Honoring God by Honoring Others

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Meth Israel in Houston.
I'm traveling this week, and while I'm away, I'm attending
a conference for the Central Conference of American Rabbis the CCAAR.
At that conference and in the service that gathered almost
five hundred colleagues, I was installed as president of their

(00:23):
Board of Trustees. It is a two year term. It's
a great honor, yes, and filled with obligations to serve
our colleagues across the country and in fact across the world.
Twenty three hundred reform rabbis are members of the Central
Conference of American Rabbis. What do we do? We help

(00:44):
each other to become the best reform rabbis that we
can be. Rabbis who serve in many places and in
many ways. Yes, in synagogues, but also in Hillel's chaplaincies, academia, organizations,
even entrepreneurial rabbis, And where we serve, we help to

(01:04):
prepare them to serve their communities and organizations so that
reform Judaism thrives. That's the crux of our mission statement.
And so in annual gatherings but also in frequent gatherings
in between, and with professional development courses, continuing a rabbinic education,
and opportunities for well being in support, we feel better

(01:28):
prepared to serve our congregations and communities wherever we serve,
during the best of times and the worst of times.
I would admit that many of our colleagues believe that
these are fraught times, not as predictable, not as familiar,
not as easy as other periods when all of us

(01:51):
lived and served in the roles that we do. But
because these times are less familiar and more unpredictable day
to day here in America across the seas, then we
have to spend special and extra time preparing for these
times in particular, so how did we begin. One of

(02:11):
the focuses that I shared with our colleagues on Monday
last week was to let them know that the Torah
portion we were reading at the very end of the
Book of Exodus, called Piku Day, includes the building of
the mish Khan, the tabernacle, the place where God's presence
would be found by all the people of Israel as

(02:33):
they made their way continued their trek through the wilderness journey,
and there Moses received all the instructions from God and
how to build that tabernacle, and buttsal Al and his
assistant to Holyab also were aware of what needed to
be done. But though God only commanded Moses directly about

(02:54):
what needed to be brought to be built and to
be accomplished to have a proper mishka on a proper tabernacle,
we were very clear that Bitzalel was also aware of
what needed to be done. So though Bitzalel didn't have
the owner's manuals, so to speak, or the instruction booklet
in front of him to read exactly as Moses received

(03:18):
the instruction, Butzalel was well aware of how to get
it done, and everyone in the community was invited to
participate in bringing, in, building, constructing, and affecting the outcome
that would be something of pride of joy and a
central holy place where they would find God's presence. Nowhere

(03:42):
in the text or elsewhere is it found that anybody
who brought was dealt with or considered to be less
than inferior, unable or unwelcome to offer what they had.
Everybody who understood the instruction as Bitsale did, did just
as Moses instructed, as if they had heard it firsthand,

(04:06):
and no one was treated with guile or deceit or contempt.
Everyone was welcome, and that's what helped to create the
boundary around the community that was being formed in that
time and place. So as we learned from the Tora abortion,
we also learn about ourselves that in aiming to do

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for the community, aiming to build something that we can
surround ourselves around and find in the center of our hopes,
we find God's presence, Yes, and Torah, our sacred text,
and a community that lent hand and heart and mission
to that which would guide us into the future that

(04:50):
was unknown for them, just as our future is unknown
to us, and likewise we haven't heard directly from God
about what to do. We have the Torah, which, in
reform Judaism, we believe was inspired by God, written by
human beings, and passed down through the generations for millennia

(05:14):
through interpretations, rabbinic stories, moral outcomes, so that we can
understand the best of our ability all that God intended
to say to Moses, and that we would understand too,
just as it was between God and Moses and Moses
and Bitsalel, and we who live today are the Israelite people,

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the Hebrew people, the Jewish people, who continue to build
and create community so that we can not only walk
behind God's presence, but be accompanied by God's presence into
a future that is still unknown. And while any future
is always unknown, it seems to me and to many

(05:56):
people that I hear from and talk to, that future
that we're facing together as Jews, Christians, Muslims, and many
other faith traditions or no faith traditions, is one that
is simply less familiar, a little more conservative, a little
more didactic, and certainly more concerning to those who just

(06:17):
want familiarity to have stable time, stable ground to lean on.
But if we have to accommodate ourselves to change, or
be a part of a democratic process that also participates
in change, then we need to know that we are
all a part of the same effort to do something good.
We don't all have to agree, but we do have

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to agree that we'll bring our best selves for our
own sake and for the sake of people who are
touched by our own lives. So who are we in
that conference last week among rabbis? I identify that many
of us look like friends to each other, but There
are parts of our community, members of our congregations, organizations, neighborhoods,

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and the world who have been recently marginalized, exiled, ostracized,
put down, and sometimes even physically harmed within the Reform
Jewish community. That is unacceptable. Within the Reform Jewish community,
we identify that first, we are all created in God's image,

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and second, who are we to judge what God has created?
It might look different than you or I, it might
seem strange to us, unfamiliar as we use words and
pronouns and descriptions that we've never heard before and people
ask us to use, But that in itself is no

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different than any other challenge or obstacle that we seem
to be facing in the future that we're confronting. But
it's our obligation, first between people to see that all
people were created in God's image, and if God created
that human being, then it's our duty to honor that
human being in order to bring honor to God. To

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judge another human being as if it weren't created by God,
or to demean, marginalize, ostracized, or God forbid harm that
individual would be to desecrate God's name and God's creative handiwork.
There is in fact a blessing that says, praise you, God,
ruler of the universe, who creates a variety of creations.

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It helps us to be aware that out of God's
creative handiwork come things that look familiar and sometimes things
that don't. Too often in the past we use that
blessing and that lesson to look around the world and
see things that were not human, bugs, creatures, animals, see

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creatures that really were different than we were, and yet
we acknowledged them and appreciated them as one of God's
act of creation too. All the more so we should
do for human beings. They have two eyes, a nose,
a mouth, a heart, and soul, and certainly feelings and
aspirations and having conversations at the conferences I did with

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people who I didn't know, but I knew that they
were colleagues. They were Rabbis but lived in a different
community than I did. Some were gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans queer,
as they identified themselves. What I heard from them when
I spoke with them were stories of hope and resilience,
aspirations in the Rabbonic world. To make a difference with

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the very same sacred texts that I studied that I
liked to teach and live by, and they wanted to
bring honor to God by doing so well. It really
meant that we had so much more in common than
I previously thought. I always expected, but now I had
evidence and proof. They want for themselves is what I

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want for myself, and ultimately what we want for each other.
And so the conference continued for three and a half days,
where there was greater peace, greater community, and greater opportunity
for new friendship between everybody there. It is obviously a
conference and obviously a model or ideal so that when

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we break and go back to our own communities, we
face familiar challenges and struggles, but perhaps with greater aspiration,
greater self worth to know that even as we see ourselves,
we might also see others and the humanity created in them,
and that begins to be an initial first step, not

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only for those who bear witness to sacred texts like Torah,
but also for you. I would challenge you to think
about who are you created in God's image? What gifts, talents,
aspirations do you have? Do you think you're that different
than your neighbor or someone that you haven't given the

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time of day two, or someone who you turn your
back to because that person is different than you. That
person hurts, that person celebrates. That person has aspirations too.
To say, hello, where did you come from, what do
your work? Do you do? What are your hopes for

(11:30):
your family in the future. Generally deliver answers that don't
sound strange or unfamiliar to us at all, and so
at home, especially with members of the family who may
be LGBTQ or not. They might just have different interest
than you, opinions than you, aspirations than you take interest listen,

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and when you do, without judgment. You don't have to
say good for you, because good is a judgment. You
don't have to say I'm so happy for you because
I think it's right too. That's a judgment. But if
you can say I'm so glad that you found what's
important to you and I support you in your effort,

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that's not a judgment. That's an affirmation, and it helps
the person that you speak to, whether a member the family,
or your workforce, or your neighborhood or just a stranger
in your company. Is a way of saying I find
you interesting and talking to me in this safe place

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is a place you don't have to be afraid. Now,
that's a way of honoring God and all of God's creations.
I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston.
To listen again or to share this message, you can
find it at my podcast called Heart to Heart with
Rabbi David Lyon at Sonny ninety nine dot com, are

(12:57):
on the iHeartRadio app. I'm still traveling and will return
to my home in Houston and congregation shortly. But the
privilege to be the President of the CCARE is not
only to reflect and to teach what is important to
us as a convention and a conference of reform rabbis,
but also to live up to the expectations, the ethics,

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and the aspirations that all of us share, to be
valued for what we hold dear, to teach what we
have in our heart, and to help others see for
themselves what they hold dear and what is in their hearts,
be they Jewish or Christian, or Muslims, seek Hindo, or

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just struggling with faith. This is an opportunity and a
time apart from all the challenges we face in the world,
to discover our own humanity in others, and to be
sure that at the end of the day that if
we've made a decision, we've spoken some words, or shifted
our orientation, if it brings on to God and the

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world that God created, then we can know that we're
in mostly the right place. And then we can lay
our head down on the pillow and know that we've
made a difference. We've created some peace and less strife,
and that ultimately is what all of us need. Because
the world is so complex and frustrating. Let's take it

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one day at a time and be sure that when
that day ends we've done our very best for ourselves
and for others, then we'll have the strength and the
fortitude to take on yet another day. So please find
within yourself a way to hear, to listen and remember
the word, to honor, to honor God, and to honor

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what God has created in you and in me. Thank
you for joining me today. I look forward to being
with you again next time.