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.
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.
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.
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.
The great New Testament scholar Walter Wink did a lot of
thinking about this passage and its implications for nonviolence and
discipleship. And he was especially interested
in the very first example in the passage this morning. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other also…” It almost flies by
in the reading of this passage, and we’ve all heard it dozens, if not hundreds
of times. "Turn the other cheek" becomes a kind of cultural code for submissiveness. But Walter Wink suggests that
it’s not passive at all, but instead something like the key to Christianity itself. The key to Christian ethics and energy.
To begin with, Walter Wink asks, “Why the right cheek?” And he
concludes—as many others do—that Jesus is describing a backhanded slap with the
right hand, a blow that would necessarily land on the right cheek. This is a blow meant as an insult, a common
first-century way of admonishing or humiliating an inferior. Masters backhanded their slaves. Abusive husbands backhanded their wives. Violent parents backhanded their kids. And Romans often backhanded Jewish
subjects. Inevitably, the anticipated
response was cowering submission. The
backhanded slap was a strategy of domination, humiliation, control.
So pay attention to Jesus here, and his teaching, his
encouragement. His counsel to the one
struck, to the one hit, is not to submit meekly to the insult. Instead, Jesus says, I want you to turn the
other cheek, the left one, to show that you are not at all humiliated. Take the initiative, Jesus says, and
communicate to your attacker that you are not diminished. You’re not retaliating either, and this is
where Jesus embraces a practice of nonviolence.
You’re not retaliating, with a blow for a blow, with violence for
violence. Instead, you are standing up
as a free, worthy, dignified person who will not go along with intimidation,
who will not cave in to domination.
Here’s how Walter Wink himself describes what’s happening in
the text: “The superior has been given
notice that this underling is, in fact, a human being. In that world of honor and shaming, he has
been rendered impotent (that is, the violent one has been rendered impotent),
and can no longer instill shame in a subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to
dehumanize the other.” And then Walter
Wink quotes the great nonviolent practitioner Mohandus Gandhi: “The first
principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.” How about that? Go home and write that on your
doorposts: “The first principle of
nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.”
4.
I’m looking at these 59 strips of cloth this morning, and I’m
not sure I know quite what to do. We did
something very similar a year and a half ago—when forty-something young people
died at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. And we did something similar five years
ago—when two dozen children and teachers were gunned down in a Connecticut
elementary school. I’m not sure I know
what to do with all this violence. I’m
not sure I know how to confront the demons of warfare and weaponry and
vengeance that seem to dominate our culture, and our public spaces.
I’m not sure I know. But
I do know this. Jesus would not have us
sitting still. Jesus would invite us to
take note of the South African women stripping to the bone before their
Afrikaner masters. Jesus would invite us
to pay attention to Gandhi’s campaign of courage, bringing even the British
Empire to consider its madness and let its Indian subjects go. Jesus would insist that we too risk our
privilege, that we too risk our safety, that we too risk our comforts, to
confront the tycoons of gun manufacturing, the madmen of the NRA, and their
congressional lackeys. To reveal their
politics for what they are: un-democratic, unhealthy, and un-American. Get creative, Jesus would say to us. Get creative!
And don’t back down.
And I wonder if Jesus would sound something like this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth.’ You have heard that
it was said, ‘Guns and firepower make you safe in the streets.’ You have heard that it was said, ‘Carry
mighty weapons, loaded for violence, and fight fear with fear.’ You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’
“But I say to you, ‘Love and only love makes you safe in the
streets.’ And I say to you, ‘Fight fear
with courage, fight violence with imagination, fight ignorance with
justice.’ And I say to you, ‘Look your
adversary in the eye. Find some reason
to hope in his future and yours.’ And I
say to you, ‘Believe in the possibility of conversion. Believe in the promise of peace. Believe in the gospel of love.’”
The options for us now often seem to be flight or fright. We flee for the hills or we cower in
fear. The NRA is brutal and mighty and
strong. And the NRA plays the "flight or fright" game to perfection. Violence is fused, in so many
ways, to American culture and entertainment and imagination. We’re tempted to flee for the hills or cower
in fear. But Jesus is the third
way. Jesus is the way of hopefulness,
courage and action. We who call ourselves
disciples do not flee for the hills. And
we do not cower in fear. We choose our
own humanity. We choose to believe in
the possibility of conversion. We choose
a future of justice and love. For little Milo and his big sister Jade. For my three daughters and your sons and daughters too. We choose a future of justice and love.
Amen.
