Sermon for 3rd Lent
A Disquieting Serendipity
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
There are three words from different cultures that indicate a fortuitous aligning of events or circumstances, and I love them all. In English, the term we use is serendipitous. I love even the sound of that word. It has a lilt and a bounce to it. Horace Walpole coined the word in 1754 based on the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," who, according to him, "were always making discoveries, by accidents and wisdom, of things they were not in quest of." Ironically, the Persians themselves have a word for serendipity – qismat. In Yiddish, we say bershert, meaning "meant to be." Of course, having been through a great deal of history and realizing how many twists and turns life can take, we Jews are careful how we employ the term. We usually only say that something is bershert, meant to be after it's already happened!
I was not "in quest of" a serendipitous relationship between the Lutheran texts assigned for this, the third Sunday in Lent, and the Torah portion for this week. Still, it seemed so obvious, like they were waiting for me and us to wrap our minds around.
Now, I'll be honest with you, from the point of view of a Jew reading today's Lectionary texts; these are difficult, troubling, even angry passages. The first, from First Corinthians, contrasts the message of the cross, Jesus, the power and the wisdom of God, with what others call might call wisdom, an understanding judged as second-rate or just outright wrong. In particular, the text calls out Jews and Greeks. "Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…"
The second Lectionary passage comes from Paul. It tells the story of Jesus coming to the Temple in Jerusalem at Passover time, finding people selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money. He becomes enraged and violent, making a whip out of chords, driving the people and the cattle out of the Temple's outer courtyard, overturning tables, and scattering coins. Pointing at sacrificial doves for sale, he shouts, "Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a market!"
Truthfully, these are the kinds of pejorative texts that fueled anti-Semitism and the exclusion of Jews from predominantly Christian society after being preached for centuries. I know this isn't easy for Christians to hear. The philosophies underlying the Crusades, the Inquisition, countless pogroms, systematic prejudice in social intercourse, business, and education, and, eventually, the Holocaust were not new. They all have their roots in texts like these.
The messages of these Christian verses are particularly serendipitous for me dtoday because the Torah portion we Jews read this week has to do with the building of the Tabernacle in the desert, the Tabernacle being the portable precursor to the permanent Temple in Jerusalem. In that text, we read: "Moses said further to the whole community of Israelites: This is what the LORD has commanded:
Take from among you gifts to the LORD; everyone whose heart so moves him shall bring them—gifts for the LORD: gold, silver, and dolphin skins, and acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and the aromatic incense; lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and the breastpiece.
This is the same Tabernacle about which God said, "And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." At the end of this week's Torah portion we read: "For over the Tabernacle a cloud of YHVH rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys." As such, the presence of God was made real for the people.
The Holy Temple, built upon the Tabernacle's legacy, is where Jesus took umbrage with his fellow Jews and set upon them violently as they were involved in part of their Pilgrimage ritual. The money exchange and the sale of the animals had practical reasons behind them. The sacrificial animals were for sale because it was often burdensome or outright impractical for Jews to travel the kingdom's length with their animals for sacrifice in tow. So they sold those animals locally. When, often after weeks of travel, they arrived at the Temple in Jerusalem, they traded their common coins for "Temple money," the only currency accepted for these ritual purposes. Finally, they purchased an animal for sacrifice. From the Jewish point of view, Jesus's outburst and disruption was not a positive revolution. It was an attack upon a sacred rite, fulfilling a commandment that many Jews could only afford to do once in a lifetime.
I've realized that all religions have similar words and stories in my interfaith work over the years. They could be in holy writ. They might be in liturgical passages as well. These are words that we use so easily because we've heard them our whole lives. They are part of who we are, and they feel comforting. They feel like home. Still, sometimes, there comes a day of reckoning.
For me, that day was one glorious Shabbat evening when my Jewish community was participating in a nationwide "twinning" experience between synagogues and mosques. What a night! We began our time together with a coupling of the Jewish and Muslim calls to prayer. We laid out everything quite carefully so that everyone participating would feel comfortable. It all went swimmingly until near the end when we began to chant a traditional prayer we call the Aleynu, which means, "it is upon us." A fuller translation reads:
"It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to ascribe greatness to the Author of creation, who has not made us like the nations of the lands nor placed us like the families of the earth; who has not made our portion like theirs, nor our destiny like all their multitudes."
"Multitudes" is a euphemistic translation. The Hebrew word, ha-mo-nam," means crowd, mob, masses, noise, many, lots, phalanx, horde, scad. In other words, not a very complimentary description.
There I was, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with my Muslim friend who so beautifully chanted the Muslim call to worship earlier. In other words, I was standing next to someone who was just part of the crowd, the horde, the non-descript masses. After that evening, I made it my business to re-write the Aleynu so that it expresses a universal notion, that is, it is "upon us," all of us, to bring peace to everyone. It's become the standard at Beth Shir Shalom.
In its traditional form, the words of the Aleynu sound shockingly similar to the notions expressed in the Lectionary texts for today. The former is hurtful t you. The latter is painful to me. Last week, Pastor Shaffer created a wonderful image of this year of safe COVID practices, saying that it feels like a whole year of Lent. Perhaps all of us, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and more, need to have an extended lenten period, "with a lower case "l. " In that time, we might take an opportunity to take a good hard look at the practices, liturgies, and phrases from our holy books that prevent us from understanding one another, respecting each other and working together toward higher goals. In this season that precedes the anniversary of Jesus's angry outburst in the Holy Temple and the anniversary of his execution by the Roman authorities, we should take hold of ourselves as the fallible humans that we are and recognize our common sin of boosting ourselves at the expense of others. Life is too short for such smallness. The more we genuinely honor each other, our differences, and what is holy and sacred to each of us, the more we become significant, whole, and worthy of each other.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
March 7, 2021
