Reading for 12/03/23 — Click to Enlarge
If your meanderings happen to bring you by the church in the middle of the week, you will find that this building is quite different in character on a Thursday at 3:30pm, say, than it is on Sunday morning at 10.
I do my best to come up at least once in the middle of each week, and as it happened, I couldn’t make it up here last Wednesday, as I’d planned, so I came up Thursday.
Brenda was here when I arrived, and we enjoyed a lengthy chat about printer cartridges among other things. It’s surprising how much mileage we can get out of printer cartridges, when we have a mind to. By-and-by we heard the bang of the crash door, and a casual glance out the back window confirmed our suspicion that it was Kathleen, involved in one of her Food Pantry errands.
I too was a man on a mission, because I had a spiffy new hand-painted “Pastor” sign for my parking spot and I wanted to hang it on the old wood post out back. This operation involved rooting around for screws and nails and hammers down in Jerry’s dungeon. Jerry’s dungeon is a place of wonder, with its leaning brooms, its lingering odor of old WD-40, and the intermittent wheeze and shudder to the old boiler. I love it down there. But don’t tell Jerry I was there.
The old “pastor” sign, which has been in the process of giving up the ghost for several years now, came down with very little coaxing, and the new one went up with surprising ease. I was just standing back to check if it was level, when Brenda came out.
She was kind enough to admire the sign for a minute or two, and we managed to kill a few more delightful minutes about nothing special, before she took off.
“I turned down the heat, but I left the lights on for you,” she said.
“Sounds good!” I said.
Kathleen was long gone – so I went back into the empty church.
There was one more thing I had to do.
*
Now, Sunday morning, our beloved church has all the lively charm that we are accustomed to. We have returned to the Sanctuary this morning – and for the rest of this month – so that we may observe the Advent season and Christmas Eve with the proper sense of traditional solemnity.
And how better to be welcomed in, than to have our altar honored, a few moments ago, by three generations of women from the Bergeron, Ojala and Paluszek clan. I am so thankful to them for leading us in the lighting of the first Advent candle…
The first Advent candle, as you all know, is the candle of Hope.
This is one of the wonderful things about being part of a community that worships together. The people who help us to enact the rituals of our faith, are not just any old people. Alison has been coming to this church since before she was Kerrigan’s age! Many of you were here, and knew her then. The love and respect we feel for these women is built on decades of shared experience. This deep connection settles our hearts, giving us a feeling of comfort… and yes… a feeling of hope.
Our local experience – when we join Francine, Paula, Alison, and Kerrigan in this sanctuary – gives us a warm feeling… a confidence that the world is not lost.
But when our minds wander out to the world beyond the sweet haven of this candle-lit sanctuary – when we think globally, we cannot deny that, this year, our Holy season is darkened.
Darkened by the shadow of war.
*
As we move into the Advent season… and as we do so with the notion of hope illuminating our hearts and minds, it is worthwhile to ask ourselves how we, as people of faith, can have hope in a time of war.
And more to the point, I ask this question:
In a time of war, can the hope of the faithful, have real and meaningful consequence?
Can our hope help us to be instruments of peace?
Please take note that when I ask these questions, I am not talking about hope.
I am talking about our hope, as people of faith.
Because, if I am not mistaken, I think faith changes hope. Perhaps faith intensifies hope.
Because it is one thing, to say, “I hope my son gets good grades” or “I hope gas prices don’t go up” or “I hope Gwenny makes her peanut butter fudge again this year…”
But it is another thing, altogether, to believe that we can base our hope in God.
As nice as it would be to eat Gwenny’s peanut butter fudge again this year, this hope depends on Gwen, who, though she may be about the closest thing we know to Godliness – she is not God.
That is, as far as I know.
Most of our hopes are hopes that are controlled by other people. Maybe, for lack of a better term, these can be called “lowercase h” hopes.
Our Hopes, as people of faith, are “Uppercase H” hopes.
These are Hopes that involve the nature of the universe itself.
Our “Uppercase H” hope, is that the universe is a moral universe, and that it bends toward justice. It leans toward forgiveness. It tends, always toward love.
And away from war.
If the verse from the 57th chapter of Isaiah, that Vicki read for us, has anything to say about Uppercase H hopes, we can feel at least some confidence that our Uppercase Hopes are not misplaced.
God shares them.
In this odd passage, Isaiah tells us that God repays our sins, not with punishment, but with healing:
Because of their wicked covetousness I was angry;
I struck them, I hid and was angry;
but they kept turning back to their own ways.
I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
I will lead them and repay them with comfort,
creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips.
Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord;
and I will heal them.
Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord…
Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord…
God shares our Uppercase Hope
Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord…
*
On November 13th, over 40 Rabbi’s gathered in Washington DC to deliver a statement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.
The statement, signed by 192 Rabbia and Rabbinical Students, read as follows:
We are Rabbis and Rabbinical students and at this moment of great moral reckoning, we are speaking out with one voice.
Those of us grieving both Israeli and Palestinian loved ones this week know there is no military solution to our horror.
We know that many Jews in our communities are feeling confused, afraid, and despairing over the events that began on October 7th.
Together with Jews in Israel, we are in deep grief over the 1400 Israelis who were brutally killed by Hamas.
We are terrified for the over 230 Israeli hostages – adults, children and infants – who remain in captivity.
However, the U.S. and Israeli governments are using our grief to justify genocidal violence directed against the people of Gaza.
As we speak, over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4600 children
According to Defense for Children International, the Israeli military is killing one child in Gaza every 15 minutes.
Scores of people are still buried in the rubble with no one able to rescue them.
Israel has cut off all access to electricity, water and medicine – and now Gaza is on the verge of running out of fuel. Threatening the lives of 2.2 million people.
In the face of this terrifying, violence, we say no!
We uplift the Torah value of v’chai bahem– live by Torah. Torah should be a source of life, not death.
As Jews, as Rabbis, as human beings we are pleading with our communities to rise through our despair and our grief to save lives.
As Americans, we call upon our leaders to stop supporting and enabling this nightmare
We call upon all Americans to call their representatives and demand that they act immediately
Our tradition is an Eytz Hayim – a tree of life. Life, not death, are its fruits.
We ask you to join our calls for a complete ceasefire now.
Ceasefire means no more bombing
Ceasefire means no ground war
Ceasefire means all Israeli hostages must be released now.
Ceasefire means immediate engagement by the international community toward a just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine.
Ceasefire is the only way to prevent more death and destruction.
All human beings are made b’tzelem Elohim – in the image of the Divine.
All human life is sacred and precious.
Too many precious lives are being killed.
The voice of the Jewish people, now more than ever, must be clear and united:
Never Again is Now.
Never again for anyone.
Not in our names.
Ceasefire now!
Ceasefire now!
*
Join me, again, on Thursday afternoon, as I walked back up the stairs, past the church office, and into the empty sanctuary.
The afternoon was getting old, and the shadows were deepening among the pews.
There is a special kind of spookiness that you feel when you are all by yourself in a place where you are accustomed to being with lots of people.
The silence seems to include the echoes of the people.
The empty pews seem to be more empty than empty.
My footfalls echoed as I walked down the center aisle and passed into the Narthex.
I walked up into the balcony, and looking at the clock, I saw that I had a few minutes to spare, so I sat down and looked over the pews.
I thought about Sandi Carland.
She used to sit in the pews near the back.
I thought about Archie Coll. Mary Kay Duquette. Norma Sands.
I thought about Pauline Halfpenny and Dick Ellis
I thought about Estelle O’Niel, and about Tina
About Vera Pomponio, Pat Wheeler, and Em Preston.
It was so quiet up there.
And at 4:30, I stood up, went over to the rope, and pulled.
I rang the churchbell.
I rang the bell into the late November sky
I rang the bell to protest the war.
I rang the bell to honor the dead.
I rang the bell for those brace Rabbi’s…
I rang the bell to claim our greatest hopes
I rang the bell to bring light into the darkness.
I rang the bell for our faith
I rang the bell to our God.
Amen.