The echo
of earth in the grave.
The crash of the glass under the chuppah.
The cry of the baby at his bris The rip of the ribbon over
your heart.
The chant of the Torah in a young voice.
The recitation of the vows between partners.
The tear of the tape to unveil a gravestone.
The tears and the laughter at remembering a life.
The tears The laughter The tearing The chant The cry The crash
The echo.
You think
these are the sound of the poignant moments during lifecycle
events.
But they are not.
These are the moments God is close to us.
Lifecycle
events allow us to be in the power of the moment. When we
have the time, we spend months, sometimes years planning every
detail. And at other times we have little more then 24 hours
to put everything in place. Over and over commemorating the
passage between life and death, between childhood and adulthood
stirs and surprises us.
We are taken aback at how touched we are, how powerful and
full our lives feel at that moment.
A few
years ago, I was sitting around a table with confirmation
students preparing for their service. All of them could still
chant the first line of their Torah portions from their Bar/Bat
Mitzvah ceremonies, very few could remember what kind of party
their classmates had or what happened at their own party.
These moments of ritual are remembered for ever because it
is our brush with God.
The chant
of the Torah in a young voice.
The recitation of the vows between partners.
In the
past week I have received two almost identical letters from
widows. These notes are beautiful and touching. Both women
thanked me for my part in the funeral of their husband. And
in each letter there was a statement made to the affect that
I know this is "routine" for you rabbi, but thank
you for helping us through such a sad time in the life of
our family. There is nothing routine about being part of these
moments; your encounter
wit the holy is a gift and a blessing for me to be a part
of. I also find God in these moments.. What other person has
God as their partner day in and day out?
I hope everyone, because God does not ONL Y dwell in these
ritual moments, but god is with us everyday. While it is during
lifecycle moments that we become more acutely aware of the
presence of God, opening our eyes to the holy makes the ordinary-extraordinary,
and makes the mundane-awe inspiring.
The rip
of the ribbon over your heart The tear of the tape to unveil
a gravestone.
I was going to title this sermon "Where is God?"
and then I thought it should be called "When do we encounter
God, but in the end I believe this sermon is about "How
can we see God?". Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote his famous
book, "God in Search of Man" to put forth his treatise
that God is always there-it is human beings who are absent,
we are the ones who have given up the search for the Divine
in our lives. There is a story of a young boy who is playing
hide and seek with his friends. An hour passes and no one
finds him. He has chosen such a good hiding place his friends
give up looking for him and begin to play another game. He
comes out crying to his father; "Why did they stop searching
for me?" His father says this is like God, because God
is hidden, we give up our search too easily. What gets in
our way of that search for the holy in our lives? How can
we refocus our attention to become more attuned to the holy?
To begin
with, I believe our expectations get in the way of our encounter
with God. When I was younger I believed that God must only
live in the good and happy moments not the sad times, during
one's successes not failures, in our positive feelings not
in the discomfort of our anger, disappointments or frustrations.
My experience as I have grown older is that during the times
of my greatest frustrations and disappointments, are the times
I have learned the most, gained the most insight. God teaches
important lessons when we are outside of our comfort zone.
And as a rabbi, I have been blessed to see God's presence
in so many more and varied ways. I have now witnessed God's
presence amidst the storms of our lives.
I remember
being called for the first time to the bedside of a man who
had died. I was scared, I had never seen a dead body before;
I didn't know exactly what to say or what to do. I walked
into the hospital room there were tears and a palpable feeling
of anxiety.
Before the nurses needed to prepare for the arrival of the
funeral home, we gathered around the bed and said prayers;
S’hma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. All of a
sudden there was calm in the room, and God's presence was
touchable.
Since
that time I have has many experiences of death and each has
its own story, and each has its own ending and each is powerful
and takes my breath away. I have come to believe the most
loving act is to let a loved go when his/her time comes. Like
that first experience, I believe in the power of prayer. I
have seen a man on a ventilator, his only source of life die
peacefully without a dial being touched, after all his family
arrived and together we said the sh'ma. He let go when he
was ready because medical technology is no match for the power
of the spirit.
God is
in the presence of a new born grandson in the hospice room
of his grandmother who through sheer will and strength stayed
alive for his birth and his bris. God dwells in that hospice
room, in between the quiet breath of a new life and the faint
breath of letting go there is the Shechinah, the presence
of the holy.
The cry
of the baby at his bris.
The echo of the earth in the grave.
As clergy,
we often cover the spectrum of lifecycles in a week, sometimes
in a day;
Tragedy
Joy and
Affirmation.
It is
commonplace for a rabbi to be asked deep theological questions,
so commonplace it happens in the grocery store and sitting
next to a stranger on a plane. Often these questions come
in the guise of a test, O.k.; rabbi, what would the world
be like without God? The cynic would answer that the world
would be exactly the same as it is today.
There would be war and hatred, the loss of innocent life,
there would be tsunamis and hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes
all the horror and trauma would be exactly the same. I would
have to agree with this assessment. But I believe that without
God we would not only have the tragedies that we have today
but there would be no outcry about the horrors of war, nor
an out stretched hand of a neighbor to help pull us out of
our depths, or the stranger to fill the sand bags to keep
the water at bay. Without God, we would not be moved to feed
the hungry, clothe the naked or create shelter for the homeless.
Isaiah implores us;
"Is
such the fast I desire? A day to starve your bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush?
And lying in sackcloth and ashes:
Do you call that a fast, A say when Adonai is favorable?
No, this is the fast I desire; To unlock fetters of wickedness
And untie the cords of the Yoke To share your bread with the
hungry, An to take the poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him, And not to ignore your
own kin. (58:5-7)
Without
God this world would be heartless and unforgiving, narcissistic,
self indulgent and selfish. But that isn't the world we live
in; we live in a world full of heart and soul.
Ordinary people making extraordinary change.
When our
youth group works at STEP.
When our men's club makes food at St. Stephen's Shelter.
When sisterhood supports the at risk children on scholarships
in our Early Childhood Center.
When a committee works to create our commitment to sustainability
and we connect our ner tamid to solar panels.
Baby baskets and shirts that say "I got my name at Temple
Israel, fully funding our commitment to Habitat for Humanity,
Meals on Wheels, delivering thanksgiving meals to 100's of
people, Naseh v'Nishma, our young teenagers logging thousands
of hours of community service every year. God is right in
front of us, all we need to do is open our eyes to look around
and we will find God, right here among us.
The complexity
and horror of our world require that we find a safe place
to rest and replenish our souls; Shabbat is the Jewish response
to that need. To that end, our movement has been working for
more than a decade to create a Mishkan, a tabernacle for sprititual
safety. Every Friday evening I invite you out of the horror
of Iraq, the chatter of political pundits, the anxiety of
our daily lives to join us in prayer and song. In this sanctuary
we seek the meaning of our prayers, our hopes and our dreams.
Through our new prayer book, Mishkan T'filah, we will see
new words in order to lift our souls.
These words lift the spirit; these words help us find God
in the midst of the tragedies that have become the ordinary.
As our hearts ache and are minds are numb, these words will
awaken us to help us seek God.
Readings.
We will
hear the voice of God in a new way when we open the pages
of this prayerbook. Our ritual committee has made a commitment
to use Mishkan T'filah, for shabbot in our congregation. As
we implement this change we will be in conversation with all
of you about your feelings and reactions. Worship is a dynamic
work of art, transforming us to open ourselves to the Divine.
This change will take place over the next calendar year, and
during that time we will offer opportunities for discussion.
To be
in conversation is what life is all about. I don't need Tuesdays
with Morrie because I have lunches with Max. If you ever want
to find God, I hope you are lucky enough to be touched by
the wisdom and insight of Rabbi Shapiro. Since I arrived at
Temple Israel in 1988, I have cherished my lunches with him.
Regardless of how many books I read, there are no books that
can parley the wisdom that a life well lived has to offer.
His insights and advice are blessings. This Shabbat, you have
the opportunity to reap the harvest of Rabbi Shapiro's gifts
by celebrating this extraordinary man's 90th birthday. It
is more than appropriate that we gather for this congregational
life cycle on Sukkot, which is known as z'man simchatenu,
the time of our greatest joy and celebration. As sukkot commemorates
the ingathering of the harvest, we will be commemorating the
rich and extraordinary abundance of Rabbi Shapiro's career
serving five generations of this congregation from cradle
to grave, and his service to the wider community of interfaith
relations. Weare honored to be blessed with his stature. Many
see God when Rabbi Shapiro lifts his hands in the benediction,
we all see God as we honor this man who never bowed low under
the burdens of his time and who brought God's presence to
the generations of this congregation. For those of you who
joined us beyond his rabbinate I would like to share a few
of his words with you from his book, "Walk Beside Me",
a compilation of his writings. In his Yom Kippur sermon of
1961 Rabbi Shapiro says:
"You
may have all the knowledge. You may have all the information.
You may have the erudition. But if you do not light the flame
you cannot have faith.
And you,
yourself, hold the match. You, yourself, can light it. Just
try. And if, at first, the light sputters and goes out, try
again. Keep acting the way a man with faith should act. Keep
living the way a man with faith should live. Keep doing what
a man with faith would do. And you will discover that you
will soon achieve only what a man with faith can find."
The tears and laughter of a life well lived.
Over the
nest 24 hours, as I seek God through T'shuvah, repentance,
I will remember--
The echo
The crash The cry The chant The tear The laughter The tears
The sounds of God brushing up against us.
As each
of you review this past year, the moments which were ordinary
for others but extraordinary for you, you will in your very
heart and soul know those were the times that you brushed
up against God. I invite all of us to see the extraordinary
in the ordinary this Yom Kippur, and to open your eyes in
order to see what has been there all along, the Divine presence
in our daily lives.
