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Keep Current - Sermons
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"Writing the Next Set of Tablets"
Shabbat, December 14, 2007
Rabbi Hausman-Weiss
One of my favorite traditions in Judaism is the midrash that teaches that as the Israelites journeyed through the Sinai, they carried in the ark two sets of tablets of the Ten commandments. The first was made up of the shards of the broken tablets that Moses threw down upon seeing the Israelites bowing to the Golden Calf. The second set was the set of tablets that God instructed Moses to carve himself. They carried both sets, the broken ones written by God's hand and the second set written by Moses. The first set that God gave the Jewish people, God made. They were precious because God made them. They were holy because God made them. But sometimes, we aren't aware of the gifts that God has given us until they are broken. But our tradition, in telling this story, lays out a map for us, for how we persevere, when we find ourselves in the midst of ther rupture of the life we hold so dear.
This map teaches us that we are to take the broken pieces, put them in the ark, put the ark at the center of our people, and search for the wherewithal to keep writing. And if we are lucky, or perhaps skilled at life, we will be able to write a second set, a set worth carrying in the holy ark of our covenant with God. For we are the writers of words on the tablets that we carry and including the broken ones along with the words we write anew is how we persevere. The broken tablets do not disappear; if we learn from our ancestors and do it right, they become a part of who we are.
On Yom Kippur, at our Afternoon service, we prayed to God that we understand that God is not really in the business of sitting at His desk and, with quill in hand, writing the breadth and depth of our lives. No, truly, for us to stay fixed in this far too simple theology, is to deny what our god-given attributes tell us: that much of life is random, that much of the good and bad that happens to us is not only out of our control, but out of God's control as well. See, the Rabbis tell the story of how God goes about creating the world with an insistence that any world worth creating would be filled with beings who could act as God's partner in creation. They teach that God kept creating and destroying, creating and destroying the world because over and over again, things weren't going according to God's plan. The problem was this experiment God was engaging in called "free will." Every time that God planted in Adam, the human being, the absolute free ability to choose, Adam often enough, anyway, in the midst of his choices for good, would make plenty of choices for bad. So God kept scrapping the project. Until, God discovered that the only way Adam could become God's partner in creation is if Adam could also freely choose to not be God's partner in creation. That any choice free of the possibility to do otherwise is no choice at all. That human beings would learn to create even as it is their wont to destroy. That human beings could learn to love even as it is their wont to hate. That human beings could learn to forgive even as it is their wont to resent. So, on Yom Kippur afternoon, we reminded ourselves that the words we pray are metaphor with a direct challenge to ourselves. Not, catvenu b'sefer chaim tovim¸ God please write us into the book of life, but, a question, "catavnu b'sefer chaim tovim?" have we written ourselves into the book of life?"
And this brings us back to the tablets. The measure and worth of our life is written for us, by us - by our actions every single day. When we say that God musters and measures, records and recounts, we are to remember that none of our actions are devoid of meaning or impact. While we may have forgotten the deeds that we performed, both good and bad, their imprint remains upon the record of our lives. We carry with us, whether well meaning and intentioned or by happenstance, the god-given gifts that we have broken by simply being human. The measure of our worth comes not in the amount or variety of broken shards that fill the ark of our lives. Rather, the measure of our worth comes by way of how well and how intentioned is our re-writing of a new set of tablets.
I watched a young girl die this week. Terribly broken shards of life that at one time, moments earlier, had shined brightly with imagination, creativity and a lust for life. And the world that has come crashing in upon her family is a brand new one filled with terror, tragic disappointment and grief. And I am a Rabbi. They look to me as the one with the answers. Why did God do this? Why would God allow this? Why are we here having to deal with this? And as a Rabbi, I tell them, with as much authority as I can muster, God had nothing to do with this. From the moment of creation, this was possible. Just as the birth of this beautiful girl, this too was possible. Because we are not under the control of some deity far away and removed from us. Whom we can appease and by our state of affairs, we can deem ourselves "smiled upon" or not. The only thing we got now are the broken shards of a life not fully lived. It is our job, this community, then to support the family of Leah Marks. To support the community of Leah Marks. To add this brokenness to our arks and to let us not forget that tragedy can strike in this world that God created. That were it not for this possibility, our world would not have been worth creating in the first place. For the problem of existence is not in our limitations, but in the reality that we are free. Truly free, not some philosophically nuanced idea of free but really free. I mean, we are free. To choose, to teach, to guide, to dream, to hope, to seek protection and to seek safety and to risk. How we build upon and at the same time limit the choices we make in the face of that freedom - that is how we measure the worth of our lives.
My challenge to this family and to all of us is to write a new set of tablets. We stand here this night, all of us, God's shattered gift in hand - let it be so that we begin the writing of a new set of tablets with our lives. And the broken pieces, they are now a part of us. There to inspire, there to nurture, there to guide, but mostly there to remind us that our freedom is the greatest gift we have and it is also the greatest challenge we face. The new tablets - may they be purposely by our hands and with our lives as we seek shalom from the midst of the brokenness.
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