Sermon #2 – Creating the First Ripple
“Drop a pebble in the water:
just a splash, and it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on,
Spreading, spreading from the center,
flowing on out to the sea.
And there is no way of telling
where the end is going to be.”
Again, I want to reiterate something I said last night, which is that I am reclaiming this word. I don’t want you to think of “Pride cometh before the fall” or Pride as one of the seven deadly sins. But rather the ability to be “proud of our own accomplishments,” or “feel a great sense of pride in our congregation.” One of our ancient books, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, contemporary with some of the later books of the Hebrew Bible, though it did not make it into the official canon, teaches us the following lesson:
“My son, in all modesty, keep your self-respect and value yourself at your true worth. Who will speak up for a man who is his own enemy? Or respect one who disparages himself?”
“Value yourself.” “Do not be your own enemy.” These are essential lessons for us to learn. And so I would like to move now from our initial pebble - the word “Pride” - to the first rippling circle: Pride in oneself.
I begin here because I think that in some ways it is the most difficult, but also the most essential. How can we reach out to other people, volunteer in our congregation, offer support and comfort to someone else; if we are experiencing inner turmoil? We begin inside, striving and struggling to understand ourselves better, and only then do we turn outwards to help those around us.
Now this is of course the ideal. But realistically it’s not at all easy. And I certainly do NOT mean to imply that if you’ve got any unresolved issues, we don’t want you offering any help in the community! That’s not it at all. It’s just that you will function better, with more happiness and fulfillment, and healthier, if you’re moving towards developing a sense of pride in yourself.
Let’s take a look at our Biblical models. Our Torah portion begins with Abraham and Sarah having a child despite being well beyond child-bearing years. Sarah calls her son “Isaac,” “Yitzchak,” which comes from the word for “laughter,” “Tzechok.” She exclaims that, “God has brought me laughter. Everyone who hears will laugh with me.” But as you know about me, and the way I study Torah, I cannot accept the words at simple face value; especially when you consider how this story plays out, the surrounding context of her statement. She says, “Everyone will laugh with me,” but the Hebrew is, “Yitzchak-Li.” It’s unclear whether she is saying that everyone will laugh “with me”.... or “at me.” Perhaps she is really wondering, “Are they laughing at me? The old woman with an infant?” She turns her own embarrassment and insecurity on her maidservant, Hagar, and has her thrown out and left for dead in the wilderness.
It is wishful thinking to say that Sarah felt nothing but great pride in herself, and in her accomplishments. Perhaps she felt elation as well, but she does project a lot of negativity onto Hagar, and I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that it’s because she is harboring unresolved issues with herself.
Hagar, on the other hand, acts the heroine in our story, because she does the opposite. She is thrown out into the desert, spurned by her family, yet when death seems immanent, her only comment is, “Let me not look as the child dies.” No cursing Abraham and Sarah, no yelling at God. I don’t mean to say it is a moment of pride or self-confidence, but she DOES take responsibility for her predicament. She owns the moment and doesn’t cast blame on others.
The Biblical characters are simply older examples of human behavior; the same behavior we see in others... and in ourselves. Take a moment to acknowledge what a little bit of introspection, or a healthy dose of therapy, might have done for the people in the Torah. What about for all of us?
For some reason, we imagine that we understand ourselves well. “I’m me, right? I’ve lived with myself for every second of every day, how could anyone understand what I’m going through better than... ME???” But that is often a serious misconception. We don’t know how traumatic situations have affected us, we don’t always remember everything that has happened to us. If you have a hard time celebrating your own successes, or taking credit for things you genuinely did well, there’s a reason why that’s happening. And it’s a reason worth exploring. And when we understand our own behaviors better, the results can be quite dramatic.
So how do we begin? Let me take a page out of [the congregation’s past president] David Pollack’s playbook, and answer those questions with a story:
There once was a rabbi who said to his students: “we are as far from where God wants us to be as East is from West”? And then he said to them: “By the way, just how far is it from east to west? One of his students raised his hand and said: “11 thousand miles. I just heard that on NPR.” The rabbi said, “no, that is wrong.” Another student raised his hand and said: “25 thousand miles. That’s the circumference of the world.” The rabbi said, “no, that is wrong.” A 3rd student said, “6 thousand miles,” the rabbi said, “no, that is wrong.” The distance from east to west is one step. You are facing east, you take one step and turn around and now you are facing west. In the same way, teshuvah is not a change in personality, teshuvah is a change in direction.
In our Machzor, we read, “Hashiveinu Adonai Eilecha ve-nashuva,” which means, “Bring us closer to you, God, and we will turn around.” Change our orientation so that our growth in the coming year will be a growth towards you and not a growth in the opposite direction.
Speaking of the liturgy in our Machzor, I actually think the way our rabbis phrased the prayers speaks to my point as well. Some of our prayers use communal language:
“Elokeinu Melech Ha-olam,” “OUR God, King of the Universe”
“Aleinu Leshabeach L’adon Ha-kol,” “WE rise to OUR duty to praise the Master of all.”
And even the one I just quoted, “Hashiveinu... Ve-nashuva,” “Bring us closer to you, and we will turn around.”
But other prayers speak as individuals. Even in this room, as we all stand or sit together in communal prayer, we are also individuals. We take individual responsibility for our actions, and we each have the opportunity to speak to God. You need to pray for YOUR self. If you think I’m standing up here, in my personal Amidah, with my eyes closed, my tallit over my head, and speaking on YOUR behalf... well, I hate to break it to you, but... Many of our prayers use 1st person language:
“Adonai, Sefatai Tiftach, U’fi Yagid Tehilatecha,” “MY God, open up MY lips, and MY mouth will proclaim your glory.”
The prayer Cantor Friedrich will be teaching you later (with the melody he composed!), “Elokai, Netzor Leshoni Mei-ra,” “MY God, keep MY tongue from evil.”
And speaking of Cantor Friedrich, after my sermon, he will move to the center of the Sanctuary, and sing the Hineni prayer, with its beautiful liturgy about the humility of a Cantor singing on behalf of the congregation, and leading us all through these High Holiday services. So, yes, there are parts of the service where we pray FOR one another, but even THAT prayer is composed in the 1st person, singular; he is singing about himself.
So our liturgy urges us to contemplate our own situation. It’s not just about the communal, it’s about the individual as well. Where are you right now? What were you doing before you came here, what are you doing after you leave, and how do YOU feel about YOURSELF at this moment?
And I’ll push you once again: What will it take for you to feel a little more pride in yourself? What are the external factors that will bring about an internal shift, for you? Or perhaps put in another way, what is the pebble - not a boulder or a monolith, not a major, life-altering decision… just a pebble - that is going to start your own rippling effect?
Returning back to our original metaphor, it’s amazing to me how significant this phenomenon of the rippling circles truly is. The idea that one behavior or action has countless effects on other people, situations, and systems, sometimes totally unrelated to the starting point - this concept exists in economics, education, sociology, computer science, and in understanding charitable giving; all of them use the image of the circles expanding out from one, central point.
The main question is: How do you begin the ripple? You begin it by acknowledging that you can change, that there are changes that need to happen. Could Sarah admit that her grievances with Hagar were really just a symptom of a larger problem? Would she have been willing to change? In our own lives, do we act more like Sarah, projecting our frustrations onto others… or like Hagar, owning our own moments, whatever they may be?
Over these High Holidays, I will be delivering several more sermons on feeling a sense of pride. But it begins here, it begins for me by understanding myself, and taking greater pride in what I am able to achieve, and what I have achieved. That is a big part of Teshuva, of affecting a transformation inside each one of us.
If you can drop that pebble of Teshuva, of turning around and making a change inside yourself, there is truly, as James Foley wrote in his poem, no telling where the end is going to be.
Shana Tovah!
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