Sermons

Sermon Dialogue, “Reflections”

John Wilkinson                            Third Presbyterian Church
Rabbi Laurence Kotok
February 12, 2006                       Psalms 90 and 97

John Wilkinson: Again we welcome Rabbi Kotok. We thought we would begin this conversation with a brief update of where we stand in terms of the actions of the 2004 General Assembly. For some of you this will be very old news, for some it will be new news. And if it’s new to you, you can get a much fuller reporting of it at another time.

What you will remember is that in 2004 the General Assembly passed an overture that asked the denominational entities that oversee such things to begin a process of exploring phased, selective divestment in certain companies doing business in Israel, and in the West Bank and Gaza. That overture was passed without much attention at the assembly, but very soon thereafter began to gather great attention, both within the secular press, within the press of American Judaism, and in our own church press.

We began to understand how upsetting that decision was to people about whom we care very much. And so in this locality we began to talk, especially with our neighbors and friends from B’rith Kodesh, and with others in the community. A group led by Linc Spalding, Rusty Olsen, and Alison Elder began to meet with a group from Temple B’rith Kodesh about how we might respond.

That group has proposed an overture to go to the General Assembly. How it works in our system is that that proposed overture first went to our session; the session has read it and has adopted it; and that overture now goes to the Presbytery of Genesee Valley on March 29th, for its vote. What that overture seeks to do is rescind the decisions on divestment made in 2004, and seeks further to enact some positive investment strategies in the whole of the Middle East, so that the intentions toward a strengthened economy, a stable governmental situation, and reconciliation and peace might be realized in this way, rather than in a negative way (which is what the perception was for some of us about the actions of 2004).

Now, I have said many times I’m not a betting person. I’m certainly not a betting person on this issue. We are not quite sure how this presbytery will respond to this overture. We know that some of the people who share common cause with us on other issues do not on this one. But some who do not on others do on this one. It will be an interesting debate and a conversation. If, by chance, it gets out of this presbytery and goes to the General Assembly, similar conversations will happen. But we thought it important from this congregation, with our relationship with Temple B’rith Kodesh, to in fact make this stand, to have this conversation, to do the homework, and to try to propose something that we think is positive and that moves forward the vision of peace that we both share.

Rabbi Kotok: Thank you so much, and of course it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s wonderful to see so many friends that have been created over these past years that we’ve been engaged in this process of learning and understanding among us. I begin by not only saying thank you for that welcome, but also sharing it with you, and also, once again, to be able to say how remarkable it is that we can speak honestly, plainly, and directly with each other, even about those issues that divide us, about those issues that cause us great pain, and how incredible this time is for communities of faith to be able to engage in honest, direct conversation, not political correctness.

The challenge of these overtures is not just the content of them, but the presumption and the assumption of how those decisions are made, and what type of expectation of morality they portray. There is a vast difference between dreams and realities. We know that in our own lives, and we certainly know that in terms of the way in which the world evolves. The tension, the gulf, the distance between these dreams and the realities on the ground create the gulfs of misunderstanding. And there is no doubt in my mind that the overtures which were taken by the General Assembly in 2004 were taken from one perception within your community, and have been reacted to powerfully by different perceptions.

I bring back to you an image which came into experience this morning. When John spoke to the children [during the Children’s Sermon] about the Olympics, he spoke of this incredible diversity that comes together under the Olympic banner: the marvel of seeing people of so many diverse and disparate nations walking there with their banners in a hope of dignity and responsibility, sharing a vision of athleticism bringing people together. And that is a dream. But, friends, let us not forget Munich! Let us not forget what took place at the Olympics 34 years ago, when under the banner of that diversity, under the banner of that expansive reality of the world, terrorists slaughtered the Israeli Olympic team.

And there, my friends, is the same dilemma we are in today. How does a body make a decision about something which they perhaps are only partially understanding? How, then, and what, then, are the bases by which decisions are made? Whose perception is accurate? And when there are distinctions of perception, how does one get a common view? Is it possible to create that? For the Israeli, that “separation,” that “wall,” whatever you want to call it, provides a level of security that was not there. Open borders are wonderful when you trust and when you have friendship and commonality between you. When a person beyond Western understanding is willing to strap a bomb belt upon themselves… And we know who some of these people are today. They are not fanatics; they are not radical 14-year-olds high on drugs. They are adults trained as lawyers and doctors, men and women, with children and families, who seem to believe it is appropriate and responsible to be a suicide murderer.

[tape side ended] population centers, from the cafes, from the bus stations, from the post offices, from the normalcy of people who are just trying to live their lives. So the issue isn’t necessarily simple. It is so profoundly complex that we, within our community, are both uncertain and confused by the attempt to replay this in some form of simple morality of right and wrong.

JW: The issues are complex. As Rabbi Kotok and I meet from time to time, we look at specific things that are happening within our communities, and then, when we want to take a step back, we explore the larger issues. It seems clear to us, as clear as anything can be, that the world in which we are finding ourselves living these days is changing rapidly. There are larger issues raised by any of these particular concerns that we share.

We were provoked the other night --- “provoked” is not the right word except it was a provocative notion that Rabbi Kotok offered -- about what it means for any of us to live in a world following the events of the Holocaust in the middle of the 20th century. And I think that’s a challenge for all of us, we who live in the Christian community as well as in the Jewish community. How do we understand events unfolding in the world, given that very awful, tragic, and monumental moment in human history? It raises other questions for us that we’ve talked about from time to time. We will not solve any of them today. What does it mean for a group of people to have an identity? What does it mean to be part of a movement in a changing world? Are there limits around what a movement can and does offer to the world? What is the nature of tolerance in a world that seems bent on self-destruction? And are there boundaries and parameters of acceptable values? Was what happened in 2004 within the Presbyterian church a clash of moral expectations? And if that’s the case, how might we be led to a different understanding where we talk with all parties involved and try to make faithful, appropriate decisions on visions of what we think to be the right ones, and yet, seemingly by so doing, have upset some friends who we hold very dear?

So we wrestle, I think all of us, Rabbi Kotok and myself and all of us in our communities about what is the nature of an identity of any group, and any group that has religion as part of its understanding. Are there limits to how we are able to act in the world because of our ethical and value commitments? What does it mean to tolerate others, especially those with whom we might disagree or who, in fact, might wish us harm? And how do we begin to identify those boundaries and live out our ethical commitments in a world that is complex and at such strife?

RK: The issue has become even more focused and diffuse. Each of our communities belongs to national as well as international bodies. It has been the nature of these bodies over the course of time to gather together, to create statements, to direct policy, to define themselves. I think it’s fair to say that, regardless of whether you come from the Presbyterian community or the Jewish community, or whatever community you may represent, those center cohorts have been much harder to find in more recent years. I believe that these national and international bodies used to speak more coherently for the normative decisions of each of our communities over the course of time.

I believe that that’s changed. I believe that individual congregations themselves are finding incredibly layered and disparate forces within them. The assumption is that at some point in time --- pick whatever time you like --- everybody was basically in agreement with whatever it might have been, whether your service started at 11 o’clock as opposed to 10:30, everybody agreed. Whether our service started at 6 o’clock or 8 o’clock, everybody agreed. It’s pretty hard to figure that out today. And that’s only on the silly issues of what time the service begins. How about what we read? How about what song we sing? How about how we employ music in our services? (Music is very, very important to Presbyterians.) But how about, That’s not the way we used to sing it! We sang it a different way! What about those songs?!

And you’re not even talking about geopolitics! We’re talking about all of the comfort pieces of our definitions. The same is true within our community. We want more Hebrew! We want less Hebrew! We want more of this! We want more of that! Whose voice do you listen to anymore? And what in some cases happens --- and I don’t think we’re different that way --- the assumption is that everybody’s voice is as valid and important as anyone else’s.

Well, how do we learn what being part of a bigger community means? How do we blend those voices into commonality? That’s not been the trend of the past 15 or 20 years. It’s been about acknowledgement of individuals and diversity. And take that beyond the congregational level, and you move it into national and international levels, you have, for example, our biennial. Five thousand North American Jews representing 1.8 million Reformed Jews in North America came together in Houston in November. They passed a resolution. What does that mean? On Iraq! On the war in Iraq. Well, there were people who thought it was wonderful, and yes, there were a lot of people who said, We don’t support that! We don’t believe that. That’s not the right kind of a resolution

What the boundaries are today are very fluid and uncertain, and they are impacting each of us, as are all institutions that attempt to present values and decisions in equal and profound ways. It’s defining for us an uncertainty of “who’s in and who’s out.”

JW: The who’s in/who’s out question is an important one. Though I need to comment first of all that there’s a phrase in our business called “going from preaching to meddling.” When you start talking about when worship starts… that was meddling, by the way. [laughter] I just wanted you to know that.

RK: I’ve always been a radical!

JW: But to address the question of who’s in and who’s out in the Presbyterian church --- you know you’ve heard it much too often from this pulpit. We are in the process of looking at a report on the peace, unity, and purity of the church. I read an email that said how typical it is for the Presbyterians to be fighting on a unity proposal! And nonetheless we are, because the questions and the answers are important ones. What does one need to believe to be a part of this community? How does one need to behave regarding certain issues to be a part of this community? How does one need to gather or not gather to be a part of this community? Indeed the boundaries seem to be very fluid these days, and there are some who want to hold together for the sake of the mission of the entity, and there are others who think that what we believe and how we behave is so important that it will be the choice we will need to make to draw some boundaries between communities. I’m still not sure how it’s going to work out, but these are the very issues that affect us locally and nationally and globally that we are all facing, whether it’s a vote on a position on Iraq, or a vote on who we ordain in the Presbyterian church. The question of who’s in and who’s out, how we hold out a dream of a possibility in the future, and what the realities are at the very moment, I think, make up a very common conversation that we are sharing.

RK: It’s also a new one. I want to reinforce the fact that many of you within this sanctuary, whether you come from B’rith Kodesh or you come from Third Church, can remember a point in time where at least the assumption was that everybody agreed. There were always people on the edges, but they weren’t the norm. Everybody agreed. All of us are being faced with the parsing of words like “welcome” and institutional integrity. Though we welcome people into our spaces who do not necessarily share our beliefs or may be practicing another faith, how do we look to both welcome and maintain a sense of integrity? It’s become much, much harder with the growing diversity of the populations who come into our doors. I hope I’m making sense. I’m not sure.

There are people who come from different faith communities who are married to different people of faith communities who come and share with us. But there is a distinction which is sometimes very painful for people to make between participation and leadership, to make between participation in the pew and leadership at the pulpit. Where are the differences of acts, let’s say, for people who are from a different faith community? What do we share, and what is distinctly ours? This is an ongoing dilemma for America, and for an America that is so committed to being religious. And the uncertainty is, do we give up all of the uniqueness (in the positive sense), all of those definitions that we hold as our faith behaviors or faith commitments, for the sake of welcome. And I don’t think we’ve made a decision yet about that.

JW: As Rabbi Kotok says, this is an ongoing conversation, and as we so often like to say, “To be continued.” Let us pray, friends. Eternal and gracious God, we thank you for this opportunity. We thank you for the presence of Rabbi Kotok among us, and members of the B’rith Kodesh congregation. And we thank you for efforts to build community, to build commonality, to find common ground, and for honest voices that can speak to one another, even in the face of disagreements. Your word is a light to our path. Help us to follow that path to your vision of justice, and reconciliation, and peace. AMEN.

(Special thanks to Beth Wlodarczyk for transcribing this dialogue.)