Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

“You haven’t heard a word I said!”

Ever been part of a conversation like that?  Either as the one who felt unheard, or the one who, yeah, really, hadn’t been listening?

Chatham Church desires to be a church that is Biblically-guided. This week’s passage contains the most fundamental prayer of the Jewish faith, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD, is one; love the LORD your God…”  Jesus our Lord affirmed the foundational importance of this Scripture when he was asked what the most important command was.  “Love the Lord your God,” he replied, quoting this week’s passage, “and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

So the most basic, fundamental command of all is to love, right?

Nope.  The most basic, fundamental command is to listen, to hear.

We cannot love well unless and until we’re listening well, to God and to our neighbors.  We cannot obey God faithfully unless and until we’re listening attentively, hearing rightly.  We cannot follow Jesus without hearing him, first, last and always.

Hear.  As we enter the world, before we can say or do anything, we are listening.  To mom and dad’s voices, to the rich and mysterious soundscape surrounding us.  And, at the end, they say that hearing is the last to go.  Perhaps you have sat with a loved one who is no longer able to communicate or respond, but the hospice nurse encourages you to keep speaking; at some level, your loved one can still “hear” you.

Hear:  A relationship is established.  Hear: That relationship is maintained, deepened, strengthened.  Hear: voice recognition develops; the next time that Voice speaks, I’m more likely to catch on and listen.

There is much to being a community that is Biblically-guided, and we hope to explore some of those riches this week.  Yes, indeed, we are commanded by God to love, we are indeed commanded to learn and to know God’s Word!  Yes, we are indeed to allow that Word to impress itself ever more deeply into our heads and hands and hearts and lives!  So Yes to reading, studying and memorizing Scripture, to preaching and teaching it, to discussing it deeply and thoughtfully!  Yes to all of that and more!

But we wouldn’t want it to be God saying to us, “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said!”

So first, foremost: Hear.

Father, please grant that our many “ears” – the ones on the sides of our heads, as well as the “ears” of our minds, of our hearts, of our hands and feet, of our lives –would all be ears that hear well.  And as we hear, may we follow, obey and love.  Amen.