Congregation Jewish Community North - Spring, Texas - A Heart of Wisdom (Sermon

Forty years ago, I watched along with many of you, as the first human being set foot on the moon. A few years before that, one of the Russian cosmonauts, circling the earth, reported back to his controllers down below, "There is no God up here." I do not think this came as a surprise to many people. By his time, much had changed in the way we think about our universe. The turning point came in 1543, when the astronomer Copernicus proposed his radical heliocentric theory, stating that the earth and other nearby planets actually rotate and revolve around the sun, a theory which is now demonstrated every day as a fact. Of course, the prevailing Catholic church was disturbed and dismayed by his findings and the findings of other scientists like Galileo, because removing the earth from the center of the universe meant that human beings were no longer at the center of God's creation.

Jews had always been a bit skeptical about the place of human beings within the creation. The Psalmist, studying the same skies as Copernicus, wrote, "O Eternal One, what are human beings that You regard us, what is our life that You think of us? We are like a breath and our days are but a passing shadow. ... We are like a dream, like grass ... in the morning it flourishes and is refreshed; in the evening it fades and withers."

Closer to our own time, Einstein discovered that this was true. Human beings are like grass. We are like a breath. We are even like a dream. The fact is that we are composed of the very same matter that comprises the rest of the universe and when we say "ashes to ashes" and "dust to dust," there is much truth in that statement, since our bodies are formed by material that begins as energy and transforms back into energy in a constant cycle. Nevertheless, Einstein remained convinced that nothing about the universe was accidental. As he put it, "God does not play dice with the universe." And the very fact that he, a scientist, could speak about God -- without defining God -- marked him clearly as a person who had Jewish roots.

The debate continues among scientists as to whether the universe is haphazard, subject to a principle of uncertainty, or carefully organized. But the very fact that we can debate this truth marks us as an intelligent species. The same Psalmist who asked, "What are human beings?" went on to say that since we are little more than dreams, like the grass that withers, like a passing shadow, and made up of dust and ashes, "Therefore," we ask God to "teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

We live in a world where Marx taught us that religion is "the opiate of the working class"; and Freud dismissed religion as a chimera of the superego, the mind attempting to make itself more important that it is; and Darwin taught us that we are not only "a little lower than the angels," but also only a minor step above chimpanzees. We can be forgiven, then, if religion does not seem to be at the very center of our lives anymore. After all, did God invent the microwave as a better way to make popcorn? Did God put Windows on our computers? Did God give us credit cards and balloon mortgages? Will God grant us job security and a good health plan? The Psalmist never asked any of these questions, but these are the kind of questions that haunt us day by day.

Not too many of our philosophers still debate about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin or whether reality should be set aside for faith. We no longer see demons and angels around every corner, though some of us have a tendency to see UFO's with some regularity. We have learned to trust in the transmission of messages and voices from one cell phone to another and in filling our atmosphere with twitters and photos that speed across the internet. We do not stop to ask why God gave us the tools to create the internet or how God constructed the atmosphere to make radio waves possible.

With all this, there are still people who wish to build a dam against science and against progress, and when the dam leaks they try to stick a finger in it as if that will stop the whole scientific enterprise. They do not read the first chapters of Genesis as poetry and myth, but rather as history and truth. They claim that the world was created in seven days because that is what the Bible says. They are willing to ignore the fact that in the Bible God also says that we must sacrifice animals, that the Bible also says that God grows angry and demands that God's followers should commit genocide against an entire nation, that the Bible also knows of serpents that speak and donkeys that talk.

When it comes to religion, our personal beliefs, what we need in our time is what we have needed in all times, a "heart of wisdom." At the very base of this is knowing what the Bible means when we read it. After all, the Bible was written by human beings who were addressing other human beings in a particular time and place. So the poetry of a phrase like a "heart of wisdom" turns out to be only partially poetry. In ancient times, the heart was not the center of love as it is in our imaginations, the heart was the center of reason, holding the same place within the organs that our brain holds today. When the Psalmist says, "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom," he or she is actually saying, "Help us to use our limited time in this world to learn to think for ourselves."

I am a Reform Jew because that idea -- the idea that each one of us has the ability and the resources to study our tradition and to make personal decisions about faith and science -- is at the very core of being a Reform Jew. To be a Reform Jew means to accept the fact that history is a process of change and Judaism needs to constantly adapt to changes. This is a fact even for those who do not accept it as a fact, even for those who wish to build their religious beliefs into a dam against change and to stick their fingers into the places where their dams leak. The Bible knows nothing about microwaves and balloon mortgages, but it knows a lot about accepting change as a part of being religious.

For nearly four hundred years, the story of Mount Sinai was the most important myth of the Jewish people. According to that myth, God came down on the mountain and Moses went up on it. God taught Moses the laws and commands that the people would need. And for four hundred years, these laws and commands seemed to work pretty well. But in the ninth century, the laws and commands were threatened with extinction and Judaism needed a new message. The priests in their Temples -- in Jerusalem and in the Northern Kingdom of Israel -- hunkered down and stuck their fingers into the dike, trying to go on with life as usual. But the kings were determined to become more and more like the world around them. A king like Ahab, for example, who supported the Jewish temple in Samaria while at the same time building a temple nearby for the worship of Baal and Astarte, gods introduced by his wife Jezebel. As long as Ahab continued to provide sacrifices and money for the Jewish temple, the priests were willing to continue in their old ways.

To a prophet like Elijah, though, it was clear that change was the only way to protect Judaism from disappearing. He challenged the priests and priestesses of Baal and Astarte to a duel in front of the people. He knew he could do nothing to change the hearts of Jezebel or Ahab, but he was not powerless when it came to shaping the opinions of the people. The trouble with the people was that they were vacillating -- they could not decide whether the God of Israel was more powerful than gods like Baal and Astarte.

The truth was that Judaism itself was in need of Reform. The old myth of Moses receiving the law at Sinai was too much like the myth of the Baal cult who believed that their ancient king Marduk had been given the Tablets of Destiny and their ancient king Hammurabi had been given laws very much like those of the Ten Commandments. It left the people wondering. Perhaps the God of Israel shared the heavens with Baal and Astarte, and maybe with a pantheon of other gods, too.

Elijah roused the people against the priests of Baal and Astarte, but only on nationalistic grounds. The duel was like a huge sporting event and Elijah managed to provide them with a convincing spectacle, a miracle in which God seemed to accept the sacrifice of Elijah and reject the sacrifices of the priests of Baal. But that was only a surface victory. As long as the old myth of Moses and Mt. Sinai was no more convincing than the myths of Baal and Astarte and all the other gods that belonged to the peoples all around them, the problem would resurface and continue.

All alone, Elijah felt abandoned and at his wit's end. He lay down to rest beneath a Broome tree, a kind of bush, and the Bible says, in its metaphorical way, that the angels came to feed him. In other words, he suddenly had an inspiration. He gathered himself up and he went to Sinai -- possibly by making the journey, more likely by being transported there in a dream or a vision. When he came to the mountain of God, he went into a cave to spend the night.

That's when the word of God came to him. God asked, "Why are you here, Elijah?" and he answered, "I am moved by zeal for the One God, for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and put Your prophets to the sword. It seems as though I alone am left, and they are out to take my life."

God said, "Come out and stand on the mountain before God." And it was at that moment that Judaism changed forever. You could even say that it was at that moment that Reform Judaism was born. As the Bible tells it,

There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of Adonai; but Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind -- an earthquake; but Adonai was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake -- fire; but Adonai was not in the fire. And after the fire -- a still small voice.

All of a sudden, the One God was not something "out there," not an alien who landed on top of Mount Sinai and presented Moses with a set of laws, or even an all-powerful God who confronted Moses "face to face" but would not speak to any other Israelite "face to face." From this moment on, there was a second Sinai, and it was suddenly revealed that God was not out there splitting mountains and shattering rocks, not in the whirlwind or the hurricane, not in the earthquake or the tsunami, not in the fire, but inside you, in a still, small voice that could speak to every Israelite.

What an enormous change this was. No other God had ever by-passed the priesthood and entered the soul of every person equally. No other God had ever made his or her presence felt to the average Jane and Joseph. From this moment on, we have carried God with us, as a part of us.

There would be many more changes to our thinking and our reality before we reached the time of Copernicus and more still to the time of Einstein, Freud, and Marx, but this one would remain a cornerstone of our faith. There is a bit of God in each and every one of us. It is a still, small voice that reveals truth to us, if only we will get us a "heart of wisdom," if only we will learn to think for ourselves.

In modern times, other forms of Judaism have tried to build up dams against the changes that challenge the old styles of religion. They stand there with their fingers in the dam, but none of their fingers will be powerful enough to stop the floodgates of real change. Against this, Reform Judaism says, bring on the changes, bring on the floods of science and the deluges of challenges to religion, we will use our minds to find the answers we need. We will get us a "heart of wisdom" because there is a bit of the divine in each one of us. The divine resource of thinking is yours. The divine resource of making choices is yours. It makes me proud to be a Reform Jew in the twenty-first century, and it should make you proud to be one, too. And let us say, Amen.