Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon (5774): Grace

Erev RH Sermon: Grace

It all began with a storm. Traveling as a lowly sailor in the North Atlantic in March 1748, John Newton and his fellow crewmates entered an incredibly violent squall. Newton was known his harsh tongue and obscene jests, but was suddenly speechless as he watched a wave crash onto the deck of his ship. The water pushed swiftly over the deck and washed away a fellow crewmate in the exact spot that Newton had been standing only a moment before. Knowing full well that God owed him nothing, Newton prayed. Banding together, Newton and his crew arrived on the shores of Ireland bearing the scars and exhaustion of their journey.

Years later, Newton would reflect on this near-death journey and pen one of the most indelible religious hymns in the history of the Western World:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a retch like me
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

In one simple stanza, Newton would summarize, near perfectly one of the most fundamental theological ideas of the western world, that of grace.

The word Grace may sounds foreign to many of us. To many of our ears it sounds Christian. Since the idea of Grace appears so centrally in numerous places throughout the New Testament, many in the Jewish community assume it’s not native to our tradition as well. However, that notion could not be further from the truth. The concept of Grace, known by the Hebrew word chen, is an integral part of the Jewish faith and is wrapped up in nearly every facet of Jewish life, especially the High Holy Days.

So what is Grace? Grace is act of God loving us unconditionally simply because we exist, not because we have earned God’s love.

With grace, instead of asking for God’s love and attention because we deserve it, we ask for God’s love in spite of the fact that we don’t. We are nothing. We are lost. We are blind, but though we are retches, in spite of our failings, save us anyway.

The notion of grace is woven throughout the tapestry our High Holy Day prayers. It’s possible to go through the prayer book and find page after page of these examples, but I’m only going to provide one tonight.

In perhaps the most famous prayer of our High Holy Days season, the Avinu Malcheinu, we communally ask God to look at us with grace. The prayer begins:

Avinu Malkeinu, Choneinu V'aneinu, ki ein banu ma'asim.
Our father, our king, Choneinu, show us grace and answer us, for we are nothing.

Then as one would expect, the prayer continues, imploring God to love us anyway:

Assei imanu ts'dakah vachesed, vehoshiyeinu
Yet in spite of our nothingness, provide us with charity and kindness and save us!

When you think about it, Avinu Malkeinu, the grace contained therein, is counter to much of what most of us think about Judaism because it defies our sense of justice. Especially today, justice is the primary way we think. We want to know our actions matter. We want good to be rewarded and evil to be punished. Unconditional love is a nice idea, but then what’s the point of being good.

The tension inherent between grace and justice and justice is real and it is deeply rooted in Judaism. It appears perhaps the most pronounced in a story we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon.

Like Newton’s story, this story too begins with a storm. Traveling as a lowly sailor on route to the ancient city of Tarshish, the prophet Jonah is fleeing God. God has told him to travel up to the Assyrian capital, Nineveh and to tell its inhabitants to repent. Ninevah is known as a hotbed of immorality and God wants to give them a chance to escape destruction.

Rather than listening to God, Jonah has fled, finding himself in the middle of the Mediterranean when a storm begins. The storm is his fault. God is punishing him for running away. So Jonah asks his crewmates to throw him overboard. They heed his command, the storm stops and Jonah is immediately swallowed by a fish

Sitting in the belly of the fish, Jonah could have acknowledge his flaws and appealed to God’s grace. Instead, he appeals to God’s justice. He recites a poem extolling all his virtues as proof for why God should save him from the belly of the fish. And as he hoped God hears these arguments and commands the fish to spit out Jonah onto dry land.

NOW Jonah knows that God listens to reason. He’s made a good case for himself and God has heeded. I deserved salvation, he thinks, and I got it! So naturally, when Jonah dusts himself off and waltzes into Ninevah to tell of their destruction he expects their imminent demise. There is simply no way, he thinks, that these inhabitants can come up with a compelling argument for why they should be forgiven when their past is littered with so much immorality.

Yet, when Jonah confronts them, they listen to him. But rather than imploring God with argument after argument for their salvation, they simply repent, putting on ashes and sackcloth and fasting. Everyone is involved from their king to their livestock. God sees their actions and turns and relents. God does not bring on the destruction he had threatened.

When Jonah learns of God’s decision he becomes very angry. For Jonah the world needs to follow certain rules. Not everyone deserves forgiveness. He tells God, “I ran away to Tarshish because I heard a rumor you are el chanun v’rachum, a God of grace and compassion. I’d rather die than watch an underserving people like Nineveh be saved.”

What Jonah wants is a good answer to his question, a simple explanation for why God chose to save Nineveh. But grace does not work that way. Instead the story ends with a question, the only book in the Bible to do so: “Why shouldn’t I have pity on Nineveh, a great city with more than 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left hand, and so many cattle as well!”

This debate, between Jonah’s conception of Justice and God’s understanding of Grace is still alive today. Clearly, there are times in our lives that we need to hold fast to an understanding of reward and punishment. Criminals must be tried. Our children must be disciplined. Hard workers deserve raises, lazy ones should be fired. Yet, all too often, perhaps because it makes the most sense to us rationally, we fail to consider the roll of grace in the world and how we can be a part of it.

Our ancient ancestors implored us to “walk in God’s ways,” to imitate God’s action and to make them our own. If that is true, how can the High Holy Days, a season rich with God’s grace, inspire us to act, not just with justice, but with more chen, more grace in our lives? In truth, many of us already do.

This year, I’ve watched as many of my closest friends became parents for the first time. For those who have reached this stage of life, it’s a very strange feeling. My friends, many of whom I had not seen as parental in the least become fountains of altruism as they held their baby in their arms. There’s an old Yiddish proverb that says “about one’s children, every parent is blind.” This saying holds true for many of them. Caring for children is difficult by any standard of measure. A newborn is less a person than an eating, sleeping, and pooping machine. Yet, in spite of the hard work and the lack of independence, in spite of the fact that one’s child has done nothing to earn their affection, new parents love their children. Parenting a baby is a disciple steeped in grace.

Grace however, does not end when we put away the cradle. This year has also been a year of tremendous public altruism. I’ve never been more proud of our community than I was after Hurricane Sandy. In the aftermath of the storm, our community came together. We gathered supplies, made sandwiches and canvassed houses. We put out an emergency call for 600 eggs and received 6,000. People brought with them open spirits and tenacity of heart, and with a combination of love and passion cared for strangers living only a few miles away.

The Torah commands us, “v’ahavtah et hager” (Dt. 10:19), to love the stranger. If taken seriously, this is an incredibly difficult love to achieve. It’s easy to love our friends; we know so much about them. Yet, to love a stranger means to love them before we know their virtues. Those who walked into darkened buildings, who brought flashlights to the elderly and food to the hungry performed acts of love to those who did nothing to earn their love. Those effected did nothing to deserve their care, but in spite of that many of you, nonetheless acted with compassion. Caring for the stranger, caring for these strangers in the storms aftermath was the truest embodiment of grace one can perform.

But one doesn’t need have children or respond to a crisis to carry himself with grace. This is the season for it. The High Holy Day season is the season for forgiveness. As a Rabbi, I’ve watched too many people hold onto anger. We have been hurt, so we hold hot coals in our hands waiting to throw them at another person, all the meantime burning our palms in the process. At times resentment and anger are often warranted. Brothers spit vitriol. Spouses undercut one another. Children act vindictively to their parent. Friends become peddlers in one another’s gossip. Often we feel that those who hurt us the most do not deserve our love and forgiveness. We feel just in holding on to our pain. Yet, in spite of this fact, many forgive. Every act of forgiveness, when we have evidence to do otherwise is an act of grace.

Gracious forgiveness is an old phenomenon beginning with the story of Jacob and Esau. The scene is set 3500 years ago. Jacob has incited his brother’s wrath after stealing his birthright and blessing. To ensure his survival, his parents send him away to Haran to find a wife. Flash forward. It’s nearly a generation later and the two are meeting for the first time. During this encounter, one filled with tears and deep embracing, Jacob asks his brother for grace. You have no reason to forgive me for all the pain I’ve caused you in the past, he intimates, it would be just to punish me, but in spite of that if I have found grace in your eyes, accept my forgiveness anyways. Esau does. Then Jacob says something that has reverberated through the generations:

God has dwelt graciously with me, giving me a family and riches when I did not deserve them. And seeing you act with grace, forgiving me when you could have done otherwise, is like seeing the face of God.

Over our lives, we are perpetually given the opportunity to carry ourselves with the same grace, the same spirit of chen that is alive in our ancient ancestors’ conception of God. And like Esau, every time we do this, we become a little more like God, bringing the divine attribute of grace into the public realm. For this reason, as the song suggests, grace is truly amazing. It defies our expectations. We could have behaved otherwise. In a world of justice, living with grace embraces a world of love. In a society of proof, living with grace challenges us to live lives of acceptance. When others ask why, grace challenges us to ask why not?

My challenge for you is to let this High Holy Day season be a season of grace. Forgive faster. Love deeper. Appeal to God to love you in spite of your flaws. Then turn around and do the same to those you meet. Much of the world functions with a theology justice. Like Jonah they seek reasons for our action. But that doesn’t mean that it’s always right for you. See the world, see your neighbors, see your family, with all their flaws, baggage, and defaults, and in spite of these things…love them anyway.