It’s August 21st and
the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy
in Decatur, Georgia is on
lockdown[1].
Police surround the school, and an armed man has made it into the front office.
He is filling multiple ammunition clips and loading his guns. In the meantime,
Antoinette Tuff, a clerk seated at the front desk, talks to him. She shares
some of her story with him – about the challenges she has faced in her life. He
shares how he has no reason to live – that he is going to die today – that he
hadn’t taken his medication. And she, drawing on a teaching her pastor has been
using in church, “anchors herself in the Lord.”
In our Torah portion this
morning, Moses teaches, “I have set before you life or death, blessing or
curse; choose life, therefore, that you and your descendants may live – by
loving the Eternal your God, listening to God’s voice, and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length of
your days.”[2]
“Hold fast to the One who is your life and the
length of your days.”
“Anchor yourself to that which
is within you and beyond you – the source of life – the source of love,” our
Torah teaches.
Afterwards, Antoinette
reflected:
“[I realized] it was bigger
than me. He was really a hurting young man, and so I just started praying for
him. And I just started talking with him and allowing him to know some of my
life story and what was going on with me and that it was going to be ok, and
then let him know that he could just give himself up [to the police].”[3]
When Michael Brandon Hill first
entered the office, he wouldn’t even share his name. But after an hour of
talking with Antoinette, he shared that nobody loved him. Her response? “I just
explained to him that I loved
him,” she said.[4]
She didn’t know this person. He
was holding a gun. Her life was in his hands. She was terrified.
“I just explained to him that I loved him,” she said.
Michael had come, intending to
shoot up the school and then to die in a shootout with police;
instead, Antoinette talked to him while teachers, staff, and 870 children
waited in the locked-down building. She persuaded him to lay down his weapons,
he eventually surrendered and the school was evacuated; nobody was injured.
She was terrified. And yet, she
anchored herself. She held fast – to something bigger than herself. She held
fast to life and to love. Love for a stranger with a gun who was ready to take
her life. She anchored herself in empathy – she saw herself and her children in
this man. She identified with his suffering.
What Antoinette did and said
may not have worked in every instance with every person intent on killing. But
it worked in this instance. What a powerful example for all of us.
Antoinette Tuff is a spiritual
superhero, and her superpower is love.
“Choose life. . . by loving the
Lord your God. . . and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length
of your days.”
Antoinette internalized this
teaching of love that we read this morning and which has been taught throughout
the ages by other spiritual superheroes such as Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Just a couple weeks ago our
nation marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s march on
Washington.
The principle of non-violence that
lay at the heart of his teaching was love.
“Non-violence chooses love
instead of hate,” he taught. “Non-violent love gives willingly, knowing that
the return might be hostility.” “Non-violent love is unending in its ability to
forgive in order to restore community.” “Love restores community and resists
injustice.” And, “non-violence recognizes the fact that all life is
interrelated.”[5]
On this Yom Kippur the Torah
calls upon us to choose life and love for ourselves and for the community in
the coming year. In our haftarah, the prophet Isaiah[6]
exhorts us to build a world based on love, empathy, and justice.
The prophet complains bitterly
that while we sit here in shul fasting and praying for our own redemption, out
in the world, we perpetuate oppression, injustice, and violence. Isaiah cries
out - “Your fasting leads only to strife and discord, and hitting out with
cruel fist!”
“Is not this the fast I look for,” Isaiah challenges us, “to unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo
the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel
chain? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless
poor into your house?”
God doesn’t care as much about
our fasting on this day as much as God cares about what we are doing to build a
community free of cruelty, of hunger, of division.
Dr. King called this ideal community,
“the Beloved Community.” According to King, in the Beloved Community, “poverty,
hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards
of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination,
bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood
and brotherhood. . .. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred.. . .” For
King, desegregation and voting rights were not the end goal of nonviolent
boycotts and marches and sit-ins - the Beloved Community was the real end goal.[7]
At the heart of this Beloved
Community was a specific type of love, called “agape.” King described agape as
“understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is
purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative.” For King, “Agape
does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins
by loving others for their sakes.” It “makes no distinction between a friend
and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and
create community.” [8]
Antoinette Tuff’s love made no
distinction between friend and enemy. She understood in that harrowing hour
that she was part of a Beloved Community, and that if she could help this
troubled young man feel that he was a part of that community too, she might be
able to disarm a would-be mass murderer. In that school office, as Antoinette
shared her story of overcoming her own suffering, and as Michael shared with
her his despair, a sense of solidarity between them allowed love and trust to
triumph over fear and hatred.
Solidarity – a sense that there
is no separation between me and you - the understanding that as human beings,
we all know the same suffering, the same joy, the same fear.
Solidarity.
Most of us know the goose bumps
of seeing that photo of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. Martin
Luther King – of seeing footage of white students sitting with black students
at those lunch counters. Those bridges between people are what made things like
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 possible. And that solidarity is something that
we still need to build today, if we want to continue to bring our world closer
to redemption.
We’ve celebrated some victories
of solidarity this year. After the Sandy Hook school shootings, all kinds of
citizens– from urban to suburban to small town—came together in solidarity to
pass strong gun control legislation in Connecticut. Solidarity among Jewish
women and their allies in Israel and across the globe calling for women to be allowed
to pray out loud as a group, wear tallises at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, and for
men and women to be allowed to pray together there – this solidarity is what is
leading Israeli government officials to finally make that vision a reality. Solidarity
among gay and straight individuals and families is what is leading our country
towards a future of marriage equality for all.
Moses spoke out of the Torah
this morning, saying, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God
– the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers, every one of you – men,
women, children, and the strangers in your camps, from the one who chops your
wood to the one who draws your water – to enter into the covenant which the
Lord your God makes with you this day.”[9]
All of us – from the woodchopper to the head of the tribe – are part of the
same community –a community in covenant with God with a vision of becoming a
Beloved community.
Unfortunately, even given the
victories we’ve experienced here and there, the overall sense in this country
that we are all part of one community is deteriorating rapidly. Studies have
shown that in the past 30 years, the rate of empathy among American young
people –has gone down by 75%![10]
Some scholars posit that there is a link between this loss of empathy and the
deterioration of social connections. We are more isolated, we don’t participate
in groups like bowling leagues, political parties and PTA’s.
This lack of empathy engenders
a “mind your own business” ethos, where I am no longer responsible for
acknowledging or easing another person’s suffering. Solidarity slips away.
A highly symbolic sign of this
came this Spring when the Supreme Court overturned major provisions of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965.These provisions required jurisdictions with a history of
blocking voting of minorities to get approval before making changes to their
voting policies. The decision is probably fair in theory, given that much has
changed since 1965, and the list of jurisdictions under this provision is
likely no longer up to date. However, this decision presents an enormous
challenge to the critical project of enfranchising all Americans.
Today, our country is a place
where baseless fear of fraud has become justification for Voter ID laws that
make it harder for minorities, the elderly and the poor to access their right
to vote in some states.
We are becoming a suspicious
society-a “keep to yourself society” rather than a beloved community of solidarity.
We are in many ways a fearful
community - a community where a young Black man can’t walk down the street in
his own neighborhood without worrying that someone might fear that he is up to
no good.
Can you imagine living in a
country of solidarity where all adults saw it as their responsibility to know
the kids in their neighborhoods for the sake of the kids’ safety? What if George Zimmerman had reached out to Trayvon
Martin to say, “Hi – my name is George – what’s your name?” Rather than to
assume that Trayvon was a person to be feared?
Can you imagine living in a country
where we all are “anchored in the Lord” like Antoinette – where we know a sense
of solidarity with all of our fellow citizens – strangers and friends? A country
where agape love flows freely?
As Jews, we believe that it is
possible to create that community. Today, the holiest day on our calendar, we
are those Israelites, standing on the other side of the Jordan. We stand
together, in all of our diversity, as one community – and we are poised to
enter that Promised Land where we are instructed to build a Beloved community
in covenant with the Divine.
Over the millennia, our Jewish
sages and teachers have developed the tools to help us build that community. In
our Jewish mystical or kabbalistic tradition, we find our own version of agape
love. It is known as “shefa” - pure
Divine love that flows from God into the universe at every moment, infusing all
of creation with life. According to our tradition, we can, through spiritual
practice, cultivate divine characteristics within ourselves, in order to become
conduits for that shefa so that Divine love can flow more easily into our lives
and into the world. These characteristics are called middot and include qualities
such as patience, equanimity, and compassion.
Practices such as meditation,
prayer, chanting, Torah study, and acts of compassion and generosity, can help
us to strengthen those qualities and balance out our tendencies towards fear,
anger, and hatred. Fear and anger are real – we all have them inside of us. But
we can work with those qualities so that we might experience and share more
love. This synagogue is a place where you can engage in those spiritual
practices. If you haven’t made prayer or meditation or study a regular
practice, I invite you to try it this year.
We also make ourselves into
vessels for that divine flow when we act with compassion and generosity. The
food we bring to the Shoreline Pantry, the hours you can volunteer to cook and
serve at the soup kitchens in Deep River and Chester, the furniture and house wares
you can donate to furnish permanent housing for the homeless, the solidarity
you show when you participate in our advocacy campaigns, whether on the issue
of healthcare or gun violence or racial equality in the justice system. These
are all ways that we, as the kabbalists say, “draw down the shefa” –draw down
that divine flow of love. If you want to
be a part of these efforts, please let our Social Action Chair Andy Schatz
know.
Every year on Yom Kippur we
face that choice between life and death – blessing and curse.
Every year, we are Antoinette, sitting in that
school office – facing that would-be shooter and his gun.
This year we can anchor
ourselves in love over fear.
This year we can become vessels
for Divine blessing.
This year we can build that
Beloved community.
[1]http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/bookkeeper-talks-about-coming-face-to-face-with/v9ZDr/
[2] Deuteronomy
30:19-20
[3] http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/bookkeeper-talks-about-coming-face-to-face-with/v9ZDr/
[4] Ibid.
[5]http://www.sistersofmercy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=202#sthash.tP1lu98n.dpuf
[6] Isaiah
58:1-14
[7] http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy
[8] Ibid.
[9] Deuteronomy
29:9-12
[10]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-me-care
