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Sermon at Southside Baptist Church on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Friendship Tapestries
Rabbi Jonathan Miller
Temple Emanu-El
Birmingham, AL
Sunday, October 21, 2007 9 Heshvan, 5768
It feels so good to come back here, to come home.
I have many homes. We all do. Home is where I lay my head at night, and where I get up in the morning to make some coffee and get going. Home is where I raised my children. Home is where I work. Home is where I worship. For me and for Rev. Jones, we get to work and worship in the same place. I think that is a good thing, some of the time. I am not always sure, but I think so. Home is the house where I grew up in a state far north of here where I rooted for the guys in blue during the Civil War movies, and the Red Sox during the summer. Home is the Bronx, where I spent every summer in my grandparents’ apartment, and home is that rundown Boston apartment where Judi and I lived our first year of marriage, and there was only enough hot water to take one shower an hour, and we had to use masking tape to keep the paper thin walls from crumbling. Home is Jerusalem and home is Los Angeles and home is Birmingham.
Home is really not a place, even though we identify it within a certain geographical boundary and in a certain physical space. A house is a physical thing made of bricks and boards and pipes and wires, but home is different. Home is where we are loved. It is that simple. Home is where we are loved.
And when I come into this sacred space at Southside Baptist Church, I say to myself, “I have come home.” I say that because I am loved here. And it feels great to be loved. And it feels great to come home. And it feels great to be welcomed back by all of you loving people. You loved us with an abundant love that far exceeded our 14-month exile from Highland Avenue and sojourn with you at the other end of Five Points South.
Yesterday in our synagogues, we read Avram’s call from God: “Lech Lecha, Go out; m’artzecha, from your homeland; m’beit avicha, from your Father’s house; mimoladtcha, from your birthplace; el ha’aretz asher areka, to the land that I will show you.” At the age of 75, Avram and Sarai go forth and do precisely as God instructs them. They don’t ask questions. They don’t say, “Hold on, one minute, I need some time to get my affairs in order.” They don’t say, “Hey, where to?” They don’t say, “How are we going to get there?” God says, “Lech lekha”, and they go. And they only go because they were loved.
There is a common misperception about Avram’s relationship with God. It is commonly believed that Avram was the first to discover the one God. But that is not true, not at all. Adam and Eve heard God walking in the Garden of Eden. Cain knew the sting of God’s rebuke after he murdered his brother, Abel. Noah did God’s bidding, and rescued himself and his family and all the animals. And those who built the tower of Babel built it to attain Godliness, and when it was destroyed, they learned that the distance between heaven and earth cannot be measured in physical terms. All the Biblical generations before Avram knew about God. What distinguished Avram and Sarai was that they were the first to know that they were loved and desired by the Holy One. And that is why they could leave their house and go home, because they were assured of God’s love and presence. That is the reason that we can go forward into unknown places and not be too frightened about the change. It is only because we are loved.
I want to share with you tonight what my congregation learned, and what I learned from living with you, from sharing and making a home with you—even if it were only for a brief and finite time.
I learned that the first impulse of religious people should be “yes”, and not “no”. Religious people are too often too quick with the “nos”, the “can’t be dones”, the “its forbiddens”. And there is a place for that in our faith. We don’t believe in everything, and we certainly don’t want right and wrong to be equated with each other. And we need to set our boundaries to say, “This is Jewish, and this is not; this is Christian, and this is not.” Religion is not an “anything goes” kind of business. But when it comes to people, when it comes to hospitality, the answer should be “yes”. The first time I met Reverend Jones, Cantor Roskin and I walked into his office, introduced ourselves, shared some pleasantries, and then asked if we can move in.
Reverend Jones, with that twinkle in his eye that he gets when he knows he is doing the right thing and he may get some folks mad about it, but he will do it anyway because that is what he loves to do—do the right thing and annoy the others who are too timid or too closed minded said, “Sure”. I think that was it. And then we excitedly began to talk about what we would need and how we would work this arrangement out.
I will tell you the true story. Cantor Roskin and I returned back to our congregation and shared with them our good news. We found a comfortable and loving home that would work for us in our worship. Southside Baptist Church was holy space. We would be able to learn from each other and grow through this experience. This might even be transformative to the religious life of this community. We shared how wonderful and accommodating Steve Jones and Tim Kelly and everyone at Southside Baptist Church were, and how we would get to know each other and share with each other. We were very excited.
But, I will tell you, not everyone at our Temple was so pleased. Some said, “What, are you nuts? They may smile at you, but don’t be taken in. They want to convert us all and put us down and when it doesn’t work it, there will be “stuff” to pay. Let’s go to a neutral place. What about the Junior High School auditorium or the Botanical Gardens? What about UAB or the Art Museum? Aren’t there other places to go? Why in the world would you take us to a Baptist Church?”
Y’all couldn’t have been nicer, but we were anxious. Most Jews are anxious inside a church. Jews listen to every nuance of spoken language and body language. Jews feel so out of place in a worshipping church, like we are a handful of thumbs when everybody else has at least four fingers. And Jews have experienced lots of not so loving things and casual digs and hurtful things and painful exclusions from Christians who are supposed to having loving hearts but only know how to love those people who are just like them.
So we had to work through “our stuff” to make it to the Southside Baptist Church, and the distance from there to here was not measurable by feet and yards. For some of my people, Southside Baptist Church was very very very far away.
When we closed down the Temple, it was an emotional event. Our sacred Torah scrolls were brought to the church, and our synagogue was “decommissioned”, for lack of a better word. It was a short journey, but a wrenching one. But you knew enough to know how to make us feel at home. When we saw the banner hung from your entranceway that said, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples” and entered into this sanctuary with the trumpets and the choir and the affection and the love, my people came home. We left behind centuries of ugly stuff that we had been carrying around for so long, left it outside the door, and came in to be greeted with love.
God told Avram, “Lech Lecha—Go forth”. It is a funny term that is not repeated in the Torah. Lech means “Go” or “Get going” or “Move it”. The lecha at the end of lech lecha means “you”. It is hard to translate. It means “go out from where you were, from your fixed and stuck place, to the place that you are meant to be, to the new place that belongs to you.” That is a lot to put into two words, but that is probably what the Hebrew means. “Go out, leave yourself behind and go forward—to the place that I will show you.” When we arrived here, we had no knowledge where, spiritually, we were heading, but God made sure that we were home. And when it came time to leave, it was with great expectation and some sadness, and with a wistfulness that we still feel today for a home that we were leaving behind as we joyfully returned to our sacred space on Highland Avenue.
When your Pastor, Reverend Jones said, “You are safe here,” we knew that we had come home. And when we were rushed with cake and cookies and those little sandwiches without the crusts, we knew we had come home. And when we were offered dinner on Wednesday nights for five dollars, and we learned from each other, and we got our blood pressure checked too, we knew that we had come home. And when Steve and I traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia and Croatia and Bosnia and Serbia and shared with each other some of the most growthful experiences that we have ever had, we knew that we were at home. And when we argued with each other, and still took care of each other, we knew that we were at home. Because home is where you love and where you are loved.
You and your pastor have taught me and my people that to be a Christian does not mean that you stamp your feet or pound your chest or holler the loudest from your steeples. I have learned that to be a Christian means that you love others with the same commitment with which God loves you. It means to extend hospitality to the unloved and the poor and the widow and the orphan and the stranger in your midst. Being Christian means that if you really believe in Jesus and really take to heart his teaching and his suffering, that you really take to heart his care and concern for all humanity. I have learned from you that Jesus’ passion without compassion is only the suffering of a single man who suffered, no different from so many people of his day. But Jesus’ passion with compassion can help redeem the world and make it a kinder place, which knows how to let God in. Your witness has taught us that. You have converted us.
After World War I, Franz Rosenzweig wrote his seminal book, The Star of Redemption. He composed it as a German soldier in the signal corps on the eastern front, and sent it home to his mother on post cards. After he returned home, Rosenzweig assembled the post cards and wrote his book, which has influenced Jewish and Chistian thought ever since. Rosenzweig came from a minimally observant Jewish home, and planned to convert to Christianity, as did so many of the young Jewish German intelligentsia who felt they could easily leave behind their Jewish heritage. They saw it as so rigid and meaningless, and besides, it didn’t hurt to have a baptismal certificate if one wanted to make it in the university. Rosenzweig changed his mind and decided to remain a Jew. He studied and taught Judaism and became a leader of the German Jewish community, together with Martin Buber, until he died, tragically, from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1929.
Rosenzweig was the first religious thinker to find a place for both Judaism and Christianity to work together as partners in the world’s redemption, therefore the name of his book, The Star of Redemption. He said that neither Jews nor Christians can complete God’s work by themselves. He taught that Judaism and the Jewish ethos and the relationship between God and Israel is the core of the redeeming star. Judaism provides the energy and the light to the outer reaches of the core of the star. But the rays that go forth into the world are the rays of the church, which is sent on a mission to bring love and healing to the world. The rays depend upon the core, and the core depends upon the rays. And God depends upon the star, it is not a six pointed star or a five pointed star, with its core and its rays, to bring redemption to the world.
We are partners together, Jews and Christians. We need each other and we depend upon each other. We each provide God with a tool to bring healing and wholeness and redemption to our troubled universe. Redemption starts together with us as individuals and moves out into the community and then into the world at large. God has made us His agents, and we are God’s partners, both of us together. And that is why we have come home to this place of love, to strengthen the star and to bring help and hope and sustenance to the world at large. God has brought us together, I am sure of that. Our friendship was more than just a sharing of space, more than just a relationship between renters and their landlord. Our friendship is the, if not the beginning, then the continuance of God’s plan for a better world. The star of redemption shines brightly from here.
Let’s work together, each of us, to keep it shining. God is depending upon us. Let us continue to Lech Lecha, go forth from where we are today, to shine forth into the darkened world waiting for us to bring our light and warmth, and let’s continue to be a blessing!
Amen
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