1.
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| David Friedman's "Many Names for God" |
In ancient Hebrew—the language of Genesis and the Old Testament—the word for spirit (ruach) is also the word for breath. Spirit and breath: RUACH. The Hebrews believe, and Christians do too, that the spiritual world is as near and as natural as the ordinary act, the most ordinary act, of taking a breath and letting it go. RUACH: the rising and falling of your breath; the expansion and contraction of your chest. RUACH: the moment-to-moment interaction of your breath with all the other breath out here, air and atmosphere, molecules and particles; every breath you take, every breath you give back, your holy dance with a global community of breath and spirit.
It’s really not that complicated. In the imagination of the ancients, in Jewish and Christian practice, all you need to do to contact the creative, creating presence of God in your life is pay attention to your breath. The rising and falling of your breath. The expansion and contraction of your chest. So do that with me right now. Place your hand, your palm flat against your chest—right up here by your collarbone—and take a deep, holy, human breath. A big one. Feel the swelling of your chest as breathe in; and then the releasing of all that air as you exhale and let it go. Do it again. Breathe it all in, and let it all go. Breathe it all in, and let it all go.
This, and simply this, is the basic building block of Jewish and Christian practice. RUACH: paying attention to the rising and falling of your breath. RUACH: taking life in, swallowing God’s spirit, and then letting it go, giving it all back. Maybe you’re looking for a simple way to appreciate God’s presence in your life, a basic practice for our busy daily life. Maybe you begin with ten minutes every morning, before you brush your teeth, before you get out of bed if you like. And you just appreciate your breathing, you pay attention to your breathing. Taking it in, and letting it go. Swallowing God’s spirit, and giving it back. Just that, I think, and you’re well on your way. The ancients would be happy.
2.
In the beginning, says the poet. Turn with me, then, to our scripture this morning. In the beginning, says the poet, earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. And God’s spirit brooded or hovered or maybe even glided like a bird above the watery abyss. Having lived here in Santa Cruz for a dozen years, I read these first verses of the Bible and I think of wide-winged pelicans gliding just above the surface of the sea, pelicans cruising shallow waters on a foggy, foggy day. God’s spirit brooding, hovering, gliding through the mist; and hatching new plans and dreaming new dreams. In the beginning, says the poet, pelicans on the bay.
Let’s be clear right here, because it matters so much to the ways we interpret this text. Genesis is the work of a poet. Not a scientist, not a cosmologist, and certainly not a religious fundamentalist. It’s the playful work of a poet who trades not in scientific truth or fundamentalist certainty, but in metaphor and language and beauty and grace. God’s spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God’s breath heaved and sighed through the inky blackness. And God spoke: “Light!” And light appeared. And God saw that light was good. If we read this for scientific data, we miss the point, even the good news of it all. And if we read it for doctrinal truth, for the absolute and holy truth for all people at all times, we miss the thrilling and imaginative promise of it. This is poetry, it’s gospel, it’s good news. Your spirit is the breath of God. You can touch it, know it, tap into it. And we are not alone.
There’s a rich consensus among Old Testament scholars that these first verses in Genesis were composed in exile, something like an ‘inky blackness,’ by a disoriented poet writing for a disoriented people. It makes sense doesn’t it? These Hebrews had been exiled from their homes and homeland. Gone were the olive groves they loved, the wheat fields they cultivated, and the great temple they cherished as God’s great navel in the world. Exile means anxiety and chaos for most of us, a soup of nothingness every day and an inky blackness around every corner. You don’t have to be an ancient Hebrew to know this, by the way. This goes without saying, I guess. So many of us experience exile, and overwhelming anxiety, and disorienting new realities, at some time or another in our lives. Illness takes health and freedom from us unexpectedly. A relationship ends too suddenly. Job loss turns our lives upside down. Genesis 1 breathes new life into tired souls. Genesis 1 extends the sweet promise of order and beauty to a disoriented people. The poet here, the poet in Genesis, is one of us.
3.
There are so many things to say about our recent two-week trip to the Holy Land, to Israel, Palestine and the conflicted, bewildered peoples of the region. There are so many conversations to report on, so many brave and weary peacemakers and so many stories to bring back to you. I trust there’ll be time for that, and soon. But this morning, I want to tell you about just one, an artist, a Jewish mystic, a poet named David Friedman.
David lives and works
and creates out of the mystical Jewish tradition called Kabbalah. And we spent a remarkable morning with him in
his studio in the Upper Galilee. He
showed us his work, his art. He helped
us understand the Kabbalah and its influence on his creativity and Jewish
practice. And he broke open my heart, and
a few others I think, to new dimensions of mystery and faith and God’s passion
in the world.
If you look at the picture on the backside of this morning’s program, you’ll see a black and white reproduction of one of David Friedman’s favorite works, called the “Ein Sof.” David spent quite a while describing this particular piece to us, and you’ll see that I’ve got it here in its original colors. He told us that this “Ein Sof” represents the decision of God to contract God’s self, to break God’s self into many pieces, and to give birth to creation in all its many, many forms. In a sense, the “Ein Sof” correlates with the poetry, the metaphor, the imagination of Genesis 1. Instead of retaining a kind of monolithic oneness, a huge and impenetrable holiness, God submits to brokenness and contraction, to multiplicity and diversity—so that a community of spirit can find communion and experience compassion and know God’s grace together.
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| David Friedman's "Ein Sof" |
And yet—and this is
the part that really moved me, that really kind of blew my mind—David pointed
to the unbroken circles between the broken colored ‘Sefirot.’ Between the colored
circles in his painting. In the broken
world of creation, in the incomplete and
fragile world of our experience, these unbroken white circles represent
in Kabbalah the formless and infinite light of “Ein Sof,” the Oneness of God
that is and was and will always be. And
this is the message of Jewish mysticism and, I think, the message of Genesis 1
as well: in our everyday lives, in our partial understandings, in our broken
communities and even in our conflicts, we have the capacity to touch the infinite. We have the eyes to see the eternal,
especially here, especially in the fragile and multifaceted world of God’s
creation. And it’s good. That’s the poet’s stunning affirmation in Genesis
1, over and over and over again. It’s
good. The light and the darkness. The skies and the seas. The greening earth and the seed-bearing
plants. The sun and the moon. And all human life beneath the great vault of
heaven. It’s all so very good.
4.
So maybe, when you
practice paying attention to your breath in the morning, before you brush your
teeth, before you get out of bed: maybe you place your hand on your chest and
you watch your breath rise up and fall gently.
And maybe you repeat the words the poet first announces in the very
first verses of Genesis, the very first verses of the Bible. “It’s good.”
“It’s very good.” “It’s good.” “It’s very good.” And whatever kind of exile you’re in these
days—whatever anxieties are fresh and painful for you, whatever inky blackness
you find yourself wading through—you watch your breath, you experience the
spirit coming and going, and you remember (because you really do know) that it’s
good. It’s very, very good.
David Friedman
mentioned one other thing I want finish with this morning. And it had to do with the Jewish prohibition
against saying the actual and revealed name of God. In some of our Christian translations of
Hebrew scripture, it’s transcribed for us as “YAHWEH” and it captures a strange
four-character sequence in Hebrew that may or may not have been pronounced in
just that way. In any case, it’s a
matter of Jewish practice not to pronounce the name, and to acknowledge
God’s vast and impenetrable mystery and resist our efforts to pin it down. To pin God down.
David Friedman, ever
the mystic, had a fascinating take on this.
He said that the Hebrew characters capture, one way or another, the
sound of the human breath. “Yahweh.” “Yahweh.”
“Yahweh.” We don’t need to say
God’s name, he said, because we’re always saying God’s name. In our breathing. In our speaking. In our sleeping. In our singing. In our collaborating. We are saying God’s name, and God is speaking
God’s mystery in us. As we breathe. As we sigh.
As we inhale life’s wonder and exhale in gratitude.
So we don’t have to
pin God down with a single name, David said, because that single name is always
on our lips—and not just Jewish lips or Christian lips either, but Muslim lips
and Hindu lips and agnostic lips and atheist lips. And not just human lips, but lizard lips and
pelican lips and golden retriever lips and Fluffy the cat lips. The single name of God is spoken—by all
creation, by the multiplicity of beings and cultures and faiths—as we live and
breathe together.
Jesus shows us that brokenness
is the way to wholeness. It’s a strange
and countercultural teaching, and it’s as Jewish as it is Christian. Brokenness is the way to wholeness. You and I take from this table today the
faith that God meets us and breathes in us precisely in our broken places,
exactly as our hearts are shattering.
You and I take from this cup today the promise that grace infuses our
brokenness with light and love and awareness.
Let’s be the people in the world who listen for the One Name of God in
every breath, in every story, in every language and culture and heart. Let’s be the people in the world who risk
opening our own hearts to new and strange truths, to expanding realities and
challenging opportunities. Let’s, you
and I, be the people in the world who move from Sunday to Monday, and from
Monday to Tuesday, and from Tuesday to eternity, with this bold affirmation on
our own lips. That it’s good. That the whole messy, beautiful, sacred,
weird and wonderful thing is good. That
it’s very, very good.
Amen.
