JOURNEYS NEAR AND FAR
PART FOUR

THE REALITY JOURNEY


A Sermon for Atonement Day 5764
October 6, 2003






Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana


So, do you enjoy Reality T.V.? Go ahead, don't be embarrassed. Millions of households watch it. Reality television shows like "Survivor" I and II and "Temptation Island have been tremendous hits. There are even gay reality shows. There was even a "Restaurant" reality show! Something to feed every curiosity! They all have one thing in common: no script! Camera crews and producers-yes. But the actors are on their own-no cues, no second takes, no rewrites. And the ultimate big winner? Well, supposedly the winner will be the one who is the most fiercely self-reliant and independent of the contestants.

Though this sounds like a classic Darwinian survival of the fittest saga, simply made small to fit your television screen. I'm not so sure. What at first appears to be a brutal test of individual survival turns out to be much more of an exercise in leadership and collaboration. Have you noticed that? Remember way back in Season One of "Survivor," how the infamous Richard Hatch won the big prize, but not because he was the toughest loner. Richard was the winner because he was a skilled fisherman and Sue and Kelly and Rudy were more than happy to eat the fish he was able to catch, so they voted for him.

Hence the unreality about Reality Television. It's based on a myth that the most "real" of us are those who are tough enough to survive on their own, and genuine relationships are the ones that are strong enough to endure even the most cavalier mistreatment. Wrong in both instances!

You and I need support to make it through the day. And so do our relationships. As I see it, any such periods of total human self reliance afforded by the human life cycle represent very brief and temporary chapters. There is a precious, brief interval between our "Pampers" and our "Depends," let's put it that way. We rely upon on others far more than we are aware or want to acknowledge. That's just how it is.

Well, Yom Kippur is our Jewish Reality Occasion. No, you won't find anyone being voted off of the bema this morning, I hope. No one will be "exiled" to the balcony, nor will anyone be heralded tonight, about 6 PM as the "King of Penitents." The fundamental message of this day is that human relationships require attention, compassion, and forgiveness. We do not survive alone, nor should our dear ones and friends be expected to. That is the underlying truth of THE REALITY JOURNEY. The Reality Journey teaches us that we need one another throughout our lives:

In every season-we need one another! And we need to be gentle with one another. We're fragile and we need understanding.

That's the message for you and me: I'm talking to you this holy day, and not to those self-reliant, bikini-clad demi-gods with 6-pack abs we see on T.V. I'm talking to real people, people who are prone to make excuses for our own missteps, while wondering why the dude next door is such a loser and sinner.

C.S. Lewis insists:

Most of us have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade.

C.S. Lewis must have attended a Yom Kippur service because that's exactly what we have done this morning. And so in all our Journeys Near and Far, perhaps none is more essential than that which awakens us to the fact of our kinship with imperfection.

I.

So let's apply some REALITY to this REALITY JOURNEY of ours. And guess what? Here's some good news! We Jews do not believe in saints! And I'm not referring to the local football team which is a trial for believers to be sure.

A few months back Andrea and I visited some of Europe's most magnificent cathedrals. These inspiring Gothic masterpieces are often built around Medieval shrines which hold ancient relics of the saints. Sometimes, through dark glass cases, one may take a look at the faithful or what's left of them: skulls and bones and teeth and any assortment of pickled viscera, which are supposed to derive from this or that martyred saint.

Each saint has an associated list of miracles attributed to them. And so they are beatified and venerated as "the perfect."

Not only do I not accept the notion of a single human being leading a life of perfect ethical act and motive, I don't believe organized religions are perfect either. As a matter of fact, I'm certain they're not. Rabbinic infallibility has no standing within our Judaism. Just ask my wife.

As a person who considers himself profoundly religious, I do not want my faith or anyone else's to be destroyed by those individuals with clay feet who fall short, sometimes profaning and giving all religion a bad, even cruel, reputation. Everyone on occasion misses the mark, from the Chief Rabbi, the Imam, the Pope, and the Bishop on down!

No subjects are creating greater controversy within organized religious ranks today than same sex marriage and the election of openly gay clergy to exalted leadership positions. Let's be candid, closeted gay rabbis, popes, cardinals, bishops and priests are a very old story. The recognition of out-of-the-closet clergy is a new story, and we have just seen it played out in the Episcopal Church this past summer. The ordination of openly gay bishops, many say, will drive a wedge within the Anglican denomination and lead to a disastrous schism worldwide.

Columnist George Will, an arch political conservative who perhaps should stick to subjects he really knows like baseball, this summer deplored the possible election by the Episcopalians of a male bishop who is, not incidentally, in a 13-year relationship with another man. Will quoted San Diego's Bishop Gethin Hughes, whose worry was that Episcopalians were suffering from what was called "chronological snobbery." Do you know what chronological snobbery amounts to? The belief that "our time is the brightest time," and that those who lived in the past suffered from a lack of sophistication and insight which we enjoy today.

Well, considering where religion has been-the burning of "witches", charges of deicide and well poisoning, the Crusades, the tortures of the Inquisition-are we really so arrogant to subscribe to the idea of chronological snobbery? Isn't it true that there are some positive signs that our minds and hearts are at last growing? Our Reform Judaism celebrates such new, larger thinking as "progressive revelation"! In many ways, religion does show signs of overcoming the virus of Triumphalism which for so long plagued the human heart. Triumphalism is the belief that "my faith saves from hell, but your faith isn't true, and so too bad, you're damned."

Harvard University's chaplain, the Rev. Peter Gomes, noting that recently the Dutch Reform Church in South Africa has publicly repudiated its old racist theology which read the Bible as being supportive of apartheid, wonders why it took the Southern Baptist Convention 135 years after the Civil War to apologize for its Bible-based support of slavery. Then Dr. Gomes asks:

Where will we be. . . when the Church at last repents of its destructive treatment of homosexuals and its reading of Scripture that allows society to act upon its innate savagery?

Well, that's the first thing. The Reality Journey teaches us that we're all subject to sin and so are our human religions which are peopled in pew and pulpit by mostly well-meaning, but thoroughly fallible individuals.

II.

On the other hand, you and I, however imperfect, are also quite able to live our lives at a heroic and saint like level. Did you get that? Perhaps you read about Harry Truman's recently uncovered diary statement about us Jews? It wasn't a pretty thing to read, was it? We're so used to lionizing Harry Truman as Missouri's little man of gigantic insight and uncommonly well meaning intent.

How thoroughly disappointing it was, then, to read Truman's diary entries of 1947 in which he clearly subscribes to bigoted and unfounded bias against Jews which once were pervasively held by Americans during that period. Nevertheless, when Harry Truman's support was most essential, his decision, for reasons still open to conjecture, to overrule the recommendation of his own State Department and to support the establishment of State of Israel, seems all the more remarkable, doesn't it? This diary revelation, this stain on Harry Truman's reputation certainly does not negate his decisive and historic choice to assist and promote the creation of the Jewish State of Israel.

A human being is a bundle of contradictions. We learned that with Oscar Schindler some years ago, didn't we? No saint was he and yet, for reasons still uncertain, he came to take great risks to save Jewish lives. With Yeats, such heroic actions remind us all the more that:

If "the best lack all conviction," then the worst "with passionate intensity" have the field to themselves.

I ran across this short verse from an unknown poet just the other day. Tuck this into your awareness on this Yom Kippur.

You say the little efforts that I make will do no good.
They never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale where
Justice keeps in balance.
I do not think I ever thought they would,
But I am prejudiced beyond debate.
In favor of my right
To choose which side shall feel
The stubborn ounces of my weight.

Isn't that what Truman did and Oscar Schindler, too? And remarkable men and women every day make such decisions? Have you ever chosen to do that? At a sudden juncture in your busy life when, perhaps even unexpectedly, a need, a cause, that really defines you presents itself, have you ever stopped your business as usual, and with sweaty palms and dry mouth, decided to apply the stubborn ounces of your moral weight? Imperfect people become saintly heroes, yes they do. And what's more, their words and actions often teach our children and others that they can do the same.

Read Sam Oliner's wonderful new book titled Doing Unto Others and discover for yourself an exciting blueprint for heroic living.

Oliner emphasizes how people like you and me in every dangerous circumstance will empathize with another's pain, will take action to save another because we care what history will say of us, and we'll understand that we really have no choice but to do our duty or be haunted forever by our failure to do so. Oliner's book is filled with such inspiring examples and, mind you, not a single saint among them!

Sam Oliner was saved at age 12 from the Gestapo and from those Polish bounty hunters by Balwina, a simple Christian farm woman who rescued him. Says Oliner:

For the last 30 years my academic interests have concerned two major topics: the nature of evil, and the nature of goodness. . . . Balwina's. . . act of compassion was the spark that led me here. Had it not been for her abiding love, caring, and specifically focused advice about how to survive and what to do, I would not be here. . . .

[And then Oliner asks us all]

Why are some people able to help whereas others are simply bystanders when they notice someone in need?

Have you noticed that, too? Whether we speak of Holocaust heroes or the heroes of 9-11, the pivotal point was whether or not the would-be rescuers perceived themselves as being just like other people, sharing a fundamental humanity, despite all other distinctions and differences.

Evil triumphs when large groups of ordinary people, lacking conscience and character, find an excuse to become bystanders. Says Elie Wiesel,

Those who thought themselves above the battle, those who were permanently and merely spectators. . . who told themselves, "The storm will blow over and everything will be normal again,"

Those were the ones whose indifference continues most to trouble. The reality of this sacred day speaks to every one of us, urging that we steel our moral spines to the awareness that:

Without love what have you got-
A world without heart.

So there we have it: THE REALITY JOURNEY. Though everyone misses the mark and no one's infallible, as Tennyson says: "What we are, we are!" We are still able to be heroic, to live at times heroically. But we mustn't wait for moral courage to suddenly emerge on cue in the time of urgent need. It doesn't work that way. Conscience arises piecemeal amidst the so-called routine business of life.

I'm an ordinary fellow. You're an ordinary person too but we have power beyond imagining. So we ordinary people need to wake up to the Reality of our Journey to make a difference. We depend upon one another. Goodness is teachable, and its results are measurable.

Atem Nizaneem Ha Yom, Kull-Chem Lefnay Adonai Elohaychem;

You are standing this day before the Lord Your God. . . . Choose life and blessing!

It's is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven. . . nor is it across the sea. . . .But it's so close, in your mouth and in your heart. . . to do it.

Amen.