Sermons: High Holy Days

I was five years old, holding my mom’s hand and playing with my little brother in the shallow waves. I watched my older brothers and my father walk farther out into the ocean.  Their silhouettes got smaller and smaller as they pushed through the surf.  I heard one brother shout as he pointed to the horizon. They all turned back towards the beach, struggling to move through the waist-deep water, shouting at us to run. My mom lifted my little brother and pulled me toward the shore.

I looked back.  The giant wave knocked my older brothers and my father down one at a time.  They disappeared into the water, and out of nowhere, the wave hit my mom, my little brother and me with a violent force.  We fell and rolled end over end in the salty froth.

When the wave receded, my older brothers and my father emerged from the ocean.  They looked like mud-figures, completely covered in dark sand.  My mud-brothers, stunned, stood shakily and tried to catch their breath.

My mom sat in the shallow water, reaching under her shirt and scraping sand out from her bra, laughing at how funny we all looked.  My mom was always smiling and lighthearted, and she loved everything about that Oregon beach.  Even the things that terrified me.  

And that beach was filled with danger.  Signs warned of “sneaker waves” and dangerous undertows that could pull us out to sea.  For years after the wave hit us, I refused to walk near the water.  When my family walked together along the shoreline, I stayed as close as I could to the sandstone cliffs that border the beach.

Yet my mom would tell me that those dangerous waves were part of the glorious creation of a benevolent God.  These waves sculpted beautiful shapes and tide pools in the ancient lava that had once flowed to the sea. Something powerful and dangerous can create so much beauty.

Eventually I learned to appreciate the waves.  They soothed away the ache of loneliness and calmed my anxious mind.   In the waves I heard an echo of eternity. Their crashing into shore was part of the world’s ongoing creation.

Seven times in the Torah’s story of creation God says that creation is good.  God creates light, earth and sea, trees and vegetation, the sun and moon, the sea animals and birds, the land animals and creeping things, and after each creation, God declares it good. When creation is finished, God calls it very good.   

Why did our ancestors create a story in which God repeats “creation is good – very good”?   Because there were those who claimed otherwise, and with good reason.  There is so much in the natural world that causes suffering: Devastating storms and floods. Scorching wildfires.  Pandemics.    

Our ancestors lived in the same uncertain and dangerous world that we do. The story they wrote about the world’s beginning, Genesis, reminds us that even despite the danger, creation is ultimately good.  

Our early rabbis explained: Even those things which you may regard as completely superfluous to the creation of the world, such as fleas, gnats, and flies, even they too are included in the creation of the world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, carries out His purpose through everything, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, or a frog. (Genesis Rabbah 10:7).  Even creatures that we might consider “pests” or “poison” have a place and a purpose in creation.

Does the coronavirus also have a purpose in creation? After all, it has no life of its own. The virus is a tiny, formless bit of genetic material cocooned in a fatty membrane.  It must borrow life from others.  Many viruses are intrinsically a part of living creatures and are harmless if they remain in their place.  This year we saw what happens when an animal virus crosses into the human realm.

My mom has been gone for decades now.  I wonder if she would have found any goodness in this virus, as she did when she laughed at the wave that nearly swept us away.  I think she would have said that the virus is part of creation so there is goodness to be found, even in the virus.

But where is that goodness? All around us we see uncertainty, anxiety, and so much death. 

Yet I see goodness in the doctors and nurses who risk their own health to care for others.  I see goodness in the researchers who devote themselves to seeking better treatments and vaccines.   I see goodness in the members of this community who help others with meals or reach out with a word of kindness.  In all these ways and more, we embody the goodness in creation.

This past summer I ordered a package of KN95 face masks. On the package was a message: “We are waves of the same sea.” 

This virus has reminded us that we are more connected than ever.  Even in our separation, our lives affect others. We wear masks to protect others.  We endure the hardships of separation to protect others. Yet this nexus of responsibility is a tenuous one.

This year we have had to ask:  Who will wear the mask in public, and who will refuse? Who speaks facts and who speaks lies?  Whose lives matter and whose lives matter less? Who decides?

The virus cares nothing for these questions.  It infects without regard for our race or our status or our ideological beliefs.  It infects without prejudice because to the virus, we are all the same.  We are waves of the same sea.

We can no more blame the virus for our suffering than we can blame the waves that rush to shore, waves that swell towards the sky and crash on the beach.  The waves are dangerous, and the waves are beautiful. 

We humans are part of the same creation.  Like the waves, we can be dangerous, and we can be beautiful.   Yet we are more than the waves.  Waves flow and form drawn by the moon and the tides.  But people do not.  We have minds that can discern truth from falsehoods, minds that prompt us to deepen our understanding of the world.  We have hearts meant for compassion, hearts that can hold the pain of others.  And we have hands with which to act, to become part of the world’s ongoing creation, agents of goodness in this New Year.