The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) is the biblical passage that a worshipping Jew recites more than any other passage. It is recited daily in the morning and evening prayers, on the Sabbath, and as part of many liturgies. But when it says, "The LORD is one," what does it mean?
I like to think of God as often working in the world incognito and showing up in places that you would least expect Him. For example, I think God goes undercover as a pop musician sometimes and His truths show up in the poetry of the songs. One of the recent times this happened for me was a few months ago after I had gotten the Jackson Browne CD, I'm Alive
, from the library. I was struck by this 1970s and 1980s star whose songs were so content-rich. Somehow though, when he was at the height of his popularity, I mostly missed him and his everyman lyrics of love, loss and pain. (I managed to miss Shakespeare too, but that is another story.) So I explored his music to find out what all the fuss had been about and strangely enough, passages that I was reading in the Torah came alive through the music.
The first album I got was from 1993 called "I'm Alive." This was after Browne had passed the peak of his fame (and his relationship with Daryl Hannah) and I suppose had entered the era of "the resignation that living brings," a brilliant turn of phrase from his song “Before the Deluge” that describes what will happen to you if you let it: resignation will set in. But on “I’m Alive,” I heard this song called "Two of Me," where he says:
There's two of me, and two of you.
Two who have betrayed love, and two who have been true.
The song grappled with the implications of people not being one. And this is where I thought Jesus slipped in incognito, wearing dark glasses and singing background vocals. When people aren't one, it affects their view of themselves, their relationships, their marriage, and their family. We marry a person and find that there is another one of them we didn't know was there. Or two or three of them. We try to understand ourselves, but our two-ness confuses us. I see it in myself all of the time. I am often a house divided, unable to stand in my own duplicity.
When I read about God in the Shema, it says He is One. But why is the word for God plural? I've heard various explanations for this, such as how it is the plural of majesty to describe God's greatness. The rabbi's struggled with this idea of God's oneness and it is debated even today. We Christians make the Jews nervous when we talk about God as a Trinity—three-in-one—but even in the Trinity we see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working not as three individual beings but as one unified whole. Synchronicity. Even Jesus said that He and the Father are one (John 10:30). But mostly I am at least two. The math is just all wrong.
In the end, I think we are all looking for this wholeness, this oneness that is the essence of the Shema. I know I am. At times, I feel like I am there, but mostly I feel like there are at least two of me vying for control. But only One will win.
I like to think of God as often working in the world incognito and showing up in places that you would least expect Him. For example, I think God goes undercover as a pop musician sometimes and His truths show up in the poetry of the songs. One of the recent times this happened for me was a few months ago after I had gotten the Jackson Browne CD, I'm Alive
, from the library. I was struck by this 1970s and 1980s star whose songs were so content-rich. Somehow though, when he was at the height of his popularity, I mostly missed him and his everyman lyrics of love, loss and pain. (I managed to miss Shakespeare too, but that is another story.) So I explored his music to find out what all the fuss had been about and strangely enough, passages that I was reading in the Torah came alive through the music.The first album I got was from 1993 called "I'm Alive." This was after Browne had passed the peak of his fame (and his relationship with Daryl Hannah) and I suppose had entered the era of "the resignation that living brings," a brilliant turn of phrase from his song “Before the Deluge” that describes what will happen to you if you let it: resignation will set in. But on “I’m Alive,” I heard this song called "Two of Me," where he says:
There's two of me, and two of you.
Two who have betrayed love, and two who have been true.
The song grappled with the implications of people not being one. And this is where I thought Jesus slipped in incognito, wearing dark glasses and singing background vocals. When people aren't one, it affects their view of themselves, their relationships, their marriage, and their family. We marry a person and find that there is another one of them we didn't know was there. Or two or three of them. We try to understand ourselves, but our two-ness confuses us. I see it in myself all of the time. I am often a house divided, unable to stand in my own duplicity.
When I read about God in the Shema, it says He is One. But why is the word for God plural? I've heard various explanations for this, such as how it is the plural of majesty to describe God's greatness. The rabbi's struggled with this idea of God's oneness and it is debated even today. We Christians make the Jews nervous when we talk about God as a Trinity—three-in-one—but even in the Trinity we see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working not as three individual beings but as one unified whole. Synchronicity. Even Jesus said that He and the Father are one (John 10:30). But mostly I am at least two. The math is just all wrong.
In the end, I think we are all looking for this wholeness, this oneness that is the essence of the Shema. I know I am. At times, I feel like I am there, but mostly I feel like there are at least two of me vying for control. But only One will win.