November 4, 2024
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) on November 3, 2024, at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Psalm 18; Hebrews 7:23-28; and Mark 12:28b-34.
In our gospel today, Jesus refers to an important Jewish teaching called the Shema. We’ll also hear the Shema in our first reading. In Jesus’ time, this teaching was so central to Jewish identity that all Jews were required to recite it several times a day. Even today, some Jewish people give the Shema a special place of honor by attaching tiny copies of it to their foreheads and wrists, even to doorposts.
Part of why Jewish people do this is similar to why we Catholics celebrate the Last Supper at every Mass. We’re not play-acting the past, as much as we are making the past present to us again today. Whenever Jews touch a doorpost with a mezuzah containing a copy of the Shema, they are connecting back to Moses giving the Law more than 3,200 years ago. Whenever we celebrate Eucharist, we are connecting back to Jesus at the Last Supper nearly 2,000 years ago.
We’re going to explore this idea of remembering the past to make it present. Only after that will we explore the implications of what it means for Jesus to hold another commandment up as equally important to the Shema.
Like our Jewish ancestors before us, we honor God with all our hearts, all our souls, and with all our strength, for our God is a God of mercy!
We Christians owe so much to our Jewish ancestors. So, today, I want to teach you a word – and a concept – in Hebrew. The word is kadima. It means both “forward,” and “remember.” To be Jewish is to live the concept of kadima. It’s a kind of remembering of the past that defines your present and pushes you forward into the future. It’s a very important idea for us Christians, too.
To solidify our understanding of kadima, we’re going to sing a song together in Hebrew. Now, don’t worry if you don’t know any Hebrew: I learned this song from a Mormon born in Utah. There are only three words to know:
- kadima – which means “remember” and “forward.”
- Israel – which, you guessed it, means “Israel.” We’re talking about people of the Jewish faith here; we’re not taking a position about the current status of the country.
- he – which means the same in English, “hey.”
So, repeat after me [sung slowly]:
Kadima! Kadima! Kadima, Israel! He, he, kadima, Israel!
Kadima! Kadima! Kadima, Israel! He, he, kadima, Israel!
So, the main idea of the song is this: you must remember your past, people of Israel, in order to be authentic to the future God intends for you.
We’re going to talk about 4 time periods. First, we’re going to talk about the time of Moses. That was around 1200 BC, more than 3,200 years ago. Then we will talk about when the Book of Deuteronomy of written, around 600 BC, more than 2,600 years ago. Then we’ll talk about the time of Jesus, around 30 AD, almost 2,000 years ago. And then we’ll talk about how remembering those three time periods and making them present challenges us here in November 2024 and into the future.
Our first reading, from the Book of Deuteronomy, told how, over 3,200 years ago, just as the Israelites were ready to enter into the promised land, the prophet Moses gathered the people. His speech included the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” His speech was an example of kadima: to move forward and build a new country, the Israelites had to remember the great deeds that God had already done to rescue them from Egypt.
But the Book of Deuteronomy was probably written about 600 years after Moses gave his speech. By then, the significance of the Shema was very different. The Israelites had built their country in the promised land, but now the country was falling apart. The Book of Deuteronomy was written not only to remember what had happened in the ancient past, but also to help people understand that their security was tied to their commitment to their God more than to the authority of their king. The Book of Deuteronomy explained to the Israelites that their God had a special relationship with Jerusalem, located in the hill country of Judah. People began to unite themselves around their religion – called Judaism – more than by their national identity. “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone!”
Let’s sing that song again, but let’s spice it up a bit! [Repeat the song again, adding percussion instruments.]
By the time of Jesus, Jews now believed that their God was not just the most powerful God, but that their God was the only God. And so, the Shema took on an even greater significance, because it was a statement about who God was. “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” The kadima of Deuteronomy: written in the time of King Josiah, looking back to the time of the prophet Moses, informing religion at the time of Jesus.
In Jesus’ time, people often asked the rabbis: “What is the most important commandment?” We know that other rabbis in Jesus’ time responded to these questions with the Shema. Other famous rabbis responded with another commandment in the Bible, one from the Book of Leviticus: love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus surprises everyone by linking the two commandments together. Jesus employed kadima. He asked the Jewish people to link the love of God in the Shema – a concept deep in Jewish identity – with the love of neighbor.
But we’re not done with the idea of kadima yet! Let’s sing the song up to tempo!
[Sing the song with instruments again, twice as fast, adding the “la la la” coda.]
What does it mean for us today — nearly 2,000 years later — that Jesus links our love of God with our love of neighbor? Well, right now, people are very anxious about the national election on Tuesday. On both sides, we have people claiming that the love of God compels them to vote the way that they vote, and yet, lots of people in the United States are fighting with their neighbors about this election!
Jesus us tells us that we must love God with our whole heart, our whole strength, and our whole selves and that we must love our neighbors as ourselves.
Kadima, Old St. Mary’s Parish! Kadima! May we remember our past in a way that defines our present and pushes us forward into better, holier, more peaceful future. The God who once delivered Israel out of slavery in Egypt can also deliver our country from everything that divides us! And if we can understand that and believe that, we will not be far from the kingdom of God.