Congregation Beth El

March 7, 2007

I was moved by a recent interview I read with Katherine Jefferts Schori, who in November of 2006, became the first woman to become the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of America. Jefferts Schori is a pilot and a former oceanographer. The interview was on the topic of what it might mean for one to have faith.
“I don’t see faith as adhering to a list of propositions,” she says, “I understand faith more in the sense of faithfulness in relationship; I understand it in the root sense of both the Latin and the English word, that it is what you give your heart to.”
Often we equate faith with what we know to be true, but Jefferts Schori is reminding us that, at its root, faith is mysterious. It is the act of the heart being given, of the heart going out to another; and the giver does not necessarily know what will happen from that point on. That is why I think her equating faith with faithfulness in relationship is a model that illustrates this well. What does it mean to be faithful to another? It means, in the words of Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, “learning to stay.” Learning to stay is learning to be present, the best we can moment to moment, to what is happening in our lives and relationships. Learning to stay perhaps could be defined as how Jefferts Schori defines faith later in the interview: “It requires vulnerability to say I will show up with my whole being and I will engage.”
The religious question we most often get hung up on is whether or not someone believes in God. For some reason, this has become an important question in our society. Rabbi Ira Stone has taught, “Whether or not you believe in God is not a Jewish question. A Jewish question is how true are you to your experience of God in the world.” Another way of putting this could be: how true are we to the sense of wonder we experience in our lives? Or how true are we to our ethical obligations to those around us? In this respect, belief in God is only as important as what we do with it, or where it inspires us to place our heart. Maybe faith is whatever moves us towards another.
The new age culture has spawned a whole new vocabulary about individual spiritual seeking and fulfillment. On balance, I think this is a useful vocabulary, because we know that each of us has our own path to walk. But it can also be a vocabulary that leaves us feeling isolated and alienated. Jefferts Schori reminds us that, “Judeo-Christian tradition has always said that wholeness, holiness, [and] salvation come in the midst of community - and the aberration is to say that I myself can understand, can just make my own decisions and go my own way.”
Judaism teaches that there is no such thing as individual redemption, that we are all inextricably tied to one another. If we’re going to make it, then we’re all going to make it. This is an ecological teaching as well, one that we’ve been painfully slow to realize. As a former biologist who studied squids and octopuses, Jefferts Schori is probably in a good position to be a religious leader in that she can see how ecologically and spiritually, we’re all in the same boat. Interfaith work in this respect isn’t a luxury, but a necessity; and the faith of not-knowing - that none of us knows for sure what the answers are - helps us to listen to one another’s religious traditions with an open mind.

March 3, 2007

Purim Tetsaveh Sermon

Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith, has been grabbing headlines these past few years by saying that, not only is there nothing worth salvaging about religion, but that it is irresponsible, intellectually dishonest, a colossal waste of time, and contributes to much of society’s problems today.

“Whatever their imagined source, the doctrines of modern religions are no more tenable than those which were cast upon the scrap heap of mythology millennia ago.”

And he goes after Judaism in particular -

“Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion.”

Well, it’s obvious to me that Mr. Harris has not spent any time with this past week’s Torah portion, or he might want to rethink some of his views about the irrelevance of Judaism and religion in general. Oh, Judaism has nothing to teach our young minds today, does it Mr. Harris? Nothing to offer the world by way of solutions and a way out of our cultural malaise? I give you Exodus 29, verses 10-14, which, as luck would have it, I just happen to have with me here tonight. Listen, gentle readers, for what Judaism in action, and faith in action can truly look like. Tremble, Mr. Harris, in the face of truth that you cannot refute!

“Slaughter the bull before the Lord, at the entrance to the tent of meeting, and take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger; then pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. Take all the fat that covers the entrails, the protuberance on the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat on them, and turn them into smoke upon the altar. The rest of the flesh of the bull, its hide, and its dung shall be put to the fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering.”

I could go on, but do I really need to? I mean, how clearly do they have to say it? They’re talking to us! The Bible is talking to us! These words ring as true today as when they were first written, and frankly, if this isn’t a call to action, I don’t know what is.

First of all, this text is deeply personal for me, it’s almost autobiographical, if you will, kind of a soundtrack of my life. Just hearing these first words, “slaughter the bull before the Lord” instantly transports me back to my boyhood summers on the shores of Lake Champlain, and fills me with the first stirrings in my heart towards God. I can almost taste my Mother’s cornbread. When I hear, “take some of the bull’s blood, and put it on the horns of the altar” I remember first knowing that I wanted to work with orphans in the subcontinent, and I remember during a particularly dark period of my life, when I’d lost all bearing and direction as a disillusioned 23 year old, working as an artificial inseminator at a turkey plant in Des Moines, hearing that same verse again and remembering who I was, and I left the next week to go to Israel and help Palestinian single mothers with glaucoma bake marijuana brownies. I mean, have you ever heard a song and felt, that song was written for me? Well, that’s what Exodus 29 does for me: it pierces my armor and looks straight into my soul. And, on an even more personal note, I remember meeting Vanessa when we were both yeshiva students in Jerusalem, and first catching each other’s eye across the crowded house of study, just as the rosh yeshiva read, “the rest of the flesh of the bull, its hide, and its dung.” Our eyes locked and it was as if the room was flooded with light. At that moment, I knew that she was the woman for me.

But, lest you think this is purely a personal text - it’s not. Oh no. This is a text of universal import. One cannot stay silent in the face of this text.

The kidneys? They are the strangers who we shall not oppress. And the fat on these kidneys? This is the oppression that the strangers find themselves being oppressed in. A fatty oppression. A trans-fatty oppression. And so, to quote another verse from Exodus, “we should not boil them in their mother’s milk!” People, this is a song of freedom and human dignity. De-fat the kidneys! Demons be gone! Curdle your loins! Love the stranger! Wash his entrails and legs!

But what about the protuberance on the liver, you might ask? The aforementioned protuberance is the threat of rap music, the latest pox on our great land.

No. No - I don’t think that’s it.

Uh, the protuberance on the liver is the state of Israel, like a lily growing among thorns, a lily which will lead the other lilies to the light, a lily that is a light to the nations. A strong Israel, a lily growing from swarthy mud, a swamp lily! Up the revolution! Free Leona Helmsley! A flush toilet in every home, a turkey in every pot!

No, I, er, I think I must have gotten off track back there somewhere.

In any case, Mr. Harris, ignore this passage at your own peril. Judaism is as relevant as it ever was. Post no bills, deer crossing, keep America beautiful. Shabbat shalom.