What is the Shema prayer? – The Shema series E1

What does the Hebrew word Shema mean and what is the significance of the Shema prayer?

Welcome to the first episode of our series on the Shema prayer and what the Bible has to say about listening. 

In this episode, Noël, Mark and Esther explore the scriptures in the books of Deuteronomy and Numbers that form the Shema and discuss how this daily prayer can shape our identity, desires and the way we live.

They reflect that listening to God is about more than just hearing his words; it involves obedience that displays itself in practical action and personal transformation.

They consider how distraction, especially from smartphones, weakens our attention on and love for God and other people, before sharing practical ways we can listen better in prayer, relationships and everyday life.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:38) - What is the Shema prayer?
• (04:48) - The Shema prayer in its original context and today
• (06:14) - The role of daily prayer in spiritual formation
• (08:59) - Hearing, listening and obeying – living out the two greatest commandments
• (11:05) - Prayer keeps our focus on the Lord
• (13:12) - The meaning of the Hebrew word Shema and its use throughout Scripture
• (13:50) - Hearing, listening, obedience and transformation
• (15:50) - Listening, true relationship and the things that distract us
• (18:12) - The importance of community and accountability
• (19:48) - Ideas for practical action

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#Prayer #Listening #Identity #SpiritualFormation #Deuteronomy #Numbers #ChristianLiving #ChristianPodcast

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Esther King

Esther is part of Bible Society's Communications team.

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Mark Woods

Mark is a Baptist minister and sometime journalist, who now heads up Bible Society's comms team.

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Noël Amos

Noël is the editor of Rooted, Bible Society's devotional journal.

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Noël: 00:02

I think we've lost the practice of repeating liturgical prayer. I think that says so much to the idea of spiritual formation.

Mark: 00:11

I suppose in my tradition, the nearest you come to that is the hymns that we would sing. I think it is really important to understand how what we say, whether we say it or whether we sing it, actually forms who we are.

Esther: 00:25

Instead of reaching for my phone or all the other things I waste time doing in the morning, if I started with this prayer and I was saying it earnestly, I'd be going into my day focused on my purpose as someone who belongs to God and looking for opportunities in my day to obey what it says in the prayer.

Noël: 00:45

What I really find powerful about this prayer is just the power it has to shape the way that I think and the things that I go after in my life. And it feels like this prayer is supposed to be a reminder of identity that every day they're waking up and and reminding themselves that their number one thing that they're set out to do is to love the Lord. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to The Rooted Podcast. I'm Noël, and I'm joined again by Mark and Esther.

Noël: 01:14

If you listened to the podcast last year, you'll have known that we've been on a bit of a break, and we're really happy to be back, but also sad to say that this is going to be the last series of The Rooted Podcast. We've so loved creating this podcast, but we're turning our focus elsewhere in our work for the time being. But we are really looking forward to this series. It's going to be all around the idea of listening. The Bible has a lot to say about listening.

Noël: 01:38

It's what we're going to focus on over the next three episodes in this series. So in the first episode, we're going to talk about the Shema, which is a biblical prayer that was recited daily by the Jewish community, is still recited by the Jewish community. So it's found in Deuteronomy chapter six verses four to nine. And then also in Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 13 to 21. And then the third section is found in Numbers chapter 15 verses 37 to 41.

Noël: 02:09

And the first word of the prayer is Shema, which is the Hebrew word for hear or listen. We really want to talk about how to be better listeners in our church communities, how to be better listeners in prayer with God. And we think that this prayer, the Shema, and this word throughout Scripture can teach us a lot about how to be better listeners. And it sort of was the spark behind this journal that we created. And we wanted to just start to think a bit about how important listening is in our relationship with God in prayer, and also how important it is when we think about building a church community that is strong and attentive and loving.

Noël: 02:54

But let's start by reading the first part of the prayer itself.

Esther: 02:58

Yes. I'm going to read this out of the lovely Everyday Faith Bible, which is the NRSV updated edition. So yeah, I'll just read those verses from Deuteronomy six. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I'm commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you're at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Esther: 03:42

Okay, so that is the opening of the Shema prayer. But interestingly, these other sections that Noël mentioned, they do add some an interesting element to that because you've got this thing about loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, your mind and your soul, your strength.

Esther: 03:59

But then there's also kind of a bit of an if then warning in the Deuteronomy 11 passage. It kind of says, if you do this and if you keep all of my commandments, if you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, then basically I'll bless you. I'll send the rains. Your land will be fertile and you will prosper. And there's sort of a warning in there as well.

Esther: 04:23

Take care not to be led astray and start serving and worshipping other gods because then the flip side is you will not receive those blessings. The Numbers passage even talks about you having like fringes on your garments that are supposed to represent this reminder of God's command. So even in what you're wearing that you would be reminded to love the Lord your God and obey him.

Noël: 04:48

Yes. Mark, can you give us a bit of context in the prayer, maybe how it was used and tell us more about it?

Mark: 04:54

Well, this was a prayer which was sort of given by Moses to the people. In a way it was telling them who they were and just getting them to reaffirm who they were, what their basic identity was. And they would say this prayer every day, and observant Jewish people would still say this prayer every day. And for me, it's so interesting and so powerful because it says, you know, right at the heart of who we are is this command to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And everything out of your identity, the way that you live, the way you think, everything about you springs from that particular commandment.

Mark: 05:43

And I think that's really powerful. So really deep stuff going on there. The other things Esther mentioned about the other places where the prayer is mentioned is about the physical representation of this identity as well. So, you know, you'd bind it on your forehead, you put it by your door as well. And so the whole thing works together as a statement.

Mark: 06:07

This is who we are. This is how we're going to live. And this is going to be our priority in our lives.

Noël: 06:14

I think it's really powerful, the idea that they would speak this out every single day. I think that says so much to the idea of spiritual formation. Just the idea that when I say something again and again and again, if I wake up every single morning and I'm set on becoming a millionaire, my whole worldview is going to change. Everything I do is going to change if I wake up and every day I say some sort of mantra towards that thing. So I think what I really find powerful about this prayer is just the the power it has to shape the way that I think and the things that I want and the things that I go after in my life.

Noël: 06:50

And it makes me think about how so much of our Christian faith is about what we want and what we desire and what we're going after. And it feels like this prayer is supposed to be, like you've said, a reminder of identity that every day they're waking up and reminding themselves that their number one thing that they're set out to do is to love the Lord.

Mark: 07:10

Yeah, I think that's really true. And you used an interesting word there, Noël. You said it's like a mantra. And I think that's right in some ways. But I think, as I understand it, part of a mantra is that you kind of empty your mind and you focus on this one phrase as a way of bringing yourself closer to the divine, to the absolute, whatever it is.

Mark: 07:32

And there is a kind of element of that in it. But at the same time, I think it has much more content to it. So when you say, you know, love the Lord, your God with all your heart and your soul and your strength, there's an ambition there that you're going to think, well, how do I actually do this? What does loving the Lord, my God actually mean? How does it work out in practice?

Mark: 07:53

So we really think hard about how to do that. And I think that's where that's different from a mantra in that way.

Esther: 08:02

It's such a good spiritual practice. Like you mentioned, Noël, spiritual formation. And I was thinking about the woeful state of my prayer life sometimes and how inconsistent I am. And it just is the truth. It is a basic fact that if I woke up every morning and instead of reaching for my phone or all the other things I waste time doing in the morning, that if I started with this prayer and I was saying it earnestly, I think I would be I'd be going into my day in a much more positive mindset with, you know, and that sounds a bit empty.

Esther: 08:36

Oh, it's just more positive. I don't mean it in that way, but I just mean focused on God, focused on my purpose as someone who belongs to God and looking for opportunities in my day to obey what it says in the prayer. And I just think that I this is a real challenge to me. I don't pray like this every morning, and I think I should.

Mark: 08:59

It's really interesting, isn't it? That when the teacher of the law comes to Jesus and says, which is the great commandment of the law, this is what Jesus says, love the Lord your God, etcetera, etcetera. And then he says, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself, which is just what you're saying, Esther, isn't it? You know, you go out into the world and you think, right, how can I actually do this? And it's almost as though he's putting these two commandments side by side.

Mark: 09:24

The love your neighbor as yourself commandment is from Leviticus. And it's almost as though he's almost putting it on a level, you you love God, you love your neighbor. And the one is the kind of outworking of the other in some ways.

Noël: 09:40

Yes. I think that's right. I think they're I think those two are meant to go together. And it's interesting in that passage, the leader asks Jesus for one command, but really he gives him two instead. And I think it's because those two are almost intertwined.

Noël: 09:58

They go hand in hand. So there are some other prayers in Scripture that are kind of similar to the Shema in that they could be recited daily. So prayers like the Lord's Prayer or the Jesus Prayer. So like you were saying Esther, I think we've lost the practice of repeating liturgical prayer. It's not really something that we do, at least not in my community.

Noël: 10:20

But I wonder what it would do to us, the power that it has, and to again shape our thoughts and our desires. And sometimes it can feel tedious, but I think it can be powerful. I was thinking as I was preparing this, I was reading Simone Weil. She's the sort of French philosopher, and she wrote in her book Waiting on God. She wrote that she would try to say the Lord's prayer every single day, but she would say it.

Noël: 10:45

And if her mind ever wandered or she started not fully paying attention to the Lord while she was saying it, she would start again, and she would say it again. I thought, oh, I wonder how many times she had to do that in a given day. But I think the reason that the prayers like these are so powerful is because they require our attention. And love is attention. Right?

Noël: 11:05

If you want to show someone love, you have to give them your attention. And it reminds me of listening. So, yeah, I do think these these prayers can have that power to focus us on the Lord.

Mark: 11:15

I think they focus us even when we don't realise that they're focusing us. You know, they're shaping us. I'm a big believer in liturgical prayer actually. And, you know, I'm a Baptist. It's not really part of my tradition actually.

Mark: 11:29

But, you know, I can really see the power of it just because you're saying these words day by day, week by week, and they're kind of sinking into your consciousness. They're kind of they're shaping how you think and how you feel and, and just, you're, you're growing into a particular kind of person, because of the words that you use. I suppose in my tradition, the nearest you come to that is the hymns that we would sing. And in those traditional hymns, there's such a weight of thinking and meaning. And I think that was our liturgy really looking back.

Mark: 12:09

And I'm not going to get into the whole debate about which is better, modern hymns or older hymns. But I think it is really important to understand how what we say, whether we say it or whether we sing it, actually forms who we are. And it shapes what we believe and how we react to things. It's really powerful.

Esther: 12:33

Well, singing is such an amazing memory tool as well, isn't it? Having a tune to something. Somehow it just helps it to lodge in your brain, I think, more perhaps than just repeating words. And I also think, I mean, again, my church tradition, there is a bit of liturgy, but not loads. And sometimes what I find when you're saying these things together in church, for example, is that it just sort of sounds like this rumble and people are speaking at different speeds and it can get a bit, I don't know, it doesn't always sound very nice, but when you sing together, it does sound beautiful.

Noël: 13:12

So what this all has to do with listening, the very first word of this prayer is Shema, which I've said earlier, but it's the Hebrew word for hear or listen. And so I think it's powerful that the thing that the Lord is first asking them to do is to listen to him. But there are so many places in Scripture where this word is used that make it clear. And even in this verse, we can see that the Lord doesn't just want them to hear the sound of his voice, but to listen is to do what he says. And that is sort of the heart behind what we're looking at in the journal is the idea that those two things go hand in hand.

Noël: 13:50

And I think that should change our perspective on what it is to listen. Not just on what it is to listen to God, but what it is to listen to a teaching, let's say, or another person. I mean, I think I can be not great at this at church, but you listen to something, and it's really good, a sermon or word. And we kind of think that that means that we've sort of done our job. But transformation doesn't just come by listening, does it?

Noël: 14:19

You hear something. And sometimes I think we mistake that for transformation when actually the doing, the putting what I've heard into action is actually when I start to become changed as a person. So I think that this word is actually so powerful. We aren't to just hear something, but actually to take action is what God wants.

Esther: 14:40

I think some of the most powerful times where I really feel that I have not just heard, but I've listened to a sermon, listening in the sense that you just said, are when I felt really convicted during a sermon and I've known immediately who I need to go and speak to, apologise to, you know, come to a slightly different place to where we've been in our relationship. And I think, yeah, those are actually some of the most immediate definite responses to not just listening, but being changed and then going and doing something that's quite costly. It doesn't always feel very comfortable to do it, but you know you need to. And then actually the blessing that can come out of that, it doesn't always go smoothly, but yeah, it does lead to a blessing.

Noël: 15:26

Yeah. I think it also comes into play when we think about we'll get into this more in the last episode of the series, but when we think about listening to others, how often do we just listen but not really do anything about what's been said? Or actually, how often do we just not listen? I think listening is quite easy, but how often are we listening to someone we live with? And like, we're kind of half listening, but really we're focusing on what we're doing.

Noël: 15:50

Or even in prayer, I was reminded of a I don't know if you guys have seen this, but Mother Teresa did an interview with Dan Rather on Sixty Minutes, like years and years and years ago. And Dan Rather asked her, so when you pray, what do you say to God? And she said, I don't say anything, I just listen. And he said, okay, well what does God say to you? And she said, he doesn't say anything, he listens.

Noël: 16:19

But it's it's it's so beautiful, isn't it? It's this beautiful understanding of relationship where the two are just sitting and listening for one another even though no one's saying anything. It's this being together. And I think it's underrated, or maybe not underrated, maybe under practised. Because how often do we come into prayer, and we have things that we want to say to God?

Noël: 16:41

And how much are we expecting him to say something to us? And he and he is speaking, but I think we've lost that practice.

Mark: 16:49

And it becomes kind of quite transactional, doesn't it? And, you know, we we want we want to solve problems, and we pray to solve problems. But, you know, if you if you have a relationship with somebody, you know, a friendship or husband and wife, say, it's really about getting to know the other person, isn't it? It's not just about what you do for them or with them. It's about knowing them.

Mark: 17:22

And you only get that by listening to each other. And you only get that if you're not on your phones all the time. They are really, really destructive to relationships because they're such a temptation. Yeah. You know, they're a temptation not to be with somebody else in the moment, but to be distracted and, yeah.

Mark: 17:42

It's it's makes life difficult.

Noël: 17:44

Yeah. They're sort of in the essence of distraction, which is like the thing that means we can't listen. So distraction from God and prayer is the thing that keeps us away from, I think, really deep contemplative times of prayer. And then, yeah, things like phones distracting us from listening to other people. My husband recently spoke on a panel at a school where they were having a conference about smartphones, kids and smartphones and the destructive nature of them.

Noël: 18:12

And the whole idea behind the conference was if we can get everyone to do this, it will work. But if only some kids can't have them and other kids have them, it doesn't work because your kids won't. They want to fit in, they want to be cool, it doesn't work that kind of it reminds me a bit of this prayer of the Shema, the idea that everyone was saying it. So you had a whole community of people who were adopting, buying into believing the same thing and saying it every single day. The power that that would have on a community.

Noël: 18:42

I can imagine even the power it would have on my church community if we all woke up and said the Lord's prayer before we started our day. It's not just it's not an individual change. It can actually be a community wide change. And I think that's what they must have been experiencing. People in the early Church must have been experiencing that.

Noël: 19:01

And I think it's so powerful when you take it from the individual to the community.

Esther: 19:05

I mean, it's important for accountability as well. So you've got the benefit of like, okay, we are all trying to please God. You know, we're trying to love God with all of our entire being. And that does, you know, if you look at the ten Commandments, even when you look at the impact that loving God in that way has on how we treat other people, obviously it benefits everyone. So there's a community benefit to it.

Esther: 19:31

There's community flourishing, but also saying it together is sort of like a promise together to God and to each other. And so that accountability, when you see things happening in your community that don't really match with that prayer that we all prayed this morning, I think it's more stark, isn't it?

Noël: 19:48

Yeah. Alright. So we've talked a bit about just the importance of listening, why it can be so difficult for us, maybe that it's less appreciated than it should be. What are we going to do this week? Let's talk.

Noël: 20:02

How are we going to listen better, embrace it, embrace the ideas behind this prayer or the first word better?

Mark: 20:11

Well, I'll dive in and say, I would really like to try and get on top of my phone habit. I spent far too much time looking at Facebook reels and stuff like that. And I don't think it's good for me, and I don't think it's good for the that I'm with either. So I think I would like to get away from that. There is this, you know, there's the constant dopamine hit, isn't there?

Mark: 20:32

It doesn't matter. It's not interesting. You know, it's not it's not significant. Yeah. So less of that and more paying attention to people.

Noël: 20:41

That's good. Yeah. I think for me oh, I have a a meeting later this week with someone, actually a group of people. And I know there will be some things that I will hear that I won't really want to give much time to. I won't really want to listen to, to be honest, because I know they're gonna be different to what I think and and that sort of thing.

Noël: 21:01

And then I think my challenge for myself always in those meetings, but again, this week is to listen. Not just to listen and then say what I want to say and not really consider the change that maybe that person is hoping to bring, but to actually really listen to it and to take what they've said into consideration. Yeah, that's my challenge.

Esther: 21:21

I think for me, this is going to sound super spiritual now after the very practical things that you've given, but I genuinely think I'm going to try and say the Lord's prayer, or maybe I'll mix it up with this, you know, the Deuteronomy six four to nine passage, like praying that every day. And also, I mean, I'm also addicted to my phone Mark, but what I fail to do when I'm, so maybe I'm not just watching cat videos, I'm looking at people's political opinions and either agreeing or very strongly disagreeing and getting all caught up in that. What I failed to do with the emotions that I feel, which is similar to that dopamine hit but much more negative, is to take them to God in prayer. And I think maybe I will try and couple those two things to have that focus at the beginning of the day and maybe the end of the day too, just on the Lord's prayer. But then also bringing that sort of contemplative prayer and maybe more listening into stuff that I'm reacting to, that I'm seeing.

Esther: 22:29

Because I think, yeah, I'm just fed up with being caught up in negative stuff, feeling helpless, feeling just like, oh, the state of the world, this is terrible. Feeling disconnected to other people and thinking how could I ever People really think like this, how could I connect with them? And I think we just forget that God can connect any people and that we have really important reasons to connect with others, that we're called to love them. And I'm hoping that this will transform my week and take me from where I'm currently at to somewhere much better.

Noël: 23:04

Well, thanks Mark and Esther, and thanks everyone who's listening. Thanks for joining us for our last series. We will see you next week for the next episode in which we're gonna talk more about how ancient Israel listened and how the early Church listened and pull some stories from Scripture and and discuss those. So looking forward to that, and we'll see you then.