“And now, Israel, what does the LORD, your God, ask of you
but to fear the LORD, your God, and follow his ways exactly,
to love and serve the LORD, your God,
with all your heart and all your soul,
to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD
which I enjoin on you today for your own good?
Is that all? Our hearts are stubborn and fickle and it is difficult to do anything with complete commitment. So to what does the author allude? What else could be asked that is not asked? He could command things which are elaborate, complicated, elusive, and hard to understand. What he actually asks is simple and easy to understand. And although it isn't easy to do, we long for it. We desire deeply to be able to give him our entire hearts and souls. We see how preferentially he treats us and we long to reciprocate.
Yet in his love for your fathers the LORD was so attached to them
as to choose you, their descendants,
in preference to all other peoples, as indeed he has now done.
His laws and decrees are a blessing not a limitation. They are the sine qua non for life in the family of God. They are the house rules, as it were. They reveal the truth of healthy relationships. We turn from them at our peril. We rejoice that the LORD loves us enough to reveal these laws to us.
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
At the extreme of all in committed relationships we find Jesus. He holds nothing back in his love for us.
"The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, 23 and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed.
Jesus is the one person not obliged to pay the penalty of sin. Yet he is the one person that truly is able to pay it. We see this on a smaller scale when he pays the temple tax. He is not obliged to do this either. The passage is especially clear in the RSV:
Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free.
Yet in order "not to give offense to them" Jesus takes this small cross as well. He pays the toll not only for himself, but for Peter as well, hinting at his primacy in the Church. He pays it not from money he works to earn but from his supernatural abundance.
go to the sea, drop in a hook,
and take the first fish that comes up.
Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax.
Give that to them for me and for you.”
Jesus teaches us the way to truly fulfilled relationships. He is all in for us. He takes on the big crosses and the small ones in order to allow us a harmonious and peaceful life in his family. Let us learn from his example and be all in for him, too.
The LORD, your God, shall you fear, and him shall you serve;
hold fast to him and swear by his name.
He is your glory, he, your God,
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