Living By Heart

Read Deuteronomy 6.1-9; Mark 12.28-34

Pentecost +23B

For his first-century listeners, Jesus probably could have stopped with, "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart". Because all that follows (soul, mind and strength) are implied in the biblical understanding of "heart". But for us as twenty-first-century listeners, we have shrunk the definition of heart to emotions. So when we hear "Love God with your whole heart," we might think Jesus means "Have only happy feelings about God."