A Prayer: "Unetaneh Tokef for America"
Rabbi Douglas Sagal, New Jersey
Today it is written,
today it is sealed
in the United States
of America:
Who shall die, and who shall be injured
who shall be scarred for life,
and who shall be left disabled;
who by full automatic fire, and who by semi auto;
who by AR, and who by AK;
who by pistol and who by revolver;
who by Ruger, and who by Smith and Wesson;
who by Sig Sauer, and who by Colt;
who by Kimber, and who by Springfield Armory;
Who by CZ, and who by Beretta;
Who by HK, and who by Glock;
But repentance, prayer and charity, will do
absolutely nothing to avert the decree, nothing,
for our politicians are too frightened.
During their recent High Holidays, most Jews chanted the
“Unetaneh Tokef,” a powerful prayer describing how God decides, at the
beginning of each Jewish New Year, who will live and who will die. “On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed / And on
Yom Kippur it is sealed / How many shall pass away and how many shall be born /
Who shall live and who shall die.” There’s
an urgency to spiritual practice that makes the holidays especially potent in
Jewish life. In the wake of Sunday’s
shooting in Las Vegas, Rabbi Douglas Sagal of Temple Emanu-El in New Jersey
reframed the prayer as a lament for violence in America and our political
leaders’ inaction and complicity.
"Get Creative":
A Meditation on Matthew 5:38-48
Sunday, October 8, 2017
After Las Vegas
1.
So here’s how the gospel works in public. Here’s how agape transforms violence. Check
this out. It’s the mid-1980s in South
Africa. And that means apartheid. And that means the dominance of whites over blacks. And that means the constant threat of
violence among Afrikaners certain of their superior heritage, convinced of
their privilege. It’s the 80s in South
Africa.
And in a squatters’ camp there, a group of black women face a
handful of bright yellow bulldozers, gruesome, destructive machines. And those bulldozers are poised to demolish
their homes, which are just shacks really, but still their homes. But what happens is this. This amazing group of women sense that
familiar puritanical streak in their white Afrikaner overlords. They know that these men are governed by
certain mores and rigid rules about right and wrong, clean and unclean, flesh
and spirit. You know. They’re puritans.
So the black women strip naked—right then and right there—they
strip to their underwear and then right down to the bone. And the shock of this, and the wild and
unexpected shock of this, causes the bulldozer operators and the policemen
there to run like crazy. They just run
for their lives. And those wild women,
those wild women stripped to the bone, laugh and sing and celebrate a victory
over violence. How's that for good news?
2.
“If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat,” Jesus says,
“give your cloak as well.” To be honest,
the translation should probably go something like this: “If anyone wants to sue
you for your outer garments, give him your underwear as well.” Jesus isn’t fooling around. It's not what he does. “If anyone wants to sue you for your outer
garments, give him your underwear as well.”
So let’s be honest about what Jesus is asking of us, asking of
his disciples, asking of his church. This
could get kind of dicey, right? Jesus is
looking for courage and creativity.
Jesus is out to transform violent situations and violent people and
violent systems. So how does that
work? For Jesus?
Well, this particular teaching is most probably set in a court
of law. Some kind of legal
proceeding. In the first century,
debtors are in court all the time. Rome
is taxing her subjects heavily, brutally, to fund its wars and
extravagances. In Israel, Herod is pressing landowners for
taxes to pay for his lavish and impressive building projects. And the landowners, in turn, are passing
their burden along to their poor and the immigrant and the widow and the
vulnerable. Everyone’s in debt to
somebody. And more often than not, the
whole mess lands a debtor in court.
So Jesus says: When you’re facing the court, when you’re facing
that tycoon who’s driven you to poverty, when you’re facing that empire that’s
saddled you with all that debt, get creative.
Get creative! When they’ve
stripped you of your land, and they’ve stripped you of your livelihood, and
when they’ve even stripped you of your outer garments, go all the way. Are you getting the picture? Jesus isn’t kidding around. It's not what he does. Give the court your underwear too. Let them deal with what they’ve done to
you. March out of that court stark
naked, if you have to. Make them think a
little. Make them blush.
Now this is Jesus at his most imaginative best. Because he knows, Jesus knows, that nakedness
is taboo in the ancient world. And he knows that
shame falls not so much on the naked party but (get this) on the one seeing or causing the
nakedness. You see what Jesus is
doing? By stripping to the bone, by
giving over even his undergarments to the court, the debtor in court brings
shame on that creditor and that whole system.
The entire system by which debtors are oppressed is now publicly
unmasked. It’s brilliant, really. Prophetic and truthful and brilliant.
The creditor is revealed in court, to be not simply a
money-lender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to
landlessness and poverty. And this
unmasking is not simply punitive, and not just good theater either. The whole thing causes the creditor, or the
rich, or the greedy, to see (maybe for the first time) what his practices do to
real people, to real neighbors, to real families. And this, then, creates the possibility of
repentance, of real human change, of true moral transformation. It’s brilliant. Just like the South African women stripping
before those bulldozers.
And this, Jesus says, is agape. This is the gospel. Do this and you will live.
