SERMON

EVE OF ROSH HASHANAH

3 OCTOBER 2005 - 29 ELUL 5765

"TRANSFORMATION, PART I"

 

More and more these days I hear people say that something was a "transformative" experience or event for them in their lives. Certainly surviving two back-to-back hurricanes within a matter of days could qualify as a transformative experience for people who had been living in denial along the Gulf Coast . Those who have gone to the Gulf Coast to volunteer in the aftermath of those two devastating storms have reported being changed forever by their experiences. One of the things I have heard over and over again, both from the survivors and the volunteers, is that they will never again take for granted many of the things they had taken for granted before the storms.  

Falling in love for the first time is often described as a transformative experience. And listening to a terrific orator has often changed people's lives forever. Hearing the Rev. Dr. Martin Lurther King, Jr., in the last generation, definitely inspired people who had been on  the margins of society to become involved in ways they had never dreamed they would be. A generation before the same could be said for Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, thundering from his pulpit in New York .  

When I first heard the term Atransformative," I wasn't sure that I understood what people meant by it, although I had learned that it was frequently mentioned in the context of an fundamentalist Christian worship experience. I think people mean "transformative" in a good sense, although I suppose that it could go the other way as well. Not too long ago I was listening to a recording of gospel music, and I think I began to understand what this transformative business is all about.  

Rather than going into detail about where gospel music comes from, I simply want to say that you know as well as I do that if you listen to it, it's really hard not to tap your toes or clap your hands. For the people who sing it and who listen to it in the churches and other places where the music is the primary medium through which inspiration comes, it seems to move people in ways that we decorous Reform Jews don't usually experience in our more formal setting. For those in gospel music churches, that kind of music is often not only moving, but also transformational. It is what accompanies the preacher's sermons, sermons intended to motivate, electrify, inspire, and yes, transform the people in some manner or form. It is supposed to remind the sinner to turn from his or her sin onto the right  path, to lift them up out of their depravity and closer to God. It is intended to inspire genuine transformation, genuine change from something lacking to something that gets your juices flowing.

I would guess that the belief underlying this process is that without the external stuff, the music and the sermons, the average church-going person would not naturally or automatically turn from sinfulness toward righteousness, would not naturally or automatically change course or lifestyle, and so on. It's clear that they believe that the change is necessary, that it probably wouldn't happen on its own, and that a proven method of effecting that change is through the medium of gospel music and preaching.  

What I wondered was what there is in our system, in the system of Reform worship or prayer that sets about to transform us. Certainly in our theological system we believe that we make mistakes that require rectifying. Some people call those mistakes sins; others are content simply to call them mistakes. But whatever we call them, we Jews understand that there is a process through which we can go to try to set things right. At the High Holy Days we talk all the time about teshuvah, the process of not only seeking forgiveness for our mistakes, but also of learning how to change our lives so that we learn from those mistakes and learn how not to repeat them. That is a kind of transformation, of trying to change ourselves for the better.  

But there is a problem with this scenario. Most of us Reform Jews show up at Temple once a week maybe, if not a lot less. Few of us want to sit in the pews and be scolded by the rabbi if we have gone to the trouble of showing up on a Friday night or Saturday morning. And in these days and times, as every one of us knows, none of us has to be here at all. But Classical Reform Judaism was about intellect and enlightenment, not about spirit, passion and emotion. We mostly left the passion and emotion to our Hasidic co-religionists and saved the thinking for ourselves. Transformation in the spiritual realm doesn't very often come from philosophy or theology; it comes from feeling something new and vibrant, something that gets your heart beating and your adrenaline rushing. We come into the synagogue after work on a Friday and we want to rest. We want to be left alone. Or at least we think that's what we want. After all, Shabbat is about rest, and when we're tired, sitting quietly in the sanctuary listening to soothing words and uplifting music, we don't have to be in control, we don't have to be in charge, we don't have to do much of anything. We can just sit back, relax, and enjoy. Certainly we can participate more actively, but it is not a requirement. In a sense, we believe that by just showing up, we are off the hook. I think that is where the problem arises.  

While at the same time we are not particularly well connected to our houses of worship, we often bemoan the loss of healthy and positive values in our society, and we don't seem to make the connection between our attending services less than we ever did and the reduction in our exposure to the articulated Jewish values that we used to hear and expect from a sermon we would hear during those services that we did attend. What I have begun to wonder is what it would take to turn a typical Friday night or Saturday morning service once again into a transformative experience, one in which you were so moved or so inspired by what you heard or read or sang, that you would leave that sanctuary forever changed. Let me be unequivocal: I am not standing here complaining about you or accusing you of anything. But I am talking about what I see from the bima, and what I think is a growing flaw and problem in the system. And while I will admit that I think each of us could use a little transformation, I also think that the synagogue could use a little transformation as well. So this is not about what you should do or what you should become, although that does figure into the equation. No, instead this is about trying to figure out with you what it would take to make this synagogue the place to be on a Friday night or Saturday morning, the preferable or preferred place, where you knew that whatever you needed to make your life work better would be what you found here. What kind of transformation would we have to undertake or undergo to make this place so dynamic, so exciting, so life-affirming and life-changing that people would change their schedules and fight traffic just so they could be here? What would we have to offer? What would have to change? If you were to imagine a Jewish place where you would want to come because once you got there, you would get what you needed, what would that place have or do or be? What would we have to do or be to attract not only you, but your parents and children, too?  

I'm not talking about turning Temple Israel into an entertainment venue. Classical Reform and many Conservative rabbis would have congregants sitting in the pews listening to lofty sermons and equally lofty music. But those things, in and of themselves, rarely move us to make significant changes in our lives any more. Something is missing; something is seriously lacking. And that something might possibly be the interactive factor. While I am among the first to sit in an audience as a passive participant in a concert, a lecture, a performance, I don't believe that we do anyone a favor by having them be passive participants in our worship experiences. Another way to say this is that Jewish prayer and worship are not now, and were never intended to be, spectator sports.  

So think for a moment about the things that have touched you in ways that might have changed the way you think about things, or that might have changed the way you relate to people or things, or that might have changed the way you respond to things. I was forced to do that when I was traveling in Asia for two months last year. On my travels I found myself in Cambodia. What I witnessed there changed forever the way I look at poverty and the poor. There seemed to be absolutely no social safety net anywhere in the whole country of Cambodia, so there were poor people everywhere, begging for money and food. And it was equally clear that, without handouts from others, these poor people would simply starve to death, since there were apparently no government services to help them. What transformed me there was the realization, the dawning awareness, that in our country, even though the social safety net is not as good as it once was, there is still a remnant of that safety net. So those who are not taking advantage of what's left of the safety net may, in some cases, have chosen not to try to work the system, relying instead on handouts from strangers.  

As a result of the shock of seeing so many poor, suffering people everywhere in Cambodia, I decided there and then that I would change the way I related to, approached and understood American poverty and poor people in our country. I decided that I would no longer give handouts to people whom I determined could obtain the help they needed from some governmental or other social program, but who apparently had made a personal, strategic choice not to try to access those services. As cold-hearted as I feared I might be becoming, by seeing the difference between a system that is not as good as it used to be and a situation where there is no system at all, I was transformed from being the knee-jerk liberal that I had always been into being someone who would still look directly into the eyes of a beggar or panhandler, but who would not waste my limited resources on people who were unwilling to take advantage of whatever the system could provide for them. It was not a pretty picture.  

That experience, among dozens of others, has literally transformed me. And I think the latest place where I am looking for that transformation, not only for myself, but for others, in the sanctuary of our Reform temple.  

So I started to ask myself some hard questions? Are we rabbis here solely to comfort the afflicted or perhaps to afflict the comfortable as well? What happens to people when they walk into our sanctuaries? Do we serve to provide them with a pillow and blanket after a hard week's work, or the loss of a loved one? Or is there something else? I think, and now I am beginning to hope, that there is, in fact, something else, something that seems to be in short supply these days, and something which we may not even be aware that we lack or want or need.  

I think that commodity is transformation. I think that we gather together for mutual support and comfort. And while that is perfectly fine, it is simply not enough. I think we need to be rattling people's cages, yanking their chains, waking them up to the reality that sitting in a pew is only the first step, a means to an end, not the end in itself. After all, what's the point of reading what could be very moving prayers if you are not moved by them? What is the point of reading about our people's belief in, experience of, and relationship to, God, if the words don't jump off the page, shake us into awareness and consciousness, and prompt us to do things for the good of society that we otherwise might not think to do if it weren't for our prophetic teachings?  

How many times do we need to read about clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, caring for the widow or orphan before we are moved enough by the images that we actually do something about it? We are now bombarded by images of the suffering resulting from the two hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. Before that we were moved by images of the disaster and destruction caused by the recent tsunami in Asia. In between we have been reminded about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. What will it take for us to be so struck by the images of our prayerbook and our mythos that we simply can no longer sit idly by while our brothers and sisters bleed?  

What takes place in synagogues, whether in the sanctuary, the classroom or the social hall, are intended to be vehicles through which we are reminded of our sense of community B and not just Jewish community. When we come together, as we did tonight, to worship, we are literally supposed to be reminded that we are a community, part of a still larger community, and that we have obligations to that community, just as the community has obligations to its individual members.