Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Sermon for 2nd Epiphany
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
Good morning, Mt. Olive community. I hope you will understand that I decided not to speak today on the assigned texts of the Lutheran Lectionary or the traditional Torah portion for this week. This is only partially true because it’s Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday weekend. Another part of this is because I believe that Torah, the opportunity for learning and moral growth, is written and revealed everywhere. As such, the texts in focus today were written in venomous words of incitement, the insane screams and beatings of riot and insurrection and in the blood spilled on the marble floors of the Capitol building. Mt. Olive is a peaceful, loving community. I know the soul of this church was rocked and rattled by last week’s event. I also know that Mt. Olive and this country are too strong to be knocked off their foundations. Please know that I share your pain and hope these words will serve as some support and a vision for a way forward.
Someone told me recently about a drinking game, or at least a game that you play by raising your hand as if you had a drink, every time you hear a particular word or phrase on TV. These are words or phrases that you know you hear too much. For instance, a teenager in my congregation told her mother, “I’m tired of living in another ‘historical moment!’” “Historical moment” is her phrase. For others, It’s the word “unprecedented.” When that word refers to some action or inaction of the 45th person to occupy the oval office, I prefer to hear it as “un-presidented.” I never felt the term unprecedented sufficiently described the moral depravity of #45 or those who fawn all over him.
I also hear the term “accountability” over and over. The trouble with “accountability” is that the action moves from the outside to the inside. We rarely hear someone say, “I’m accountable.” Instead, people and their behavior are held “accountable” by the community for anti-social, damaging, or hurtful actions or inaction. That was never satisfying for me. It reminds me of the time members of Beth Shir Shalom and I stood on the corner of Wilshire and 19th Street with signs that called for Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and on Palestine to cease murderous actions in Israel. Someone drove by and yelled out the window, “You should be ashamed of yourselves!” From the outside, he was demanding that we feel ashamed internally. First of all, no one can order someone else to feel one way or another. We didn’t feel ashamed and, if we were going to, it would come from within our consciousness. Accountability is a social determination. It’s far from an internal turning of the soul.
Acknowledgment and recognition are closer. When we become aware that we’ve done something wrong, inappropriate, or illegal, and we acknowledge it and/or recognize it, that’s more ownership of our wrongdoing. Still, to acknowledge that we’ve done something wrong means we simply KNOW it was wrong. Similarly, to recognize something as inappropriate or hurtful means that we KNEW it was wrong and now we are cognizant of it – again. We re-cognate, recognize. As if to say, “Oh, yeah, I had a feeling that was wrong. I may have known that before. I guess I knew it was wrong all along!” Again, not enough.
The word I don’t hear all too frequently is “responsibility.” “Responsibility” implies a response. In other words, responsibility is something we take upon ourselves, but not in a passive way. We must RESPOND to what we’ve done wrong with some healing or curative action. As it turns out, that is how Dr. King referred to the term in a 1953 sermon entitled, “Accepting Responsibility for Your Actions.”
He began the sermon forthrightly, saying, “One of the most common tendencies of human nature is that of placing responsibility on some external agency for sins we have commited or mistakes we have made. We are forever attempting to find some scapegoat on which we cast responsibility for our actions.” Dr. King did NOT speak of mere accountability, nor acknowledgment, nor recognition. He spoke clearly and directly about accepting and taking responsibility.
My Jewish tradition also says little about those other terms but nearly exclusively emphasizes responsibility. Foreshadowing Dr. King, one of my predecessors commented on Numbers 5:7 that commands,
“Then they shall confess their sin which they have done…”
Before I tell you what Rabbi Menacham haCohen, Menachem the Priest, says about this verse, I must first explain a bit of Jewish tradition. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we list our sins as a community. As we say each one, we take our fist and lightly beat our chest for emphasis. We call the process Al Chet, “for the sin.” Rabbi Menachem comments:
At first glance, it appears that [to say, “For the sin” and then to add] “which they have done” is…unnecessary…- but it is not. It is the nature of people to blame their faults on others, figuratively “beating an על חט on others’ breasts.” Therefore, the Torah emphasizes “which they have done” - they are responsible for their sins, and no one else is. (Rabbi Menachem HaCohen – Torat Am)
My preceding colleagues also find this lesson in the Passover laws, specifically the mandate to search out and remove any food containing leaven from our homes. At the search’s end, the head-of-household recites a phrase referring to the bread, cake, and pasta within the home. The words are: “All the leaven which I have in my possession.” (Bedikat Chametz)j. According to the Sages, “leaven” in our homes signifies sin or wrongdoing in our circles of life. The rabbis indicate that our ownership of these sins goes far beyond the walls of our homes. What a person is really saying, according to the rabbis, is, “All the leaven and bread existing in the world, and, therefore, all its sin, is,ברשותי,” in my possession”; i.e., I am responsible for it. Rabbi Baruch of Medzibozh added: “He who does one good deed causes the entire world to be judged on the scale of merit; he who commits one sin causes the entire world to be judged on the scale of sin. This would mean that one bears part of the guilt if there is any evil left in the world, for by his actions he can cause the entire world to be judged on the scale of merit, and then there would be no leaven [no sin] left in the world.”
Calling ourselves to account for the sins of the world is a huge responsibility. But Jewish tradition demands that we do so. Dr. King also demanded that we do so. His sermon about responsibilty ends by calling on the example of Jesus. According to Christian understanding, by the character of his life, and how and why, he died, Jesus literally took on himself the sins of the world. Combining Dr. King’s thoughts with those of Jewish tradition, Dr. King pointed to Jesus not as a solitary act of responsiveness and identification, but rather as an example for others to follow. Jews respond to the question, “What we supposed to do?” not as an exclamation of being powerless. What we are asking is, “What is my individual, and what is our people’s responsibility in this circumstance?” In this way, we respond to Hillel’s demand, “In a place where no one is acting like a human being – try to be human!” Not so different when Christians ask, “What would Jesus do?”
The assault on American democracy and our very humanity on January 6 was animalistic and ferocious. As of my writing, no one, not the participants, not Fox, certainly not #45, and his cronies are acting human and taking responsibility. Commenting on last week’s assault, MSNBC’s Ari Melber pleaded for accountability, but then he called for truth-telling, taking responsibility, and searched for a response. Referring to our communal ownership of the event from last week, he said, “This is who we are, who we were yesterday, who we are today and tomorrow unless and until we do something about it. You’ve seen the facts. They’re not new. What are we going to do about it?”
The answers aren’t new either. We are all responsible not only for our own transgressions but also for the offenses of those around us. All the leaven, all the wrongdoing, in the world is my responsibility. The way I behave causes the world to be judged either on the scale of merit or sin. Jesus put forth his life and death as a paradigm for all humanity, not as a one-time purge. Dr. King reminded us, we cannot place our responsibilities on something or someone outside of us. And as Rabbi Menachem HaCohen said, beating someone else’s chest doesn’t absolve us of or resolve anything. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said the ONLY thing that gets anything done is praying - peacefully, non-violently, and boldly with our legs, our arms, our eyes, our ears, our hands, our hearts, and our souls. That is how, John Lewis taught us, we make GOOD trouble.
Amen.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
January 17, 2021
