Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Sermon for 18th Pentecost
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Frisco Kid.” The film takes place in 1850 and begins in Poland. A Yeshivah, an academy for rabbinic training, receives a request for a rabbi to serve a congregation in San Francisco. The head of the yeshivah chooses Avram Belinsky, played by Gene Wilder, to travel to San Francisco. Avram sets out with few possessions, but the most precious among them is the Torah scroll, the parchment Hebrew manuscript of the first five books of the Bible, the Five Books of Moses, that his new congregation will read. Along the way, as you might imagine, Avram has many adventures and mishaps. In one such event, a Native American tribe captures him. His religious fervor impresses the chief of the tribe. At one point, the chief holds up the Torah scroll and proclaims to his people, “I have read this book!” and then quickly, in an aside, says to Avram, “Did not understand one word!”
Sometimes, I feel that way, too, that I don’t understand what the words of biblical passages say, even texts with which I’m familiar. I must tell you that’s especially so for me when I see my Jewish Bible passages paired with New Testament readings that are supposed to relate thematically within the context of the Lutheran Lectionary. So it was for me when I first perused the texts from Numbers, the Book of Psalms, James, and Mark assigned to this week. Of course, I knew the first two better than the latter two. I’d read them many times over the years. Actually, Psalm 19 is a standard part of our liturgy for placing the Torah back in the ark after reading the weekly portion on Shabbat, the Sabbath. The passage from Numbers I also know pretty well and have led others in studying it many times. The James and Mark readings were less familiar but clear and transparent in their settings. The challenge is how did they all fit together?
I know well a religion’s need to make everything fit. In Judaism, the ancient rabbis would get very creative in their commentaries to reconcile biblical passages that are out of sync with one another. The need for synchronization is only part of a deeper drive for the rabbis – to understand the layers of meanings in the text. The first level is p’shat or the plain sense. This approach utilizes linguistic, literary, and historical context lenses to reach greater understanding. Another perspective is midrash, which creates stories about the stories, filling in plot gaps or smoothing out something that bothered the rabbis. The remez method views the words as metaphor or allegory. Finally, sod searches for secrets in the text and is the most mystical path.
My personal preferences are midrash and remez, storytelling, and metaphor. The phrase “as if” added to the words widens the horizon of interpretation in beautiful, lyrical ways. Let’s look at a couple of examples from this week’s Hebrew Bible passages. In Numbers 11, we read of a revolt against Moses’s leadership in the midst of the Jewish people’s forty-year sojourn in the Sinai Desert. Verses 4, 5, and 6 tell us:
The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt… Now our souls and our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!”
Here’s how the rabbis respond:
It was… the mixed multitude that rebelled against God and Moses… All this murmuring and these complaints were only a pretext to sever themselves from God, for, first of all, they actually possessed many herds and much cattle, plentifully enough to satisfy their lusting after flesh if they had really felt it; and manna, furthermore, had the flavor of every conceivable kind of food, so all they had to do while eating it was to wish for a particular dish and they instantly perceived in manna the taste of the desired food.
In other words, the rabbis identify the “riffraff” as the Mixed Multitude, non-Jews who left Egypt in the Exodus along with the Jewish people. That’s not in the text itself. The rabbis made it up! Further, the rabbis point out that the people, Jew and non-Jew alike, had plenty to eat. Manna fell from the sky every day, and it had magical properties that enabled its consumers to imagine it tasting like any food, even meat. In addition, the Torah is on record that the people had real meat from the herds of cattle that were with them. So, why were they complaining – k’vetching in “Jewish-speak”?
Why? Because this wasn’t about meat at all! The rabbis tell us the complaint about not having flesh to eat was merely a “pretext” for the non-Jews to “free themselves from God.” You see, the rabbis assume that since the Torah states earlier (Exodus 12:49), “There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you” that the non-Jews were equally obligated under the covenant. Here’s how they figured this out. If you recall, the first flesh for which the rabble craved was fish. The rebellious throng says:
[We remember the fish] which we ate in Egypt for nothing R. Shimon b. Menassia, who lived in the late 2nd and early 3rd century, commented: If you say that they meant that the Egyptians gave them fish without the need for payment, then I ask, “But does it not state, (in Exodus 5:18): [Go, therefore, now, and work], for you will receive no straw”? Now, if they did not give them straw for free, would they give them fish for nothing? — What then is the force of the word, חנם, “free”? It means: free from the responsibility of the mitzvot, the Divine commandments (Sifrei Bamidbar 87).
This passage of commentary is an excellent example of the midrashic process of pulling and tugging on the words to find more meaning. But, you might kvetch, that’s not what the Torah says! The Torah doesn’t say it was non-Jews complaining. The Torah doesn’t say the non-Jews wanted to be free from the obligations of the commandments. Well, from the rabbis’ point of view, the revelation that began at Mt. Sinai continues through them and their interpretations. In that sense, what they comment is very much what the Torah says. From the rabbinic perspective, we should wrestle with what the Torah relates, “turning it over and over,” always finding something new therein. That wrestling match kept us alive as a people. That’s the Jewish answer to a text that might otherwise not seem to say very much at all.
The Christian response to the Numbers passages comes from the texts from James and Mark that the Lutheran Church assigns to this week. As the New Testament sees it, the Numbers text chronicles a classic biblical incident of people losing their faith in God. Mark and James focus directly on that sin and respond to it in very different ways. James’ reply to the sin of losing faith is filled with kindness and respect for the sinner, encouraging his disciples to actively engage with the one who is becomes an apostate and turning that person back:
My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Mark, on the other hand, is pretty harsh with the wrongdoer going so far as to encourage that person to amputate the part of the body most involved with the sin:
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
Which way of dealing with sin is the right one? Interpreting, like a rabbinic commentator or a psychoanalyst, to determine what motivated the wrongdoer in the first place, //gently turning the sinner back toward a righteous path or //enabling the process of choosing a response other than a hurtful or immoral one? I believe they all are worthy of application and not mutually exclusive. Jewish tradition sees these three process and interlocking steps toward repentance. Identifying the source of the wrongdoing and what catalyzed the wrong behavior can only be helpful to the transgressor. Reaching out with kindness and guiding the one who strayed to a path of purposeful actions is also good. Finally, I may be so bold as to borrow the rabbinic midrashic technique and see the amputation of body parts another way of saying behavior modification, eliminating poor responses by enabling the choice of better ones (without cutting off limbs) is also worthwhile.
Turning individuals, groups, and nations to more constructive alternatives for action and interaction needs all three approaches. Understanding whence the destructive behavior comes is a worthy pathway. Also, accompanying someone who made poor choices on their way to better ones is a beautiful, practical kindness. Choosing to exorcise harmful responses from the options for people and nations would be a dramatic change in our social framework. In our divided world, any or all of this would help. Let’s choose to be, as Isaiah said, “repairers of the breach, restorers of paths to dwell in,” lending understanding, an accompanying shoulder and ear, and a firm push toward making constructive choices for ourselves and the world in which we live.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
September 26, 2021
