Dear Friends,

If someone asked you to describe the fullness of faithful life before God in two sentences or less—and not miss or overlook a single detail—how would you do it?

No pressure, then.

This Sunday, Jesus answers a question about the greatest commandment with two familiar lines: love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

But what if those two commands carried far more than we usually hear in them?

Rabbinic teaching places great importance on memorization and memory aids: remembering a small thing that brings a much larger thing to mind. A familiar phrase can carry a whole passage with it. We can hear Jesus’ answer that way.

His words from Deuteronomy call us back to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and, perhaps, the most famous prayer in the entire Jewish tradition: the Shema. Remember who rescued you. Remember whose people you are. Let that reality shape your whole life, including those comfortable moments when you might imagine you managed it all yourself.

Jesus’ words from Leviticus come from the Holiness Code, and invite the hearers to remember to recall the call to holiness. Belonging to this God takes shape in honesty, justice, generosity, and care for the vulnerable. Even what you leave at the edge of your field matters. God’s saving work makes a claim upon how his people live.

And that brings us to our little community and how we hear those words, those commandments. Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, God has acted for us. In baptism, we are drawn into that accomplished reality. Our task is to learn together how to live faithfully within it. Love God. Love your neighbor—not just as a posture of affection toward the divine and others (as important as they are). These two sentences can open up a lifetime of transformation: receiving our lives from God and—in response—becoming a holy people whose shared life is worthy of the Gospel.

This Sunday, as we gather at the table, we remember the saving story that holds us—and consider the next steps it calls us to take here in Warren County.