Gifts Galore

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, December 5, 2010,

after a retelling of a story from Jewish tradition, based on a column by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman in the Dec. 2010 newsletter of the Church of the Larger Fellowship:

Once there was a man who heard his rabbi teach about lechem hapanim, the “show-bread” which was offered in the Holy Temple each Friday before Shabbat.  After discussing the various laws and procedures governing the preparation of this offering and touching on its mystical significance, the rabbi bemoaned the fact that, “because of our sins, we no longer have this ready means to appease G-d.”

The man went home and asked his wife if they could prepare two special challahs on Friday.  He told her that he wished to present these loaves as an offering to G-d; hopefully G-d would consider them an acceptable sacrifice, and eat them.

The next Friday afternoon, when no one was likely to be in the shul, the man brought the loaves there under his cloak.  He prayed and cried that G-d should look upon his offering with favor, and eat the freshly baked bread.  Then he placed the loaves, well wrapped, in the Holy Ark, and quickly left for home.

The shammash (caretaker) of the shul arrived later that day to check that the Torah scroll was rolled to the appropriate place for the reading the next morning. When he opened the Ark, he was surprised to see two fine-looking challah loaves! He had no idea where they had come from, but he decided to deliver them to some poorer members of the congregation.

That evening, the man waited impatiently for the end of the prayers. When everyone had left the shul, he approached the Ark with great trepidation, and swung its doors open. The loaves were not there! He was so happy. He hurried home to tell his wife that G-d had not disdained the poor efforts of such insignificant people as themselves. Indeed, He had accepted their two loaves, and eaten them while they were still warm!  The man and his wife decided, “Every week we must try to give G-d this pleasure, with the same care and devotion that we did this first time.”  So every Friday morning they would faithfully prepare two beautiful loaves, and every Friday afternoon he delivered them to the shul and earnestly prayed to G-d for their acceptance.

Every Friday the shammash would come along and pick up the bread and deliver it, happy to fulfill the mitzvah of giving unto others.  And every Friday night the man and his wife saw that once again their meager offering had been accepted.

So it went, for many weeks and months. One Friday, the rabbi of the shul stayed much later than usual. He was standing on the bimah (reading platform), reviewing the sermon he planned to give the next day, when, to his surprise, he saw one of his congregants enter carrying two loaves of bread, walk up to the Ark, and deposit them inside. He realized that the man was unaware of his presence, and he heard him utter fervent prayers for G-d to accept his offering and enjoy the challahs.

The rabbi listened in astonishment. Finally he was unable to restrain himself any longer, and burst out in fury: “Stop! You fool! How can you think that our G-d eats and drinks? It is a terrible sin to ascribe human or any physical qualities to G-d Almighty. Why, it is probably the shammash who eats your bread.”

At that moment the caretaker entered the shul, blithely expecting to pick up his challahs as usual. He was a bit startled to see the rabbi and another man standing there. The Rabbi immediately confronted him. “Tell this man why you came here now, and who has been taking the two challahs he has been bringing each week.”

The caretaker freely admitted it. He couldn’t understand why the rabbi was so agitated, and why he was yelling at the other man.

As the rabbi continued his rebuke, the man burst into tears. Not only had he not done a mitzvah as he had thought, it seemed he was guilty of a great sin. He apologized to the rabbi for having misunderstood his lesson about the show-bread, and begged him for forgiveness. He left the shul in shame and despair.

Shortly thereafter, a messenger from the “Holy Ari,” Rabbi Isaac Luria, who was one of the great mystics of his day, strode into the shul and approached the rabbi. In the name of his master the messenger told the Rabbi to go home, to say goodbye to his family, and to prepare himself, because by the designated time for his sermon the next morning, his soul would have already departed to its eternal rest. Thus it had been announced, the messenger assured him, from Heaven.

The rabbi couldn’t believe what he had just heard, so he went directly to the Ari, and asked why he had been called to God.  The rabbi responded, “Such things are not for us to know.  But I heard that it might be because you halted God’s pleasure, the likes of which He hasn’t enjoyed since the day the Holy Temple was destroyed.  After all, with all the gifts God has given, would a little challah every once in awhile hurt so much?”

Gifts Galore

A few years ago, my wife Linda gave me an unexpected gift.  It was in the kind of brown cardboard box that comes in the mail and she handed it to me and told me to open it and see what I thought.  It was about the size of a shoebox and when I shook it, I could tell from the sound and the feel that it was something solid and heavy and maybe wrapped in an inner layer of tissue paper.  So, I cut through the packing tape, pulled the top off, and nestled there in the box was a pair of sandals.

My usually gracious façade fell away as up from the depths of my inner being came the words, “I hate sandals.”  And then, adding insult to injury, for some reason I repeated myself, “I hate sandals.”  Linda, trying to help me make the best of my poor manners, said, “When have you ever tried them?”  I said, “I don’t remember, but I hate sandals.”  She said, “You haven’t even looked at them.” I said, “I don’t have to look at them.  I hate sandals.”

She said, “You haven’t even gotten them out of the box yet.” I said, “I don’t have to get them out.  I hate sandals.”  As she threw up her hands and walked away, all I could think was, all I could say was, “I hate sandals.”

Now, if I ever have any chance of looking halfway decent, it’s because Linda buys me clothing of various kinds.  She has a good eye for quality, a good eye for color, and a good eye for a bargain.  I usually trust her judgment in matters sartorial - more so than my kids who tell me that my favorite color combination of a pink shirt with a red tie is an absolute no-no but which I say is just subversive enough to make the proper statement about the necessity of taking one’s own fashion risks.

So when she picks out something and hands it to me to try on, I’m usually game, but with these sandals it took me a little longer than normal to accept her suggestion.  When I put them on, I think I must have felt a little like a horse must feel when it’s shod for the first time - I was taking baby steps, putting one foot in front of the other slowly and gingerly lest I hurt myself or take a spill.  And you know what?  After I got used to them, the sandals weren’t bad.  They were secure on my feet with straps both front and back, they were supportive where they should be, and the soles were padded so that each step felt just right.  Once I got used to them, I really didn’t want to take them off.  I started wearing them on walks.  I wore them to work in the yard.  I wore them to work and to school, with slacks no less - which, speaking of fashion risks, drove my daughter up the wall.  But I loved my sandals.  I loved the comfort I felt while wearing them.  And I lived in them until I wore them out and then I went and got myself another pair.  And none of that would have been the case if I hadn’t received a gift from someone who loved me.

As I began to reflect on my lack of graciousness when I opened the gift and saw the sandals, it dawned on me that I may carry some deep-seated issues around inside here.  As I pondered my bad reaction to the gift, I realized that the last pair of sandals I owned were most likely also the first pair of sandals I owned. 

My first sandals:  I was about 19, married, two kids at home and a third on the way, my invalid mother-in-law living with us as well as an 11-year-old brother-in-law and an 88-year-old great aunt.  Our little extended family didn’t have much, and I worked as hard as I could just to buy diapers and put food on the table.  But I wasn’t blind to fashion, and sandals were all the rage in those years, and so, in the face of all the other stuff I needed to be buying, I coveted a pair of sandals.  The pair I finally bought as a gift to myself were really cheap, probably about $2, which was way more than we had at the time.  And I was elated that I finally had some sandals.

Ah, but these were $2 sandals, and the sole was an ultra-thin, flat piece of hard leather, smooth on top and bottom, on which my foot slipped and slid.  The strap was a tiny leather torture device that didn’t hold the sandal to my foot but let it flop back and forth and all around and, in the meantime, caused blisters and sores wherever the strap itself rubbed.  I hated these sandals, I think primarily because they hurt so much physically.  But more deeply, I hated these sandals because I’d wanted them so badly and then they didn’t fit and offered no support.  They were simply the wrong gift at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons.

 

On the Jewish calendar this week, we’re in the midst of the celebration of Hanukkah.  Hanukkah was a minor holiday (holy day) in most streams of Jewish tradition, but in recent times it has been lifted in many households and communities from its low status by what some feel is its unfortunate proximity to Christmas in more Christian or secular contexts.  I say it was a minor holy day, for the story of Hanukkah is more traditional than textual;  none of it is found in the Hebrew Bible but portions of it are alluded to in some of the extracanonical writings known as the Apocrypha, or “things hidden away.”  The Apocrypha were originally written in the Greek language rather than the Hebrew, which means they were all written sometime after Alexander the Great swept through the Ancient Near East in about 330 BCE.  The Roman church includes the Apocrypha in their version of the Bible;  Protestant reformers removed the Apocrypha when they printed their own Bibles in and after the 16^th century.

In the Apocrypha are a number of books concerning the Maccabean revolt in the 160’s BCE.  Antiochus IV Epiphanes was the Seleucid ruler of Syria from 175 to 164 BCE.  This Antiochus Epiphanes, though a gruesome chap in so many ways, is chiefly remembered among Jews for what they see as his most gruesome deed:  the defilement of the Jerusalem Temple.  In 168 BCE Antiochus placed an idol in the Temple;  some witnesses said the idol looked like Zeus, some said it looked more like Antiochus.  Then he had his men butcher and roast a pig in the most sacred of rooms within the Temple - an abomination in Jewish tradition.  When a number of Jewish men refused to eat the barbequed pork, Antiochus had their tongues cut out, their hands and feet cut off, and their bodies burned - an excess of violence even in the gruesome culture of the Ancient Near East. 

When this awful story made its way out to the countryside, a priest named Mattathias gathered his five sons and other followers into a guerilla army to fight the oppressive idolaters.  In 165 BCE, after many Jews had been killed, Mattathias’ son Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee won a military victory over a much larger Syrian force, and retook the Temple complex for the Jews.  Searching for oil to burn in the Temple lamps, the victors found that the Syrians had tainted all the flasks of oil save one that was left undefiled.  The one flask would normally have been enough to last only one night, but miraculously the oil lasted eight nights, long enough for the priests to purify more oil.  This is the gift we celebrate during Hanukkah:  the gift from God that kept the lanterns burning, the gift of purified oil that kept the Temple lit for eight dark nights.

 

Perhaps you’ve seen the advertising campaigns of various atheist and humanist associations that are going on here and around the world.  Even if not particularly aimed at liberal religionists such as ourselves, the slogans I’ve seen them using are, at the very least, interesting as discussion-starters.  I haven’t seen one yet that I haven’t agreed with on some level.  For instance, there’s a bad-news-good-news one:

“The bad news is that God does not exist.  The good news is that you don’t need him.”  For me, calling God “Him” is immediately problematic, and I’d want to discuss at some length what “exist” might mean in terms of God.

Another has an ethical ring to it:  “Why believe in a God?  Just be good for goodness’ sake.”  Okay.  But if you’re being good only because you believe in a vengeful and judgmental God, you’re doing it wrong anyway, aren’t you?

And this one for the holiday season:  “You KNOW it’s a Myth.  This Season, Celebrate REASON.”

Oh, I know it’s a myth, and if they mean Celebrate REASON, I’m down with that.  If they mean, though, that we should abandon myth and Worship REASON, then I have a problem - the same problem as with all other forms of idolatry.  Of course we’re supposed to have reason in our toolbox as we go about a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.  For those of us who’ve been practicing our Unitarian and Universalist traditions for even a little while, this is nothing new.  But reason is not an end in itself.  Reason can become an idol, as much as Zeus, as much as Antiochus IV Epiphanes, as much as anything we worship other than that which is larger than all and yet in all.  So much about our lives is UNreasonable:

What’s reasonable about the crunch of leaves on a crisp autumn morning? 

What’s reasonable about the wonder in a child’s eyes?

What’s reasonable about love? 

What I think the language of the Christmas ad campaign misses is how much meaning is contained in myth, how much truth and power is carried through and within narrative and story.  If we apply the gift of reason alone to the Hanukkah myth / narrative / story, then we’d look at it in a particular - and particularly limited - set of ways.  We might examine whether or not the story is historically accurate - we already know that the central miracle of the gift of light is not in any of the ancient texts but only in later rabbinical commentaries.  We might complain that the temple tradition needlessly demanded “pure” oil - couldn’t we use anything that’d burn?  We might suspect that it was a bold-faced lie the story teller told that it was God who provided the oil - isn’t it possible, in fact far more likely, that someone with a good heart was sneaking around adding more oil when nobody else was looking?

 

In the story this morning about the man who placed the gift of bread on the altar, it was the rabbi who was being reasonable and rational - and thank goodness somebody was.  When the rabbi heard what the man, a member of his congregation, had been doing with the bread, he became incensed and yelled at him, “You know better than that!  You know better than to anthropomorphize God!  You know God didn’t eat your bread.  If it’s gone, then it must have been somebody else who ate it.” 

The custodian who took the unexpected gift of bread from the altar and delivered it to the families who needed it was being reasonable, too, at some level:  if he’d left those loaves in the Holy Ark, surely they would have spoiled and made a moldy mess, so taking them away was the rational choice.

But I can’t see that the man who offered God the gift of bread by placing it on the altar was being very reasonable.  It’s not reasonable to think that God would eat.  It’s not reasonable to think that God would eat bread.  It’s not reasonable to think that God would eat your bread.  It’s not reasonable to think there is a God, so maybe it’s not reasonable to want to give God gifts.  But to require everything we do to be reasonable is to practice idolatry.

Maybe like me, you carry something around inside, some dark shadow from the past, when a rabbi yelled at you, when a storyteller told you a bold-faced lie, or when you told one yourself. Maybe, like so many of us, you harbor a burden of remorse or regret in your heart. Maybe, like the man in the story and like so many of us, you left a synagogue or a church in shame or despair or disgust.  But that’s no reason this morning to continue to reject gifts offered you by those who love you. 

Maybe it’s time this morning to take some new risks.  Maybe it’s time this morning to open the gift box and take out the new sandals and see how they feel.  Maybe it’s time this morning to bring all your gifts - reason and intellect, intuition and imagination, humility and courage - to the altar of humanity, to the altar of God, to the altar of life, to the altar of love. 

After all, with all the gifts God has given, would a little challah every once in awhile hurt so much?

So may it be.