SHABBAT CHAZON

SERMON  June 21, 2023

And on the seventh day, the waters of the Flood came upon the earth… All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open.
(The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.)
That same day Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, went into the ark, with Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons— they and all beasts of every kind, all cattle of every kind, all creatures of every kind that creep on the earth, and all birds of every kind, every bird, every winged thing.

The Flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and raised the ark so that it rose above the earth.
The waters swelled and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark drifted upon the waters.
When the waters had swelled much more upon the earth, all the highest mountains everywhere under the sky were covered.
Fifteen cubits higher did the waters swell, as the mountains were covered.
And all flesh that stirred on earth perished—birds, cattle, beasts, and all the things that swarmed upon the earth, and all humankind. All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died.
All existence on earth was blotted out—humans, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky; they were blotted out from the earth.   Genesis 7:10-24

This recent flooding has been scary, upsetting, and given that there wasn’t a hurricane or something behind it – it seemed to bring home the reality of climate change and how quickly our world is changing.   For the past week, I can’t stop thinking about the verses I just read. 

Of course, in Genesis, the story continues that the waters recede, life is saved, and then we read this:

Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that stirs on earth came out of the ark by families. Then Noah built an altar to יהוה and, taking of every pure animal and of every pure bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. יהוה smelled the pleasing odor, and יהוה resolved: “Never again will I doom the earth because of humankind, since the devisings of the human mind are evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.

So long as the earth endures,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
Day and night
Shall not cease.”      (Genesis 9: 19-22)

 Indeed, God’s promise never to flood the earth again has become part of Jewish blessings.  The blessing for when we see a rainbow is to say:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

Baruch ata Ado-nai Elo-heinu melech ha'olam zocher ha'brit v'ne'eman bivrito v'kayam b'ma'amaro.

Blessed are You, Adonai our G‑d, who rules the universe, and remembers the covenant, and is faithful to our covenant, and keeps this promise.

With rising seas, threatening collapse of glaciers and Antarctic ice shelves, much more severe rains and monsoons, coupled with mind-boggling heat in much of the Northern Hemisphere, I wonder if this promise still has meaning.

However, I think it is important to recognize that it is not God who has broken faith, but humanity that has failed to steward the earth, failed to hear the warnings and respond to them fully, failed to elect leaders to make difficult changes that are needed, or our failure to put the gift of this world that is so good and precious and beautiful -  so rare, balanced where it is near enough the sun, but not too near, with a moon large enough to stabilize our spinning but not so large that we are washed with massive tidal waves every day -   this is a miracle.  

So as we did in the desert, instead of appreciating the gift of freedom, the give of liberation, we kvetched about the food and the heat -   here, instead of doing whatever we can to protect the planet, we have ignored it, or put other pressing matters higher on our priority list of things to fight for.  

So we have failed, and there is something in the climate this summer that feels like both a wake-up call, and like a rebuke, and “I told you so” on the grandest scale, and I suspect we are all sitting with a combination of fear and good Jewish guilt.

In the Jewish calendar, right now we are in what are known as the Shabbats of rebuke, centered around Tisha B’Av, and featuring Haftarah readings that are about rebuke and chastising us for not being faithful, not appreciating what we have, and not prioritizing the things that matter most. 

Tonight is Shabbat Chazon, the Sabbath of Vision, the last of the three weeks of rebuke leading up to the day of mourning on Tisha b’Av, this Wednesday.  

On Wednesday evening, we will gather in a darker sanctuary, sitting on the floor or in chairs, and we will read part of the Book of Lamentations, that is a lament for what was lost when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. 

But this year, on that night, I want us to sit also with the lamentation about the planet and the accelerating pace of climate change that we have caused in our hubris, our greed, and our willingness to ignore the prophets who have been preaching for decades about what is coming if we don’t change our ways, much like Biblical prophets of old.

I also want us to just sit, witness and hold the fear and pain we carry from Jewish and family history over generations of pogroms, displacement, and genocide.  Tisha b’Av is the right time for us to acknowledge the toll of the tragedies all around us, and the fears we all carry.

But tonight is Shabbat, and it is important to remember that Shabbat is meant to celebrate the world, to celebrate the goodness of creation all around, and for us to say, as God did look around -  “This World is Very Good.” 

Shabbat is a time of rest, but it’s purpose is also to remind us of the profound power of the world around us and to help us stop and appreciate what a miracle it is that humans exist, that we have the ability to not only harm the planet, but also to appreciate it as sacred and work to repair it. 

Next week is Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of comfort and consolation that beings the move toward Rosh Hashanah.  Our tradition recognizes both he need for rebuke, to be told clearly and punished when we choose to do the wrong thing, but it also recognizes that rebuke alone is not helpful if not balanced with words of comfort and sense that we have some agency in making things better.    

So let’s take that blessing for a rainbow, and “flip the script” saying it daily, as a way to remind ourselves that we have responsibility and agency in addressing what is happening all around us.  It is not nearly enough to say a blessing, but it is a place to start internalizing deeply and spiritually that we have broken our covenant to be stewards of this world, and we must accept the consequences even as we work to repair what we have done. 

One thing we are doing here at Temple Sinai is collecting money to help buy dehumidifiers for flood victims who need to dry out their homes, their stores, their basements, and with more rain, it will be more needed.   Before service I sent out an email to give more details about that, so after Shabbat, take a look.  

Giving in to defeatism has never been our way – if it were, we would not have survived.  In Judaism, we remember that things can change for the worse but also the better, and change is always certain, and that the choices we make to help move the changes toward good are the only power we have. 

Shabbat Shalom