Repairing the World is Simpler than We Thought

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation Meth Israel in Houston. It is this week that
we turned to the Torah and we learn about a
very famous story in a portion called Pinkas or Phineas
in English. It's about the story of Balach and Balam,

(00:21):
and there just as a reminder. The story of Balam
and Balach, found in the Book of Numbers, centers around
a Moabai king Balach, who sought to have the prophet
Balam curse the Israelites who are encamped near by. Despite
all of Balakh's intentions and Balaam's initial willingness, God intervened,

(00:43):
causing Balam to bless the Israelites instead. As a result,
the prophet Micah said to the Israelites, remember what Balac,
king of Moab, plotted against you, and how Balam responded
to him, and you will recognize the gracious acts of
the Lord. And so Balach all of his plans were thwarted.

(01:09):
Balam could not curse the Israelites at Balach had commanded
him to do. And these gracious acts were performed and
thwarted by God in favor of the Israelites. And so
Micah comes to the Israelites and says, basically, how will
you acknowledge them? Perhaps there's a way to express your gratitude,

(01:32):
seeing that their safe journey in the past and now
in Judah could be due to God's handiwork. Micah addressed
the Israelites response with increasingly powerful questions, with what shall
I approach the Lord? Do homage to God on High?
In simple terms, this great God, ruler of the universe.

(01:56):
How can I begin to express my thanks? I approach
him with burnt offerings? Would the Lord be pleased with
thousands of rams, with myriads of streams of oil? Should
I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit
of my body for my own sin. Such profound and
biblically sounding questions, but filled with opportunities to do something extraordinary.

(02:22):
Perhaps the people can't even begin to think about doing.
But in effect, Micah wanted to say, God served you well,
how now will he give thanks to God? So Micah
built this literary tension, and then he delivered the punch,
the familiar verse. It has been told you, o mortal,

(02:45):
what is good and what the eternal requires of you?
Only this to do justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly
with God. Now these weres are familiar to so many
of us. To do justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly.

(03:05):
These are words even inscribed on a wall in my synagogue,
and perhaps inscribed on walls in your holy place too.
Talkt to you, learned by you, perhaps even lived by you.
The brilliance of Micah's contribution to Israelite life led to
an unprecedented and enrich new approach to serving God. Now

(03:27):
the unblemish deed reflected it and done through justice, mercy,
and humility was as important as the unblemished sacrifice. Remember
that the initial question was what can we bring? What
can we do? And in ancient time sacrifices were brought
to express many different things to God, gratitude, thanksgiving, humility, atonement.

(03:53):
But in this way, Micah says, through justice, mercy, and
walking humbly, our deeds are replaced sing sacrifice. The unblemish deed,
now it's as important as the unblemish sacrifice. Amazing, their
salvation would be found in deeds of social justice rather

(04:14):
than sacrifices. Timeless and timely justice, mercy, and humility would
be enough to assuage God's wrath and earn God's love
all the way from Micah and down to us today. Justice, mercy,
and humility and still are still guidepost for us what

(04:36):
to do and how to be. But even before we
arrive at these subjects, we learn from the verbs that
precede them, Do love walk. These are the words of
prompted prophets, sages, rabbis, and advocates throughout history to make
a difference, and a profound one at that. They understood

(04:58):
that nothing short of these acts would ever accomplish what
was at stake, namely, justice, mercy, and humility. As God
commanded them, Prayer and faith would not suffice. How many
times in our own day have we been drawn to
stand and act individual through prayer. It does satisfy a

(05:21):
certain part of us to express our soul, to link
ours with others and with the hope that God would
prevail and offer help and relief from our suffering. But
we know that such prayers are empty if they aren't
followed by deeds. It might be inspired by those prayers

(05:41):
not to say that prayer is nothing, but it is
nothing if it doesn't inspire us also to act in
the interest of what those prayers express if we pray
for courage, if we pray for strength, then let's act
with courage. Let's act with strength, perhaps the kind of
cur Ursian strength we never knew that we had, but

(06:03):
is already in us and needs activation, needs inspiration from
our relationship to God, who inspires us and moves us
to do what we must. In our own complex world
of intense anti Semitism, for example, stretching across the world,
strained race relations at home, and deep partisip ship in

(06:25):
our nation, we can't expect to be rid of them
with prayer alone, and as anti Semitism rages, it is
always an indication of where our communities are. If we
tolerate anti Semitism, it bleeds into other forms of bigotry

(06:45):
and hatred intolerance, and we see it happening all around us.
Vigils and prayer rallies do have their place, but unless
we can translate words into actions and intentional acts of
person deeds, then it will be for naught, and we
have plenty of examples to see it. In our own

(07:06):
Jewish community local in Houston, we used to gather fairly
often after the only suffering that we all endured were shootings.
Bad as they were, there wasn't much else beyond them
that caused us to gather as a community. But when
there was a mass shooting in the past, very often

(07:27):
the Jewish community and other faith communities too gathered where
they were for a vigil to pray, so that actions
could replace these demonic deeds that took such innocent lives.
But eventually we realized that these vigils were just visuals.
They were just prayers, and rather than gather and spend

(07:47):
the time and the money and the resources to put
together these visuals that gathered sometimes fifty or one hundred
or two hundred people, better to communicate by email and
urge people to do something about it. Justice, mercy, love, humility.
These were the bedrock of the actions that we ultimately

(08:10):
chose to do. The issues that tear apart our cities
and threaten all of us will be best addressed by
serious leaders who are willing and able to face these
crises squarely and honestly. And those leaders might be us personally.
It begins at home. It might be leaders that we

(08:30):
inspire through our actions and expectations to do something on
behalf of our towns and cities and our nation. They
don't have to seek God's input, and they don't have
to wait for God's call to them before they act. Yet. Rather,
they and we have already been told what is good

(08:50):
and what God requires of us. It is only this
to do justly, love, mercy, and welcomely with your God.
Judaism teaches that if one's wisdom is greater than one's deeds,
then one's wisdom will not endure. But if one's deeds
are greater than one's wisdom, then one's wisdom will endure.

(09:14):
And if wisdom is important to you and to us,
then we realize that it's all about one's deeds. It
isn't enough to write an op ed. It isn't enough
to write a book or a commentary. It is enough
to give a speech or even to utter a prayer.
It really is all about our deeds. And if we
do something good that makes a positive difference, that transforms

(09:38):
the world around us the way it ought to be,
then we can know that not only is it a
reflection of our wisdom, that our wisdom will grow and deepen,
it will inspire others because it leads us to do
something important about the circumstances that we're facing. Knowing the
difference marks a starting point from which all reasonable people

(10:01):
can work together to do, to love, and to walk.
The question that remains for us is what will we
do to make a difference. How will we demonstrate love?
And how will we model humility before God? It might
actually begin there, because if we don't feel humble before God,

(10:25):
but rather arrogant in our own presence and larger than God,
God's self, then we would have a huge problem trying
to arrive at a place where we understand what justice
can be and certainly what mercy always is. So a
little bit of humility, but not to be humiliated. Rather,

(10:46):
humility means in Hebrew, seem soon. It's a contraction of
the ego. It's a restraining of our expectations, our usual
reactions to events, to pause, especially in these times, and
to ask ourselves, is it what these times call for?

(11:07):
Is there a room to lift people up who can't
lift themselves up? Are we living in such a time
when vulnerability is so rampant that we have to step
in and bring people along. Yes, there are always people
on the fringes who do heinous things, or people who
are so idle that they make no impact whatsoever, not

(11:30):
even for their own sake. But in the reasonable middle,
which is huge and large, there are people who can
be moved, inspired and motivated to appreciate that in God's presence,
in the image in which they are created. There's so
much for us to do and to be as we
continue to grow and learn and mature. It really does

(11:54):
begin in childhood. But what's more, it continues as we
grow to be adults, and we have to shake off,
as it were, or break away from our childhood tendencies,
or maybe even from lessons that we learned in the
past from those who led us astray, to find our
own footing, to find our own thinking, and to make

(12:15):
that thinking a part of the larger world in which
others who join it's in a reasonable way can accomplish
what needs to be done. But even those who consider
themselves to be reasonable may still be demonizing Jews or
immigrants or other vulnerable or minority communities. To demonize is

(12:35):
never right. To listen, to understand, and to find the
reasonable center. In those communities, too, are places where we
can link like minded people to accomplish so much more.
The questions that I ask are important, and there may
be more that you want to ask yourself and your family,

(12:57):
your coworkers and community. The enduring life lesson of Micah
is important to learn. It's even more important to model
and to teach. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth
Israel in Houston. To listen again or to share this message,
please find it on podcast called Heart to Heart with
Rabbi David Lyon. You can find it at Sunny ninety

(13:19):
nine dot com on the iHeartRadio app. These are crucial times,
and as we wake up in the morning and find
the news is constantly changing one way and then the other,
and sometimes unpredictably, we need to find a steady ground,
in a steady way to approach the week to come

(13:40):
and to approach the issues that we must address. We
can't do it alone. We have to do it in
company with others who will join us. I hope it's
those people who understand what Micah urged so long ago
and whose words still resonate with us today. To do justice,
to love, mercy, and to walk humbly with God. It's

(14:02):
a good beginning. It will never fail us if we
exercise some humility. It's already a strong start that can
lead us to appreciate the people who are around us,
who we might not even know, but we must serve,
to protect, and to serve in meaningful ways that lift
up humanity and help us to face our God, knowing

(14:25):
that we've done the very best that we can, not
always all that we can, but in our effort to try,
we've made a very positive difference in a time and
place that needs it so much. So, as the week unfold,
do your best to answer the questions, what positive difference
can you make? How can you love? How can you

(14:45):
do justice? And where can you walk? Humbly thank you
for joining me to day. I look forward to being
with you again next time.