Near the beginning of this week’s Torah Portion, Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy ch. 27, Moses instructs the people: “As soon as you have crossed the Jordan into the land the Lord your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones. Coat them with plaster and inscribe upon them all the words of this Teaching.”
Moses sees as paramount, the presence of Torah, of the religion in the future Israelite land. His explicit instructions to the people to erect the Stones showed his belief in the importance of the moral and religious code. Moses realized that the perils and pitfalls that the Israelites had so long endured during their trek through the desert would not end upon entering the land. He believed that their religion, that God, could help them travel on the difficult road that lay ahead.
So too today, in our own country, do people turn to religion and to God for answers. They seek to see the “Large Stones”, inscribed with Divine wisdom that will help them through the most difficult of times.
We have all been troubled by recent events, most notably the two Hurricanes that have devastated large sections of our great nation. We have many questions of how and why? How did it happen? Why was the region not adequately prepared? How did this happen in the United States of America? Why was the response to the tragedy slower than it should have been? How can we move beyond the tragedy?
Many have Americans have looked to religion for answers. We have all looked to the “Pillars of our respective Faiths”. Our world is broken: we ask: Where is God? The voices of religion can provide us with some explanation and some answers. In our national dialogue, the voice of the Religious Right has resounded most loudly.
In an article in last weeks NY TIMES MAGAZINE, a young man who was drawn into the Evangelical Christian world as a teenager told of his experience with the ministry of Reverend Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas. Phelps provides one possible answer to the difficult question of God’s place and role in the world.
The article states: “Phelps celebrates the vengeful acts of a wrathful God: AIDS, the attacks of 9/11, the killing of American troops in Iraq, the London suicide bombings, and most recently Hurricane Katrina…….Your only terrorist he states later is the Lord your God! He fights against you personally!”
Phelps sends out protesters to gay-pride parades and the, I quote: “funerals of impenitent sodomites, like Mathew Shepard.” Phelps believes the world is broken because of the “SINS” of mankind. God is present amidst the turmoil and the pain because God causes that pain. God’s role is to punish us for our depravity…..to send modern plagues down from heaven.
While Phelps represents the most extreme wing of the Religious Right, and in know way speaks for all Evangelical Christians, the ideology of the Religious Right, including their literal interpretation of the Bible has permeated the national consciousness, and it has gained great influence in the national debate on morality and religion. In large part, Progressive Religion has remained silent, marginalized to the sidelines of the religious dialogue taking place in our country.
We, like the Israelites in our Torah portion are also wandering in the desert, searching for water, searching for answers, searching for God. If water is not provided, we will drink the sand, and therefore be lost. Our tradition and that of other liberal co-religionists demands that we provide and alternative answer to the question of God’s presence in our midst.
Where is God in the tragedies that befall us? I agree with Reverend Phelps that the world is broken in many ways. The most recent manifestation of this being Hurricane Katrina. Where was God when the winds and waves destroyed homes and lives? Where is God now?
Reverend Phelps would say God is the storm. But our Judaism does not believe that God acts in this way. Rabbi Jan Katzew, the Director of Lifelong Learning at the Union for Reform Judaism, points out that when an insurance company attributes a loss to an “act of God”, this is not a theological statement. It is simply stating that the loss was due to something beyond human control.
1st Kings Chapter 19 verses 11-12 reads: “There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of Adonai; but Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind – an earthquake; but Adonai was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, fire; but Adonai was not in the fire. And after the fire---a soft murmuring sound.” Hurricane Katrina was not a divine action, and God was not in the storm.
The question still remains: Where is God? God is in the three Duke students written about in the Monday NY TIMES who forged press passes to get into New Orleans to save people while the National Guard was camped outside of the city, watching and waiting. God is in the people who opened their hearts and homes to refugees of the Hurricane. God is in the love and compassion of elementary school children in Cincinnati, OH who sent warm messages in their finest crayola.
A beautiful Hasidic saying says that “There is only one thing that is whole in the entire world, and that is a broken heart. We live in a world that has not yet been redeemed, a world in which tragedies befall us. How can we not walk around with a heart that is in some ways broken. It is this broken heart that fuels our compassion. It is this heart that fuels our hope and our desire to inspire others that tomorrow will be just a little bit better. We are broken-hearted, but this is what makes us whole-hearted. A broken heart is a loving heart.
God is not in the crashing of the waves and the screaming winds of the storm. God is in husbands, wives and partners finding each other, children being reunited with their parents, and religious communities displaced by tragedy coming together to pray as one. God is in the still quiet voice that echoes after the storm.
As we approach the High Holidays, we begin the process of reflection. Over the past year, national tragedy and difficulties in our own lives have caused us to reflect. May these reflections guide us back to paths of love, kindness, generosity, and peace. Only on roads such as these can we erect the stones upon which our future stands.