D’var Torah – Behar – Bechukotai May 14, 2004

This morning, Rabbi Yitzhak and I attended the annual Mayors’

Prayer Breakfast at the downtown Hilton. This is an annual event that is

sponsored by an independent non-profit organization, although the name of

the event can give the impression that it is sponsored by city government.

The event may have been intended to be a multi-faith event, but it certainly

did not have the feel of one.

Several hundred people packed the ballroom for an early breakfast

amidst ceremonious remarks from the current mayors of Springfield and

Eugene, as well as Eugene’s most recent past mayor. Towards the

beginning of the program, Rabbi Yitzhak was invited to read Psalm 46, a

psalm of reassurance. Though the world may quake and feel wobbly, surely

the Eternal One is with us, the psalm declares.

Following Rabbi Yitzhak, the next speaker, a Catholic nun, read from

the book of John. She read verses in which Jesus is quoted as saying that

famous line, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” After she

spoke, the keynote speaker, Adolph Coors IV, took the podium to share the

story of his personal spiritual journey.

It was a story of genuine suffering and self-discovery. Adolph’s

father was senselessly murdered when he was only a 14-year-old boy, and

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much of Adolph’s young adult life was a fruitless search for spiritual

gratification through the kinds of means that many of us have learned are,

ultimately, not the stuff soul-fulfillment is made of.

After many failed attempts at true happiness, Adolph had a life-

changing car accident. During his recovery – just at a time when he was

considering leaving his wife and young son in pursuit of yet another false

source of fulfillment – Adolph and his wife had a transformative experience

while hosting another couple for dinner. They discovered evangelical

Christianity, and shortly thereafter, they each embraced it.

Unfortunately, as the talk developed, Adolph began stating, flat out,

that only belief in Jesus as God’s son who died for all of humanity’s sins can

grant people eternal life in heaven. He was very clear. He said that there are

not many ways to be in good relationship with the Creator of the Universe –

only one way, his way. He repeated this message passionately, and then

asked everyone in the room to bow their heads in prayer with him, at which

point he prayed to Jesus to help us all.

Sitting in that vast ballroom, a sea of bowed heads, as he recited this

prayer I could not share, Rabbi Yitzhak and I were among only a few people

with their heads held erect. It was a strange feeling. I felt incredibly small

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and invisible. I felt like the guy in the movies who everybody in town thinks

is guilty of some crime, while only he and God know that he is innocent.

This was an extremely painful experience, and the pain Rabbi Yitzhak

and I felt was not lost on some of the Christian clergy who were there. We

received heartfelt expressions of concern and distress from an Episcopal

priest, from former Eugene mayor Jeff Miller (himself a minister), and from

others as well.

I was feeling a crush of intense feelings – lots of anger, bitterness, and

perhaps worst of all, a feeling of profound separation from the people who

put on this event. I found myself having many distancing, “otherizing”

thoughts. I try to be on guard for these thoughts, because if practiced over

and over they can lead to a dehumanizing of others – something contrary to

my core spiritual beliefs. And yet, these thoughts flooded me. I heard my

mind ranting:

“These people aren’t my kind of people.

These people are deluding themselves so much

that they can’t even see how they’re hurting

others around them. These people are so self-

righteous. This is the other America. This is

George W. Bush country – these are his people,

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 not my people, and they want to remake America

in the image of the biblical verse that they recited

from the Book of John: ‘No one comes to the

Father except through me,’ instead of molding

America in the spirit of the verse that’s actually on

the Liberty Bell, and which happens to come from

this week’s parashah: ‘You shall proclaim liberty

throughout the land for all its inhabitants.’ These

people are mean with a smile on their faces –

they’ve invited us here as Jewish participants only

to turn around and teach a message of Christian

superiority.

Look how many of them there are! We’ve

got to pull together and outvote these crazies this

November. We’ve got to get organized or they’ll

take over the country. They already have taken it

over! I hate these people. I hate them.”

Listen to me. Listen to these thoughts. They sprang out of anger, out

of fear, out of having been in an experience in which I felt cornered and

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spiritually disrespected and misunderstood. The feelings were normal, and

indeed, what happened was wrong and very hurtful. And yet, if the feelings

lead only to my carrying an ongoing sense of certain people being utterly

worse than me – if my feelings lead me to separate myself from Evangelicals

completely, to think of them as the ultimate Other, to even hate them (God

forbid!) – then I have not found a way to avoid the pitfalls of anger.

Because the truth is – the truth that I place my trust in – is that all of

our religious communities are flawed vessels for the divine. All of our

communities, whether liberal or conservative, Jewish or Muslim or Christian

or Buddhist, progressive or fundamentalist, -- all of our communities are

flawed and do harm in some ways, and all of our communities hold sacred

pieces of the cosmic puzzle. All of our communities – all of the people on

this planet down to a person – hold pieces of the puzzle we collectively need

to put together in order to create the great tikkun, the great repair and human

healing that the Eternal One seeks to express.

This vision of every community manifesting sacred fragments of the

Divine message includes us at Temple Beth Israel. And it includes

progressive churches. And it includes Orthodox Jews, and Shi’ite Muslims,

and Evangelical Christians. It’s sometimes hardest for me to see the

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spiritual gifts of religious groups that I feel the most threatened by, but when

I think about it a little, I realize it’s not that hard to see.

For example, although I don’t share their beliefs about Jesus being the

only way to God, I recognize that Evangelical Christians make spiritual

contributions in large numbers in parts of our society where many religious

and secular progressives talk a good talk, but fail to show up in large

numbers where it counts. I saw this when I was living in Philadelphia. My

wife, Melissa, worked for a prison reform organization in that city, and

through her I, too, came to visit inmates in prisons. Guess who shows up in

large numbers to do the real life work of visiting prisoners. Evangelical

Christians show up. I saw it again, most recently, while Melissa and I were

taking classes for prospective foster and adoptive parents through the state’s

child welfare service agency. Guess who showed up in large numbers to

foster needy children. Evangelical Christians – many of them working-class

and clearly prioritizing the needs of these unwanted kids over their own

personal material gain.

I can see that there is something about Evangelical Christianity - this

powerful, passionate way of faith that gives people the courage to act on the

teachings of self-sacrifice and unselfishness that form much of their belief. I

could even see evidence of the genuine spiritual gifts present in Evangelical

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Christianity in Adolph Coors’ speech. For instance, one of the

transformations he experienced in embracing his faith was the determination

to seek forgiveness even when it is most difficult. It was moving to hear

him talk about the spiritual risk he took when he decided to find the man

who had murdered his father when he was just a boy of fourteen and seek to

reconcile with him. Adolph located him in prison and began visiting him

regularly, and eventually forgave him.

So there is real value there – there are spiritual talents and gifts in

Evangelical Christianity. And so there also are spiritual talents and gifts

present in every other faith community in the world. The beauty of having

the gifts distributed so widely – the beauty of no one religion or sect having

a monopoly on all the gifts, is that what it means is that we all need one

another to bring all the gifts together and be all that humanity can be.

In order for that sharing of gifts to happen, however, all the religions

and denominations need to recognize that none of them have all the gifts.

None of them has a monopoly on the Truth – nobody has all the answers,

and God – the one we call the Infinite One, the one the prophet Jeremiah

calls the Fountain of Living Waters in this week’s haftarah – God… doesn’t

fit in anybody’s box.

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 All that being said, after my experience this morning, I have been

feeling disheartened about the prospect of Evangelicals – or for that matter,

religious absolutists of every faith – ever being able to enter into a respectful

dialogue of spiritual equals with other religions. I have been feeling

disheartened by the fear I have that it would be difficult for many in these

communities to even understand why what was done this morning was

wrong. But I don’t want my disheartened, or angry feelings, to lead to a

pattern of hateful thoughts and total distancing from people who believe this

way, because that is where pain festers and dehumanization begins. Today I

sat in a room full of people who are on the other side of America’s culture

war from me, and yet, they are my brothers and sisters, and despite

everything we actually have so much to learn from each other and we

ultimately need each other, and if I lose sight of that, then I lose sight of one

of the spiritual beliefs that I hold most dear. We are all created b’tzelem

elohim, in the image of the Divine. It’s hardest to remember that about

people towards whom you’re feeling angry.

One of the concerned Christians who spoke with us after this morning’s

event mentioned the need for dialogue – appropriate dialogue in safe, well-

mediated spaces – between Evangelicals and people with more progressive

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religious orientations. I think this idea is right on target. I would add that

this kind of dialogue between religious conservatives and religious

progressives needs to happen in our own faith community and across all

faith lines. I don’t know who would mediate it. I don’t know how some of

the differences of belief and differences of approach towards sacred texts

would be negotiated. But I know that without this kind of dialogue, the

culture war in this country will only become worse – it will become an even

more hateful spewing of snide remarks and bumper-sticker barbs being

hurled by brothers and sisters at one another. I hope that the chance for this

kind of healthy dialogue emerges soon. With prayers for better

understanding and community wholeness, Shabbat shalom.