Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Sermon for 5th Sunday after Pentecost
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
When ancient Judea was under Roman rule, the Romans did all they could to disengage the Jewish people from our laws and traditions. They intended to make Hellenists of us, worshiping a pantheon of gods via their idols and merge Roman authority with those divinities. One of the tools they used to weaken us as a people was to make it illegal to read from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of your Bible, and mine. In ancient times, as it is now, the Torah was and is read three times during the week: Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. My ancient rabbinic predecessors chose Mondays and Thursdays because they were market days. As such, there were plenty of people around to hear a Torah reading. The rabbis took advantage of the confluence, declaring on those days a sharing of merely an "appetizer" of the entire Torah portion for the coming Saturday. Recognizing the spiritual, ethical, and social power created when the Jewish people all over the country gathered on the same days to read the very same portion, the Romans outlawed it. For a moment, it was a devastating decree that the rabbis understood could eventually undermine many threads of Jewish continuity, identity, and bonding. It was one of those gut-blows that can throw a person, or, in this case, an entire people, face forward into the dust. I am not confident that I would have been as clever and creative as my ancient colleagues, who devised a sage solution. They lifted thematics from each of the weekly Torah portions and found passages in the Prophetic books of the Bible with a similar focus or other connection. They called those other passages the Haftarah, meaning "additional." The Romans gave up. We read the Haftarah to this day, after the Torah reading on Shabbat.
This week's Haftarah is from the book of Micah, and its relationship to the Torah portion is more evident than many others. In fact, this week's Haftarah specifically references the Torah portion. The Torah portion is called Balak, named for the King of Moav, who, afraid that the Jewish people might attack his nation, assigns one of his sorcerers to curse the Jewish people. That sorcerer is named Balaam. Balaam is ultimately unsuccessful in his attempt to deliver that curse. God takes possession of Balaam's mouth and tongue, causing a blessing to come out instead. In the end, gazing out at the peaceful encampment of the Jewish people, Balaam, under God's influence, declares, "How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel."
In referring to this beautiful one-line blessing, that is often prominently displayed on synagogue walls, the prophet Micah assumes that at that ancient time, the Jewish people, the wandering Israelites, were deserving of it. Rabbinic commentaries note this as well. They say that Balaam observed that the Israelites positioned their tents to afford everyone their privacy, both within and between tribes. Apparently, Micha didn't see such mutual respect among his contemporaries. Therefore, he alluded to the story of King Balak and Balam the sorcerer with these words, "Remember now what Balak king of Moav devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him."
In one of the texts assigned to this week for Lutheran communities, a passage from the book of Second Corinthians strikes a similar note about mutual respect and mutual responsibility. Paul says, "For this is not for the ease of others and your affliction, but by way of equality. Therefore, at this present time, your abundance being a supply for their need, so that their abundance also may become a supply for your need, that there may be equality; as it is written, 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little had no lack.'" Clearly, Paul assumes we will know to what he is alluding when he says, "As it is written…?" I didn't.
In the context of this discussion, it is kind of ironic to remember that Paul used to be Saul, that is, Shaul. In the embryonic Christian Church, Paul gave himself the role of proselytizing the Gospel of Jesus to his former peers in the Jewish community, converting them to the belief in Jesus as the Messiah and abandoning the 613 Jewish commandments. Thus, what he refers to, which he knows his listeners are familiar with, is NOT an example of the Jewish people acting well and cooperatively as a society. Instead, it is an incident when we backslid and were selfish and greedy. It is early on in our history. We are newly out of Egypt and complaining about the manna falling morning and evening from the sky for us to have food in the wilderness. We moaned, "If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death." Wow! Talk about the antithesis of respect and cooperation. However, when each Israelite gathered in, whether they ended up collecting a great deal of very little, miraculously, everyone ended up with exactly how much they needed. It was, indeed, a miracle.
Paul uses this text to say something more. Surprisingly for Paul, he says, "DON'T rely on miracles! Make your own!" How so? He says, "When you have more than you need, know that it is not all yours, but rather yours to share. For there will come a time when others will have more than they need, and you will be lacking. Then it will be upon others to give to you." As Paul often did, he distills the enormity of Jewish law into something much smaller, and he hopes, more attractive.
However, this honing things down into one phrase happens within Judaism, too. Concluding the Haftarah from Micah, the prophet famously says, "He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with God."
Life is pretty simple then, isn't it? Just share with others, be just and good and hold yourself with a healthy amount of humility because you will do wrong. You will be selfish. You will take more than you need, and you will keep it all for yourself. You will experience the selfishness of others and their lack of justice, empathy, and compassion. Still, as the Psalm chosen this week for Lutheran congregations, the Hebrew Psalm 30, implies, when you fall into the dust or a shoved there, that is NOT the place to give up. Rather, that IS the place for hope. It's not the place to pray for a miracle. No, hoping while you are face down in the dust, that IS the miracle! Getting the wealthy to recognize that their wealth is for sharing is a miracle. As Psalm 30 admonishes, "It is good to wait patiently…" Flying to the moon will need to come later.
Here's another miracle, this was a sermon created from Jewish and Christian texts whose message would not exist except for them all coming together this week. We just made a miracle! Now, let's go out and make more. Let's be just. Let's be good. Let's share with one another. Let's be patient. Let's hope when all seems lost.
Amen.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
June 27, 2021
