Address: Let My Words Turn Into Sparks©
The Rev.
Last week I sat with a group of my
ministerial colleagues as we planned the programs for our monthly gatherings
this year. “I would like to discuss the
challenges of ministry in a time of fallacious war” said one colleague. The scribe started to write down the idea,
but stopped, uncertain of how to spell “hellacious.” We all agreed that either term would do, and
that this was indeed an urgent topic to address.
On Thursday the shofar blast
announced Rash Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. At this point, it is said that the Gates of
Heaven open, allowing ten days for introspection, righting ones wrongs,
personal awakenings and good deeds. During
this time, it is said, God opens the Book of Life, where our actions, both good
and bad are listed. By casting away the
bitterness and wrongdoings of the previous year, we have a chance to clean up
our record. On Sunday at dusk, Yom
Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, will be over, and the book will be sealed up,
and the Gates closed for another year.
And so, at this mid point in the
Jewish High Holy Days, it seems an apt time to take stock, both collectively as
a nation and as individuals, at where we have missed the mark, and how we might
begin anew to seek transformation and healing in our lives and in our world. Our task is complicated by the fact that we are currently engaged in what I believe
is a misguided and harmful war – a war in which we as a people have spent half
a trillion dollars, sacrificed the lives of more than 600,000 Iraqis, lost
nearly 5,000 of our own troops, and for what?
On Thursday evening our president defended this unpopular war, using phrases
like economic revitalization, security progress and providing hope as a
justification for our ongoing presence there.
But in reality what people are left
with in Iraq these days are broken lives, ethnic violence, and widespread
corruption. And here at home, it is as
if we have put our nation’s wealth into a bathtub and just pulled the
plug: $9 billion unaccounted for – money
down the drain; American soldiers returning with psychological and physical
trauma – human lives down the drain; money that could help our schools, or feed
the hungry – down the drain. And so it
goes, on and on and on.
Each year, Rabbi Michael Lerner publishes
a wonderful supplement for the High Holy Days in Tikkun Magazine. This year, he titled the supplement
“Repentance in a Time of War.” Apparently
it isn’t only the UU clergy who are struggling with the issue of ministry in
this context. In his introduction he
writes:
In the United States, Israel and most other
advanced industrial countries, this year’s High Holidays come at a period of
massive hypocrisy, national chauvinism, repression of civil liberties, and
denial of the most critical issues facing our planet. We continue to ignore basic p
It is easy to get stirred up when
you think about just how far astray we have gone. It makes one wish that congregations of all
faiths -- along with all of our American political leaders -- were spending
time this week in honest self reflection, asking themselves what they could do
to rectify the damage we as a nation have done in our greed and our arrogance. Yet few will do so. And, as Lerner also points out, few of us
will make demands upon our political representatives, challenging them to
reject the underlying strategy of domination that perpetuates this and other
wars. Were we not so timid, he suggests,
we might demand a fully new paradigm – the idea that security can come only
through a strategy of generosity and open-heartedness to others, based on the
recognition of our fundamental interconnectedness.
The Haftarah that is read on Yom
Kippur comes from the prophet Isaiah, as he interprets God’s challenge to his
people:
Is not this the kind
of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to
share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with
shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh
and blood?
Then your light
will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear; …
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Perhaps
some of you thought that it was Jesus who first spoke of feeding the hungry,
providing shelter to those without, and breaking the chains of oppression in
his Sermon on the Mount. And indeed,
there, near the Sea of Galilee he did echo these more ancient words attributed
to the prophet Isaiah. The call to
follow the dictates of love, mercy and justice is the ongoing quest of multiple
generations and multiple cultures. It is
up to each of us to respond to this vision of old, and to continue the work of
making the world new again, like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose
waters never fail.
On the birthday of
the world
I begin to contemplate
What I have done and left
Undone…
How much have I put
On the line for freedom?
For mine and others?....
Have I spoken
out? Who
Have I tried to move?....
…Here
I stand before the gates
Opening, the fire dazzling
My eyes and as I
approach
What judges me, I judge
Myself. Give me weapons
Of minute destruction. Let
My words turn into sparks.[1]
We
all need to be reminded at times to reignite the spark within, and to put into
action our yearnings for freedom and justice.
It has been a while, for instance, since I actually attended a peace
march or a rally – I always feel so busy with my work here and my duties at
home that I have been content to cheer on others who stand in my figurative
shoes, but I’m beginning to realize that I am also called to stand in witness
for justice and peace sometimes. On
September 19th – next Wednesday in fact -- my colleague, the
The
group is heading to Jena, a small town of roughly 3000 people located in
Central Louisiana, where a little over a year ago racial tensions were brought
to the surface when some African American students asked their Vice Principal
if they could sit under the “Whites Only Tree” that dominated the front lawn of
their school. In response, three White
students hung nooses from the tree, but received only three days
suspension. More Black students began to
stand under the tree in protest of this light punishment, prompting the racist
District Attorney to come in with a cadre of local police demanding that they
end their presence there. He was quoted
as saying: "I
can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with
a stroke of my pen."[2] Racial tensions continued to
escalate and on November 30th an arson fire destroyed the main
school building. That same weekend, a
white student threatened some black students with a shotgun. The Black students managed to wrestle the gun
away, and no one was hurt. The white
student was not charged with a crime, but the Black students were charged with
stealing the shotgun. Finally, in
response to racial slurs by on of the noose hangers, a White student was beaten
by 6 Black Students. All six were
charged with attempted murder and conspiracy and charged as adults for crimes
that could total over 100 years in prison.
No White student has ever been given anything more than a school
suspension for similar incidents.
Originally, the rally was set for Thursday when a sixteen year old, who
has been in jail since last December (he was the only one of the six whose
family could not raise the tens of thousands of dollars require to bail him
out), was scheduled for sentencing. In
response to public pressure, however, just yesterday a judge threw out the
charges, saying that the teenager should have been charged in juvenile court
rather than as an adult. The rally will
still go forward, and hopefully this young man will soon be released from jail. Just as in the days of the March on Selma, it
wasn’t until people took notice and began to muster the strength of communities
to stand up for what is right, that the kind of grossly racist oppression we
thought was swept out with the signing of the Civil Rights Act were forced to a
halt.
I
don’t know if you had been following this story, but I’m embarrassed to admit
that I had never heard of the Jena 6 until this week. I don’t remember seeing anything about this
splashed across the front page of the New York Times, although I could have
missed it. How many more incidents of
racial bias in our justice system -- not just in the deep South but also here
in New Jersey -- have we ignored or not heard about? It makes me want to attend the next POP
Bergen County chapter meeting we have in this building, not to mention the next
event that they organize. We obviously
can’t always be the one to show up for every rally, every march, every cause on
every day. But we can each be the one
sometimes. If not us, then who?
Of course Rash Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not only about looking at righting wrongs on the level of society or world, but these holy days in the Hebrew calendar also remind us to look within, at the places we are out of alignment with our truest selves. Where has our own fire gone out, or become buried in ash, and how might we ignite our passion for life and for living as whole persons? Interestingly, one of the many customs of Rash Hashanah is that Jews are not to take a nap on the afternoon of this day. The source for this custom is a saying in the Talmud: “If one sleeps at the year’s beginning, one’s good fortune likewise sleeps.” I interpret sleeping in this case as a metaphor for living in a murky state of awareness. Wake Up! say the teachers and prophets of all traditions and times. Do not sleep-walk through life. Don’t say you’ve stopped reading the paper and listening to the news because it simply depresses you too much. It just isn’t good enough to shut the world away and focus on the day to day. But neither should the external work of the world – gathering information, pursuing one’s career, tending to family, etc – take you away from yourself, and the pursuit of an internal life that in equal parts satisfies, disturbs, excites, bores, and grows us as a person. Don’t just nap on the days set aside for self examination and new beginnings.
Awaken into yourself, awaken into
the world. Let go of outworn bitterness,
and embrace new possibility, like a garden that is well watered, like a spring
that never dries, like an ember that carries the living spark that always can
be rekindled. “May you be inscribed for
another year in the Book of Life.” said a Jewish friend to me this week. May you begin again in love. May you, with your Jewish brothers and
sisters, at the close of Yom Kippur “Go and eat your bread in gladness, and
drink your wine in joy,” for a new year is always beginning, it has even now
begun, and it is time to go out and face the world again, with all of its
complex demands.