“Zochreinu l’chayim, melech chafetz bachayim, v’chotveinu b’sefer ha’chayim, l’ma’ancha elohim chayim—Remember us unto life, O King who delights in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, O God of life.” God is Dayan HaEmet, the Judge of Truth. And the Dayan HaEmet, the Judge of Truth opens His book to read and to write. And we are the subject of the Judge’s scrutiny. God examines each of us, and reviews, and considers and recounts and retells and writes us into the Book of Life, recording our deeds and our misdeeds, our accomplishments and our failures, our sins and our virtues, recounting them all, and then giving us the g’zar din, the decree of judgment. “You have lived with virtue and you will be rewarded.” Or “Your sins are overwhelming, and you will be punished.” Or “You have turned back from your evil ways with acts of repentance, charity and prayer, and your sins have turned to virtue and your punishment to reward.” Dayan HaEmet, the Judge of Truth has spoken.
But what if there is no book? What if we were to search the heavens, in all of its remotest and hiddenmost corners, and we could not find the Sefer HaChayim? What if there were no Book of Life? What if there were no g’zar din, no verdict, no declaration of judgment—so that all of our actions, our merits and our failings now count for nothing? What if there were no Dayan and no Emet, no Judge and no Truth? What if we pulled back the curtain, and instead of seeing the Wizard we would see only Professor Marvel, the fortune teller from Kansas, pushing all the buttons and pulling all the levers; and the broom from the Wicked Witch won’t get us back home again and neither will the ruby slippers? What if we pulled back the curtain, and there was nothing, no Professor Marvel and no buttons and no levers, nothng at all? And what if there were not even a curtain? And what if the Emerald City is only a dream, a fantasy or an illusion? What if Yom Kippur were for us a dream, or a fantasy, or an illusion, just like the City that emerged from the poppy fields?
So when reality knocks; when we get that call from the doctor with our test results or from the principal with our grades or from the boss with our performance review or from the creditors because the loan has been called in or from the family that it is time to come home quickly, and bring a suit—when we get that summons to appear and we must come, sometimes we cannot find the Yellow Brick Road. Sometimes there is no way home and comfort eludes us. Sometimes there is no Sefer HaChayim, no Book of Life. Sometimes there is no Dayan Ha’Emet, no Judge of Truth. Sometimes there is no g’zar din, no decree of judgment. Sometimes there is no chayt, no sin; no mitzvah, no virtue; and no teshuvah, no repentance. What if there were no light of day? And all we have is the night, an unending impenetrable darkness, a nihilistic void empty of meaning; a black hole of the spirit, which soaks up all the light that comes its way. What if that’s all there is; the source of the beginning and the source of the end, and all there is is darkness?
This is my seventeenth year with you on this pulpit. I have seen you grow and mature, and I have grown and matured with you. It has been a delight for me. I have named your babies, educated your children, occasionally inspired you, and maybe infuriated you now and then. I have also buried your loved ones, who over the course of these years have become my friends. I know you. And I know that most of you are rather faithful, fairly generous, somewhat giving, and comfortable enough for the most part with your spiritual lives. I see most of you, if not all of you year in and year out; at least we meet each and every year on Yom Kippur. And you are happy enough most of the time, content enough most of the time. My sermon this morning is perhaps not written for most of you. Most of you don’t struggle to find the Sefer HaChayim, the Book of Life. You don’t particularly worry about the Dayan HaEmet, the Judge of Truth. Perhaps on Yom Kippur you think about sin and mitzvah and repentance. But otherwise you are ok. You raise your kids as best you can. You give back to your community. You sustain the synagogue. You don’t steal or commit adultery or gossip too much. And you don’t worry too much. Y’all live in the warm rays of sunlight, in the comfort of your faith and deed. God is with you, and when you need God, God is around—kinda. And that is good enough for you. You are blessed with a spiritual complacency, which, my friends, is a blessing. You are in your comfort zone and you are “OK, very fine, thank you very much.” You really don’t need any sermon on Yom Kippur.
My message instead is for the others among you. My message is for those who live in darkness, who teeter on the edge of despair. Even in the midst of dozens of friends and family, there are those among us who are spiritually lonely. There are those among us who live life both well and good. But behind it all, you have a gnawing emptiness inside that perhaps can best be described as an existential sadness and aloneness. For these among us, beneath the layers of intellectual rationalizing and emotional discernment, spiritually there is only the dark night of nothingness. God is, at best, an absentee landlord, or perhaps the last extension on the universal voicemail. You stay on hold, and wait and wait and wait trying year after year to get through to simply leave the message, “I am here.” By the time some of us learn how to connect with God, we are long since gone.
And here is the surprise I have learned from being your rabbi. The large majority of us in the congregation is not like the first group; happy, complacent and blessed with spiritual sunshine and smiley faces. And the large majority of us in the congregation is not like the second group; spiritually sad, alone, and dwelling in the dark. Most of us, maybe even all of us, are a combination of both of these human prototypes. Spiritually, we are comfortable and ill at ease. We struggle, and we are complacent. We give, and we withhold. We bask in sunshine, and we dwell in darkness. We are an amalgam of both types of people. This is what it means to be fully human living in search of meaning and knowing that we are in communion with God. That is why the Torah tells us on Yom Kippur year after year to choose life, and not death. Because, just as we are life choosers, who revel in the joy and sunshine, we are also death choosers and night dwellers. We are both, and that is our glory and our downfall, our joy and our pain.
Here is another lesson I have learned from being your rabbi: the spiritually alive and mature person is the one who finds God and meaning even in the darkness. The spiritually alive and mature person is the one who knows there is more, even when he or she despairs of ever finding it. The spiritually alive and mature person lives with hope, even, and especially when there is no reason to be hopeful. The spiritually alive and mature person is constantly aware of death and meaninglessness and emptiness—and still, somehow carries on fighting his or her way towards the light that may never come. The spiritually alive and mature person is the human being who has been defeated and who cries out for God to rescue, but when there is no answer, that person still cries out and knows that crying out is still what human beings do. And the spiritually alive and mature person does not surrender even when he or she has been defeated. Still, the spiritually alive and mature person calls out to God, even if he or she does not expect an answer.
Our tradition attributes these words to King David, the mightiest of Israel’s kings and the sweetest poet humanity has ever produced. King David called out to God:
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent. (Psalm 22)
23 Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
24 Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and oppression? (Psalm 44)
God has had many righteous servants who have come in every generation to serve Him. Among those most well known to us is the saintly Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, born on August 10, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia. At the age of 18, Agnes left her home and began the journey that would eventually bring her to India. Soon she would be known to the world by her new name, Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa’s concern for the poor grew out of her Christian faith. But her faithfulness transcended the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church.
As the Catholic Church moves Mother Teresa on the fast track to sainthood, much is being revealed about her spiritual life. She had written volumes of private letters that she sent to her spiritual directors. In her humility, she had requested that these private letters be destroyed upon her death. Thankfully, the letters have been preserved. Scholars now have examined her spiritual life and have learned that Mother Teresa’s spiritual journey was fascinating and painful. As a young woman, an acolyte and a nun, Mother Teresa set out to praise God and glorify Him. She wrote poetry and paeans of devotion to God, ecstatic expressions of her faith and commitment. God and Mother Teresa had an intimate bond of joy, devotion and willing sacrifice. She had visions of God and Jesus, and heard them speak to her. In 1946 and 1947, Mother Teresa heard God call her to take care of the poor. Out of her love for God, she promised to withhold nothing in her service to the earth’s least fortunate. So Mother Teresa left the comfort of her convent and started the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.
What most people do not know is that from the moment she left the convent to serve the poor, Mother Teresa stopped hearing the voices of God and seeing her ecstatic heaven inspired visions. Spiritually, she entered her black night from which she never emerged. She confided to her spiritual advisor that she felt “. . . just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” She lived in the service of God without the presence of God, feeling that God had left her behind. Still today, Mother Teresa is known and admired and beatified by all persons of faith—not for her youthful joys and visions of the Divine—but rather for her desire to sacrifice everything to serve the poorest of the poor. When she left the convent and entered the streets of Calcutta to serve God, God left her.
But Mother Teresa never left God.
My friends, that is the theology of darkness, the theology of loneliness, the theology of longing, and the theology ultimately of love. It is as real for us as it was for our ancestors, and as it will be for our children. Being with God, loving God, and serving God is not just joy and bright lights and a heavenly choir of harp music and children’s voices and fiery chariots and earthquake and fire. Being with God means remaining with God, even when we feel that God has left us. The theology of darkness means that God is with us even when we feel Him most absent. Our lover has left us, but we still love—and we spread that love to others.
To love God is easy when we are comfortable. To love God is easy when we hear the choir and see the lights and focus on our breathing. To love God is a whole lot harder when we hear nothing and see nothing and focus more on others and less on ourselves. It is a whole lot harder and requires more faith to remain steadfast through the black night of faith. It means to believe in the Book of Life when life is unfair. Faith during our darkness means for us that there is a dayan, a judge, and an emet, a truth—even when the Judge’s chambers are empty and the truth is hidden. It means to believe that there is a g’zar din, a judgment, even when we cannot fathom the rectitude of God’s decree. It means that there is still sin and mitzvah and repentance, even if God seems to have abandoned us.
Just ask Mother Teresa.
Let me conclude this Yom Kippur morning with a Hasidic story and a Swedish poem:
The story:
Once upon a time, three men were confined in a prison. There were no windows in this prison, no light seeping through any chinks in the wall, no glimmer slipping quietly beneath the door. It was pitch-black, so dark, that even the darkness could not see. Two of these unlucky fellows, were very intelligent and learned men, great teachers, admired and followed by many. The other poor soul was a simpleton. He knew nothing, nothing at all. He couldn't put his clothes on, he couldn't feed himself, and he could do nothing for himself. So, one day, one of these learned men made a decision: he would teach this poor fellow! There, in that darkness. He would teach this poor soul all he needed to know: how to dress himself, how to feed himself, button his buttons, how to hold a spoon—everything he would need to know.
He worked hard. But the second fellow, the other learned man, did nothing at all. Finally, one day, the hardworking teacher had all he could take. "Friend, I do not understand! Why do you just sit there, waiting? How can you do nothing for this poor simple soul?"
The other man waited a while and then spoke.
"My friend, I understand that you have been working hard. I understand what you have been trying to do. Now, understand me. In my waiting, I have been working, too. You see, in this darkness, I fear that though you teach this poor soul, you will teach him nothing. In this darkness, he can learn nothing of value at all, no matter how many years you try. And so, I sit here thinking. How might I break a hole in that wall? How might I bring the light I have known into this prison? When that happens, my friend, we will be free and this man will learn for himself all that he needs to know."
The Poem:
|
Friend, in the Desolate Time
Friend, in the desolate time, when your soul
is enshrouded in darkness
When, in a deep abyss, memory and feeling
die out,
Intellect timidly gropes among shadowy forms
and illusions
Heart can no longer sigh, eye is unable
to weep;
When, from your night-clouded soul the wings
of fire have fallen
And you, to nothing, afraid, feel
yourself sinking once more,
Say, who rescues you then?-Who is the
comforting angel
Bringing to your innermost soul order and
beauty again,
Building once more your fragmented world,
restoring the fallen
Altar, and when it is raised, lighting
the sacred flame?—
None but the powerful being who first from
the limitless darkness
Kissed to life seraphs and woke
numberless suns to their dance.
None but the holy Word who called the worlds
into existence
And in whose power the worlds move on
their paths to this day.
Therefore, rejoice, oh friend, and sing in
the darkness of sorrow:
Night is the mother of day, Chaos the
neighbor of God. |
|
Erik Johan Stagnelius
Translated from the Swedish by Bill Coyle |
On Yom Kippur, we live our faith in both light and darkness, intimacy and distance, with a longing that the night will someday end and we will on the morrow be reunited with our lover. Until that time, we hold on through the night watch of our soul, waiting, waiting, waiting for the dawning of the light. That waiting which comes from loneliness and desire and longing and distance, that waiting too is a source of great faith and love and spiritual depth.
Maybe it is, really, the source of redemption.
Be steadfast in your faith. Do not despair.
Gut Yomtov
(I am indebted to Carol Zaleski’s article, “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa” in First Things, May 2003.)