Some of the blogs I follow have been talking about Ash Wednesday and Lent for a week now. I may be joining the conversation late, but I’m here. I rolled out of bed at 5:12 a.m., into the church parking lot at 6:45 and was soon joined by a few others helping to get ready. Ashes are on and Lent is here!
And Lent is different for me this year. I am not trying to figure out my own spiritual discipline for the season. Sometimes it takes me well into the first week to come up with (preferably, prayerfully) what I am going to do or not do during Lent. But this year we’re doing a Lenten discipline together! Today I and our congregation are beginning to learn Mark 12:29-31 by heart. This scripture is Jesus’ answer to a religious lawyer who asked him what he thought the greatest commandment to be. Jesus responded with his version of verses from Deuteronomy and Leviticus:
‘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 mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.
If Jesus thought these were the two greatest commandments, that should make them worthy of major attention. As Scot McKnight has noted, they are words that seem to have formed Jesus spiritually. (See “The Jesus Creed” by Scot McKnight.) Maybe they will mold and shape our lives too.
In reciting these words over and over throughout the day, we will be taking them on the road. Loving God and loving our neighbor will pop up while we are brushing our teeth in the morning, waiting in the grocery line, or when we get cut off in traffic, when we are filling out our income tax, or taking a friend to a doctor appointment, while we are walking the dog, and finally as we crawl into bed at night. The words of loving God and loving our neighbor will not just be stuck in the pulpit and the pews, but will be out on the road…at least, that’s what I’m hoping.
I’m curious: what will these words bump into out on this road trip? And what will our hearts do about it?
jnkuebler says
What led you all to choose this text (among so many others) as your Lenten discipline?
I love the idea of a community ruminating on the same words over several weeks…
Elaine Dent says
We are watching a DVD on Wednesday nights: “The Jesus Creed” by Scot McKnight, based on a book by that title. He suggests that this “creed” was what formed Jesus spiritually.