Sermon for 11th Pentecost
My Justice
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
When I last had the opportunity to speak with you a few weeks ago, I explained the annual cycle of Torah reading that is used by the Jewish people, reading the entire Torah in weekly portions, in order, from Genesis through Deuteronomy. You may not know that we also have a reading from the prophetic books that is attached to each Torah portion. We recite these texts every week as well. There is usually a thematic correlation between the Torah portion and what we call the Haftarah, the prophetic reading. This week, the relationship is, to my mind at least, not the strongest. Ironically, the connection between the Torah portion and the prophetic reading chosen for today in the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s Lectionary is much better! It’s a powerful one as well. Let’s take a look.
The Jewish people names this week’s Torah portion Shoftim, meaning Judges. It begins with mandates for those whom Moses will choose as judges for their communities so that they engage in their tasks fairly and with righteousness. One of these commandments for the judges arrives only three verses into the Torah portion:
צדק, צדק תרדוף”, Justice, justice shall you pursue.”
To understand this phrase, I’m going to teach you how to think as my ancient Talmudic colleagues did, who combed the text for meaning. Consider it like adding layers on to an onion rather than peeling layers away to get to the core. The Jewish pursuit is not for the understanding of the Torah’s words. Instead, our quest is for more understanding.
In Jewish tradition, we don’t take anything for granted in the text: syntax, spelling, context, etc. In this verse, the first thing we notice is that the word צדק/tzedek/justice repeats twice – “Justice, justice.” Why? Ibn Ezra, a medieval Spanish Torah commentator, poet, philosopher, and grammarian, gives four reasons. He says the word tzedek repeats because:
-
- Scripture [is] address[ing] the litigants.
- Because one must pursue justice, whether it be to one’s gain or one’s loss;
- Because the repetition denotes “time after time” — all the days of your life
- or for emphasis.
These options do not comprise a multiple choice quiz. All four interpretations are right – in different ways. I hope you also noticed Ibn Ezra broadens the object of this law of pursuing justice beyond those who are judges. For him, the Torah speaks to every individual. All must be fair and righteous in our interactions with others, inside or outside a court of law, whether or not the formal proceedings or informal discussion leads to a conclusion that is in our favor or not and, we must pursue justice continually in our lives.
Let’s add to our text wrestling with another commentary, this time from an Italian rabbi, biblical commentator, philosopher, Jewish legal expert, and physician of the 15th and 16th centuries, Ovadiah ben Ya'akov Sforno. He says that when Moses selects judges, he is to “select only those who are already known for their sense of fair play and righteousness…If potential judges do not have all the qualifications which are desirable in a judge, this qualification of fairness is the overriding quality all must possess.” From this, we learn two things: First, that Sforno believes the first repetition of the word tzedek/justice indicates fairness and that the second means righteousness and, of the two, fairness is more important.
Yet, “fairness” over righteousness or justice seems to weaken the whole point of having judges and a justice system in the first place. After all, if a judge knows what is “right,” according to the law, but becomes persuaded by fairness, justice will inevitably suffer.
The 19th c. Lithuanian rabbi, Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, notes that when God told the first human, “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” that God was saying, “Your creation was an act of pure justice, and you will die in an act of pure justice.” One only needs to look at the unpredictable and indiscriminate way in which the Corona Virus moves from victim to victim to understand Rabbi Berlin’s cold, medicinal perspective.
However, in the grand collection of commentaries called Genesis Rabbah, the rabbis teach that while such a strict justice may be the way the Universe naturally operates, we, humans, need not. They say:
"God first created the world with din (justice) and when God saw that [the world] would not survive [that way] God combined rachamim (mercy) with justice. This does not imply that God changed His mind (God forbid!). Creation was according to absolute justice, but the continuing conduct of the world was not possible under strict justice, which demands punishment for every violation of the laws of the Torah unless mercy is also included. God knew before creation that this would be necessary.”
In other words, the world cannot exist shackled by absolute justice. The presence of mercy and fairness are also necessary, and that’s why we humans can choose them.
This week’s prophetic selection from the Lutheran lectionary is the 56th chapter of Isaiah, verse 1 and verses 6 through 8. Verse one is a typically prophetic and poetic expression of what is waiting for us in what we might call a Messianic time (the 2nd one for you and the first one for me). Here’s what Isaiah says:
The Inner-Breathing-of-All articulates through the wind, saying, Keep judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.
And what is that word in Hebrew that Isaiah uses to say “my righteousness? “Tzidkati!” I hope you hear the word tzedek/justice in tzidkati. In other words, we could translate the last few words of this Isaiah verse as, “For my salvation is near to come and my justice will be revealed.”
“My justice,” the justice of the Oneness-of-All, of the Breath-of-All, the Soul-of-All-Living, the Always-Beginning-and-Never-Ending. Thanks to this week’s Jewish Torah portion and the Lutheran Lectionary, we know what this justice is. It is justice tempered by mercy, the hard edges of the justice of nature smoothed over by the human capacity for empathy, sympathy, tenderness, compassion, mercy, and kindness. It is everything that George Floyd deserved and didn’t receive. Brianna Taylor, too. And Trayvon Martin and Michal Brown and John Lewis when he purposefully and plainly walked across a bridge.
And, justice tempered by mercy also means justice tempered by reason and understanding. It means restructuring the police is a better term than defund. Decommission and prosecute are better goals for a policing policy that removes a rogue officer from one police department and allows him or her to move with impunity to another. God’s justice doesn’t allow people to remain incarcerated because they can’t afford to pay bail. The justice of the Universe is honest->enough to look at the social, economic, and systemic reasons that push people to feel as though illegal behavior is their best option. And in the justice that resides in every molecule of every living thing and inanimate thing, no one and nothing is alien. For all these reasons, humans are on this planet: to ensure that justice is not cruel and unforgiving, but rather supple, gracious, and abounding in mercy.
Amen.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
August 16, 2020
