended for them to pass on their beliefs and experience to others.

Reflections on Shema

In the shema we encounter the essence of the ancient faith and the heart of God’s desire for his people. Everything is related to whole-hearted, loving commitment to God that is expressed in the contours of daily living. Since there is only one God our heart need not be divided. Yahweh is to be the sole object of our worship, allegiance, and affection. One God calls us to one purpose, one passion, one pursuit – loving God.

Since everything relates to God, our love for God can be expressed in every aspect of our lives. God is sovereign over all. The same God who created all things, who redeemed Israel through mighty acts of deliverance, who defeated sin, death, and the devil through the cross of Christ, is the same God who is interested in our common, daily, domestic lives.

Since everything relates to God, then everything we encounter can be a means to loving response to God. The very purpose of our lives, expressed in the shema, is that we would love God with all that we are in everything we do. Our Lord Jesus himself strongly affirmed that this is truly our highest calling in life. To him, this is the greatest commandment (see Matthew 22:37-38)!

Communicating Faith in the School of Life

Our love of God is sustained and preserved through weaving the reality of God into every nook and cranny of our lives. This is most effectively done by communicating faith in all the routine experiences of an ordinary day.

The shema calls for an intentional, structured mindfulness to God’s presence in the normal duties of our lives. We can only assume that without continual conscious attempts to remain aware of God in our daily lives, we will ignore or even forget God.

The clear and elaborate admonition in verse 7 calls for an emphasis on communicating faith to one another at all times and in all places. This same emphasis is found in the New Testament. Everything is related to Christ and thus is a means to reflect upon, share, and communicate about and with God: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31), “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Col. 3:17; cf. Col. 4:23; 1 Peter 4:11), “I can do all things through Christ” (Phil. 4:13).

Contrary to popular sentiment, authentic spirituality is not limited to religious meetings and special occasions. A truly God-oriented life relates God to all of life. “Authentic religious language is not about some narrow band of experience called ‘religion’ or ‘church’ or our little view of God’s will. It is about everything - the fullness of life, the fullness of being human, the fullness of God's presence in and for the world.”[3]

The shema presents us with a picture of the world that is related to God at every point. It encourages us to see that life is full of “teachable moments.” For the sake of nurturing faith – our own and other’s – we should make the most of every opportunity.

This involves far more than simply attempting to punctuate our daily lives with formal times of Bible study and prayer. Though these disciplines have their benefits, we must not assume that communicating faith is a matter of simply reproducing a Sunday School format into our daily lives. Instead of recreating Sunday School at home, Pastor Ray Stedman encourages us to reject formal structures and follow the natural rhythms of daily living.

I think that it is helpful to follow a simple format of discovery and response. That is the normal natural way of teaching anything. Discover something, and then react to it, and lead a child in that. I must confess that I have come to an understanding of this after years of doing it the wrong way, of trying to teach by formal methods, of bringing the classroom or the Sunday school into the home. But that doesn’t work well. What is necessary is to understand… that all things reveal God – people as well as matter, circumstances and incidents as well as mountains and sea – and that you can find your way to an understanding of God in every incident and every circumstance of life. This is the way God ought to come into the home. Discover God in these everyday events, and then lead the child in the proper response to him, whatever the events demand.[4]

The proper response may include, among other things, gratitude, petition, sharing, or service.

By calling attention to the pervasive presence of God and the theological significance of ordinary life, our faith is shared in the most natural way in our natural environment. Faith becomes part and parcel of the reality with which we daily interact. It becomes part of our home. We discover that faith and faithfulness are not limited to formal religious observance but extend into the unrehearsed sloppiness of daily living.

Contrary to expectations, imposing a foreign formal structure into the normal weave of everyday living may have an adverse rather than positive effect. Isolating “religious” or “devotional” time to one period of formal observance can cause us to view the rest of our time – the vast bulk of our lives – as non-religious or non-devotional.

It is hurtful, damaging, deadly, to insist that you have family worship at such-and-such a time every day, and yet never to mention God or think about him otherwise, but to allow secularism to pervade the rest of life. Then it is terribly wrong.[5]

Sunday School formats and ordered liturgy in church are appropriate for these environments. But we should never make the mistake of confusing the family with the church. The family is not the church. Its structures and rhythms are completely different. Forcing a churchlike structure onto the natural rhythms of family life can wreak havoc.

The first principle [of family worship] is that families are families, not little churches. The religious life of the family must be based on its everyday life, and not allowed to become an appendage of congregational programs. The family does not need to mirror the congregation's traditional Sunday morning expression of faith.[6]

Over the course of our lives, as we continue to communicate faith in ordinary life, speaking about and responding to God becomes as natural as sleeping, eating, cutting the grass, taking a bath, and doing dishes. In our ordinary business we sense divine mission. The “stuff” of ordinary life becomes charged with eternal significance. It becomes a means through which we are touched by God.

Since God is related to every experience of life, our daily attentiveness to this changes our perspective on everything. We come to experience the world as sacred rather than secular. For the secularist, meaning does not transcend the present moment. What you see is what you get. Life is little more than matter in motion. In contrast, for the sacramentalist, everything becomes a means through which God is able to communicate grace and love. Everything is charged with purpose and meaning. Nothing is exempt from revealing truth about God.[7]

For this reason, Jesus spoke of the faith using a wide variety of objects and situations: seeds, flowers, fields, birds, coins, housework, shepherds, thieves, and kings, among others. Paul followed his exampled and spoke of the faith through boxing, runners, soldiers, farmers, household relationships, and the writings of pagan authors. Both Jesus and Paul clearly demonstrated that creation and human culture can be a means through which faith is illumined.

The challenge of the shema is to communicate faith in everyday life in such a way as to preserve, maintain, and nurture it in ourselves and others. When we regularly call attention to the presence of God pervading all things, our world looks different, for it is seen through the eyes of faith.

Here again we see that the key is not knowing just what to say or possessing all knowledge about the Christian faith. The key is to provide the kind of environment in the home where talking about God can take place. If talking about God is as expected and as natural as talking about playmates or television programs, children will learn to ask questions about God, speak their thoughts about God, and come to trust this God, whose presence is woven into the fabric of the everyday.[8]

Ultimately, the key to passing this grand vision on to others is to truly experience it ourselves. In this regard, Pastor Ray Stedman writes,

We have learned that nothing can happen through us which hasn't happened to us, that we can’t expect our children to be changed unless something has changed us, that we can only communicate what we ourselves have discovered. Therefore, if life has narrowed down already to boredom and a routine and humdrum existence for us parents, it is very unlikely that we will ever communicate excitement and mystery and glory to our children. We must start with ourselves. And then we are responsible to pass on to our children what we have been taught and have learned and discovered in our own experience – understanding, of course, who they are and what they are like.[9]

We must never underestimate the importance of weaving faith into the whole of life without being overly pedantic or heavy-handed. (Perhaps this is behind Paul’s command that fathers not exasperate their children.) The Christian faith is meant to be liberating, joyous, and compelling as well as provide meaning, purpose, and guidance. Our expression of faith should not resemble a library, classroom, or gym. Instead, it should resemble a living room full of life, joy, laughter, and love. It should resemble the adventure of a wooded trail full of sights, sounds, and smells. Could it be that the reason so many abandon the faith is because they possess no way to integrate it into the whole of their lives?

Conclusion

The reflections above are simply first steps in attempting to live out the creed, “Jesus is Lord.” We do this by learning how to communicate faith (for our own sake and for the sake of others).

Communicating faith is itself an expression of faith. It is a way of confessing the reality and significance of God – an act of belief. It is a way of embracing the shared beliefs of God’s covenant community and expressing and experiencing them in the whole of our lives with the whole of our being. Communicating faith expands, enriches, and deepens our faith. Discussion always leads to a deeper knowledge of what we believe. By relating God to all of life, we learn the language of faith, and thus, are able to pass our faith on to others by word and deed.

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2005