Hear, O Israel — The Shema, the Greatest Commandment, and the Prayer Jesus Prayed Every Day

If you had stood next to Jesus of Nazareth on any morning of his life, you would have heard him say six Hebrew words: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Every observant Jew says them on rising and on lying down, and has done so for three thousand years. They are the last words a Jew is meant to speak before death. Rabbi Akiva said them while the Romans tore him with iron combs, and died on the word one.

The text

The Shema is not a prayer addressed to God. It is a command addressed to the people, and it comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, part of Moses' last sermon on the plains of Moab. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Jews took the last verses literally, and still do. The words are written on tiny scrolls inside the tefillin, the leather boxes bound on the arm and the forehead for morning prayer, and inside the mezuzah fixed to the doorpost of every Jewish home. Two further passages are joined to it in the liturgy, Deuteronomy 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41, so that the full Shema is three paragraphs; but the six opening words are the heart, and the word echad, one, is drawn out long.

What the word one means

In a world of many gods, each with a territory and a price, the Shema was a declaration of war. Not: our god is the strongest. But: there is only one, and he is ours, and we are his. The word echad means one in the sense of unique, undivided, alone. It rules out the idols of Canaan, the astral gods of Babylon, and every attempt to split the world between a good god and a bad one. It also rules out, Jews have always insisted, any idea that God could be divided or share his being.

That is where the argument with Christians begins, and it should be stated honestly. Christians say the Shema too; the Nicene Creed opens with We believe in one God. They confess that the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not three gods and not one God wearing three masks, but one being in three persons. Judaism holds that this breaks the Shema. Islam agrees with Judaism on this point: its own confession, la ilaha illa Allah, there is no god but God, is a cousin of the Shema, and the Qur'an insists that God neither begets nor is begotten. The three faiths of Abraham all say one; they do not all mean the same thing by it. This church says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.

The greatest commandment

A scribe once asked Jesus which commandment was first of all. It was a serious question; the rabbis counted 613 commandments in the Torah and debated their order. Jesus did not hesitate. The first is: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:29-31). The scribe agreed, and Jesus told him he was not far from the kingdom of God.

Notice two things. First, Jesus answered as a Jew, from the Torah, with the Shema itself; he did not replace it. Second, he joined it to a verse from Leviticus 19:18, love your neighbour as yourself, and said the two belonged together. Other rabbis had said similar things; Hillel, a generation earlier, had summed the Law as what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. What was new was the weight Jesus put on the pairing, and the parable he told when someone asked who the neighbour was: a Samaritan, a heretic and an enemy, stopping on the road to bind a stranger's wounds.

Heart, soul, might

The Hebrew asks for love with all the heart, lev, which for Israel meant the will and the mind, not the feelings; with all the soul, nefesh, the breath, the life itself; and with all the might, me'od, a word that means very, muchness, everything you have, including your property. The rabbis said: with all your soul means even if he takes your soul; with all your might means with all your money. Jesus added with all your mind when he quoted it in Greek, making explicit what the Hebrew heart already held. To love God is not to feel warmly about him. It is to give him the will, the life, the wallet and the intellect, and to keep giving them every morning and every night.

How a Christian may pray the Shema

Every Christian family already does, in one form or another. The Catholic and Orthodox liturgies open the creed with it. Protestant catechisms build the first commandment on it. The Anglican communion service begins with Jesus' own summary of the Law. But there is a simpler way. Say the six words in the morning before anything else, in English or in Hebrew. Say the two commandments at night. Put them where you will see them: on the doorpost, on the desk, on the lock screen. Teach them to your children when you sit and when you walk. Moses' instructions were not for a special class of people. They were for a household.

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Jesus prayed these words on the morning of the day he died. They are the oldest prayer in the Bible still said aloud every day, and the one the Church, the synagogue and, in echo, the mosque all know. An independent Christian church can offer them without claiming them. They were never anyone's property. They were a command to listen.

— IHS Bethlehem Church. An independent, non-denominational Christian church. Explained here; claimed by no one.