Isaiah 25:6-10; Philip. 4:12-14, 18-20; Matthew 22:1-14; Psalm 23
Oct 11, 2020
Marvin Friedman-Hamm
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Homily
Over the past few months we have heard a few homilies on the topic “How has my faith been challenged or changed in the past few months or years?” That’s my topic this morning. To be seasonally appropriate, this is also about one thing I am thankful for.
So…I was out in my car this summer, with the radio tuned to CBC, and a program called Tapestry came on, and the person being interviewed was Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Whom I had never heard of. I liked the little bit I heard, so thought I would check him out. I got one of his books from the library, titled “The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning”. Rabbi Sacks is formerly the chief rabbi of the Jewish community of England. It’s quite a good book, really.
But a one thing he said stood out. It stopped me short, and made me rethink my faith journey, and my understanding of God.
Here is the paragraph that caught me. Rabbi sacks writes…
People in the Abrahamic monotheisms – meaning Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – people in the Abrahamic monotheisms have always known that, for most of us, most of the time, God, more infinite than the universe, older and younger than time, cannot be known directly. God is known mainly through God’s effects, and of these the most important is God’s effect on human lives.
I have spent most of my life as a Christian seeking and longing for some direct experience of God – some sense of being spoken to when I call out to God, some awareness of God’s presence with me – especially at times when I have walked through the valley of the shadow – some inner experience of being deeply loved. But I can count maybe on one hand the times I have had any such experience. Mostly I have experienced God not as speaking – but as silence. Not as presence – but as absence.
So much so that I have come to think of myself as something like a faulty radio – that just does not pick up certain signals. Maybe I just don’t tune to the God frequency. That has been a painful thought.
Truth be told, I haven’t just doubted myself. I have doubted God too. If my experience is one of silence and absence, then maybe God is not there after all. Maybe I am seeking someone who does not actually exist, except in my mind. I don’t like to go to that place of doubt, but I do.
Now here is Rabbi Sacks saying that my experience is not so unlike that of many people – most people even. Most people, most of the time, do not know God directly. If I am a faulty radio –then so are many other people. Maybe I am not so unusual. I like that thought.
But now listen again to the second part of that paragraph – God is known mainly through God’s effects, and of these the most important is God’s effect on human lives. Rabbi Sacks says that – when he looks for evidence of God, or knowledge of God – he doesn’t look to theological arguments, or to miracles, or even to his own inner spiritual experiences. He seeks God in other people. In holy men and women. In others’ acts of compassion and forgiveness and generosity. In others’ gentleness and kindness. He says sometimes we encounter people who seem to transcend ordinary human-ness – souls who we can sense have been enlarged by God’s transforming grace - people in whom we sense “a divine presence speaking through them”. That is where he has come to know God, in the witness of these people, who in themselves seem to point to something or someone beyond themselves.
I knew right away what he was talking about. In my life I have met people like that. People who – by their kindness and generosity – touch my spirit, inspire me, move me to become a more compassionate person. My life has been shaped by encounters with people like this – in person, in books. Some of these people are listening to me this morning.
But it never occurred to me that these people were speaking to my soul because I was responding to the divine presence speaking through them. I knew these holy people deeply touched my life, but it never occurred to me that it was because they had been touched by the Holy One. When I read this from Rabbi Sacks it became so clear, what I had missed before. I had been looking for signs of the divine presence – and they had been there right in front of me, all along. My heart had recognized them – now my head did too.
God is known mainly through God’s effects, and of these the most important is God’s effect on human lives.
I am thankful for the people in my life who – by the quality of their character – have pointed beyond themselves to the Holy One.
I am thankful for Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for helping me recognize how God has been speaking to me all along.