This past Sunday, I went to church. This is not my way of dropping any surprising news - I attended services at Grace Episcopal Church in Silver Spring to hear my dear friend, the Reverend Aaron Dunn, offer the sermon for the congregation. Aaron is an old friend of mine from my days teaching in Rockville; he left the school to go to seminary and was recently ordained as an Episcopal priest.
In his sermon, Aaron spoke about the eucharist (the ritual of communion) - not a topic with which I’m extremely familiar nor one that I would ever have the need to discuss homiletically. However, I found Aaron’s exploration of the core texts and rituals of the eucharist both fascinating and relevant to my own Jewish understanding of our core texts and practices. In the course of his teaching, Aaron suggested several lenses through which to view this important part of the church’s liturgy and tradition, two of which are lacking in some way and one of which has the potential to help practitioners find meaning and truth. One possible way to view the eucharist, and indeed any ritual, is through the lens of “Moment,” meaning that it reflects a moment in history that happened and that can be replicated. In this view, taking communion is reliving an event that took place during the life of Jesus. Since the wafer and wine used in this ritual are not factually the body and blood of Jesus (nor were they ever), it’s difficult to see the eucharist through this lens. Another way to look at the eucharist is through the lens of “Metaphor.” From this perspective, the significance of the ritual lies in the symbolic meaning underlying the objects themselves. While understanding the eucharist through this lens is more comfortable for the contemporary intellectual outlook, it ultimately robs the ritual itself of the power of a real connection to its biblical origins. The lens Aaron proposed as one that might be more successful for us is the lens of “Mystery.” Mystery accepts a certain amount of agnosticism when it comes to the historic understanding of the eucharist ritual. And it also accepts that the ritual itself may have symbolic resonance beyond the actions and words that make it up. But it challenges us to suspend our disbelief and participate in the ritual without trying to intellectualize it, without trying to define it or understand it. The aim is to experience the ritual, opening ourselves up to its power and helping forge a connection to the theological (if not historical) truths it contains. It was a great sermon. Listening to my friend preach, I was both interested to hear his interpretation of his sacred text and inspired to consider how this framework might be helpful in looking at my own sacred texts. This week, in Parashat Ekev, Moshe, in the opening verses, offers promises of abundant blessings for following God’s ways and moving forward with entering the Land of Israel. Acknowledging that the task ahead is daunting, he presents the people with something to counteract their fear: they should “...bear in mind what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and all the Egyptians: the wondrous acts that you saw with your own eyes…the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm by which the LORD your God liberated you.” (Deuteronomy 7:18-19) Here we see a phrase we know well, both from the Torah itself and from our Passover rituals: God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm rescuing the Israelites from Egypt. It’s a powerful image, but one that isn’t necessarily easy to understand. Applying Aaron’s framework, we see that “Moment” doesn’t add to our grasp of this idea - God, as we know, does not have hands and arms in a literal sense. Taking this verse literally presents some real theological problems. “Metaphor” seems more promising. God’s hand symbolizes infinite strength; God’s outstretched arm represents the Divine ability to reach us no matter how far away we might be, as well as a desire for closeness. While these ideas help us understand what we may seek in our relationship with God today, they lose some power when applied back to the story of the exodus from Egypt. This leaves us with “Mystery.” This lens leaves open the possibility that something truly beyond our understanding happened to our ancestors and that we capture some of it in our own lives. It invites us to imagine that experience, both in the time of the Torah and for ourselves. What might it have been like for the Israelites to be moved safely out of enslavement by God’s mighty hand? Or to be reached from far away by God’s outstretched arm? When would we most want to be held in the palm of God’s hand? What would that feel like? From how far away can God reach us and bring us close? It seems impossible to answer these questions, but when seeking a relationship with the Divine, it also feels impossible not to ask them. Shabbat shalom.
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