Word to the Wise
Saturday, March 7, 2020 - 1st Week of Lent - Sat
[Deut 26:16-19 and Matt 5:43-48]"Today the Lord, your God, commands you to observe these statutes and decrees. Be careful, then, to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you are making this agreement with the Lord; he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees, and to hearken to his voice. And today the Lord is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you; and provided you keep all his commandments, he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the Lord, your God, as he promised." [Deuteronomy]
Our Christian faith has its roots in Judaism. One cannot have a plant without its roots. This is why anti-semitism is such a terrible thing. It is a denial of God's own covenant with the Jews and through them a covenant with Christians, too. We must not forget that Jesus was a Jew. His interpretation of the Mosaic Law is the interpretation that we, by our baptism, are called to accept and proclaim, but that interpretation takes as a given the reality of a covenant between God and humans.
The Book of Deuteronomy represents a recovery of the understanding of the Mosaic covenant at a period when the collective observance of it had become corrupt and required renewal. As such it repeats some of the previous four books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers) but also reforms and builds upon them. The "two greatest commandments of the law" which Jesus proclaims to us are found in Leviticus [19:18] - love your neighbor as yourself - and Deuteronomy [6:5] - you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your mind and all your strength.
Lent is a good time to strip away the excuses and convenient interpretations that creep into our lives (which Jesus condemned in the scribes and Pharisees) and take a long serious look at how we love God and neighbor, realizing that these two commandments are two sides of one coin. Are we keeping our side of the covenant? We needn't worry if God is keeping God's side. AMEN
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