(00:00:00) I was realizing earlier and sharing with Rabbi Shapiro. The realization that this is I think the fourth our fifth consecutive year that I have (00:00:08) found myself in your (00:00:09) community in october-november. I guess that's the only time when would come here but (00:00:16) Having come here every year. I have learned some things. I have learned for example (00:00:20) that wherever I happen to be speaking. I am not to say that it's good to be in Minneapolis or it's good to be in st. Paul. It is always proper to refer to the Twin Cities because some people get very upset if I mentioned one enough the other (00:00:35) But what I've learned more significantly is that The (00:00:37) ecumenical Interfaith effort which is going on in the Minneapolis. St. Paul Community is the Envy of this entire nation. I don't know if you appreciate it because you live here and you've gotten used to it. (00:00:49) Nobody else does (00:00:50) the things that you are doing here in no other community is the program as deeply rooted as widely received as imaginative and nowhere else. Does it operate at the same high intellectual and spiritual level as the programs in which you are involved year after year. My invitation to come to the Twin Cities would be under the auspices of one organization or another that was doing pioneering work in jewish-christian dialogue. I think there are many reasons for this. It is the nature of your community is the nature of your environment, but I suspect the one thing the one advantage you have here in Minneapolis. St. Paul that nobody else in America has the two people who are responsible for the institute on Jewish Catholic studies. Monsignor Murphy and Rabbi Max Shapiro (00:01:40) Rabbi Shapiro met me at the airport this afternoon. Yeah. I think that would be appropriate (00:01:44) what happened. (00:01:53) Rabbi Shapiro pick me up at the airport this afternoon when I flew in and it took us several minutes extra to get out of the (00:01:59) the airport to the parking lot because every few hundred yards somebody would say hello Rabbi, and I knew they weren't talking to me. I knew there were talking to Max Shapiro. (00:02:08) He is a well-known and much-loved (00:02:10) figure in your community. Not only among his former congregants not only in the Jewish Community, but in the entire Community, you are extremely fortunate to have someone like that in your midst and I think I know I am here and I suspect many of you were here because of him. the inspiration for this evenings talk (00:02:30) came out of a (00:02:31) Sabbath service at which I was officiating many years ago. I was a young Rabbi at the time. I had just recently come to my congregation in Massachusetts and in my youth and in naivete, I (00:02:43) thought that I still measured my Effectiveness (00:02:45) as a rabbi by counting the attendance of the Sabbath morning service in the more people who came the better Rabbi. I was I have since learned the opposite that the secret of success in the Revenant is to keep the speech the same and find a new audience every week. (00:03:07) What are those long ago days I didn't understand that yet? And this was a typical Sabbath (00:03:12) service at Temple Israel of Natick, Massachusetts. (00:03:15) It was attended by approximately (00:03:17) 300 worshipers. Most of them disguised as empty seats. (00:03:28) I was disappointed. (00:03:30) I was (00:03:31) frustrated and walking home from synagogue. I took advantage (00:03:34) of one of my good loyal congregants and I poured my frustration out on him. I said, what's the matter with these people? I worked so hard on my sermons and nobody comes to hear them. The choir is so good. The service is so nice. Why don't these people come out in greater numbers? They said something to me which I've never forgotten. (00:03:52) He said, you know, Rabbi, I'm a (00:03:53) businessman if people don't buy what I'm selling. I don't spend a lot of energy talking about how dumb my customers are. I assume that either I'm selling something. They don't need or I'm selling something they need and I haven't been able to persuade them that they need it. When we talk about the human Souls need for God when we tell people that their lives will be enriched if they will open themselves up to the faith commitment (00:04:22) when we say to them that just as we have physical needs (00:04:25) for vitamins and minerals for food and rest. We have spiritual needs and if those needs are not met we will feel unfulfilled and out of sorts. What is it? We're selling. What is it? We are really offering people and telling them they need and they can get from (00:04:42) us. (00:04:45) My thesis is that in the Contemporary Society people have become so sophisticated. So modern so intellectual that they simply don't have room for the faith commitment for the commitment to God and to the religious community anymore and they don't realize what they have given up when they have learned to live this way. (00:05:09) Somebody asked me who did you have in mind (00:05:11) when you wrote your new book who needs God. Could you write it for I said to them I wrote it for Phil Donahue. (00:05:26) Because you see for me he represents the good decent caring morally committed individual who for one reason or another has (00:05:37) only scorn for organized religion and for theological affirmation (00:05:42) and I wrote it not only for Phil Donahue. I wrote it for the dozens of people. I have met unless well-known (00:05:48) television and radio shows (00:05:50) I wrote it for the people. I would find myself sitting next to you on an airplane on a three-hour trip and you strike up a conversation and they say what do you do for a living (00:05:58) and sometimes I'm tempted to (00:05:59) say I work for the CIA because I don't want to get into any theological discussions with them. (00:06:05) But you know, I'll say I'm a writer and let's say what are you right now? I'll tell (00:06:08) him and then I hear this whole thing, but they cannot believe (00:06:11) that an intelligent college educated person would take religion. Seriously today. (00:06:16) Those are the people I had in (00:06:17) mind when I came up with the the contents from my most recent book. What is it? We're selling them. What is it? (00:06:23) We're offering them and offering (00:06:25) ourselves. The first ingredient I think is a word we really have to dust off and reclaim from ancient history because you don't hear people using it anymore and the word is reverence reference the sense of being in the presence of a power (00:06:42) so much greater than (00:06:43) yourself that all of a sudden that encounter defines your place in the universe (00:06:49) what has happened in the 20th centuries that human beings have become so good so skilled so accomplished we can do so much in modern inventions and medicine and everything else that (00:06:59) we think we can do everything and there is no room for that sense of a power greater than our (00:07:04) own I would remind you that in scripture. The biblical definition of idolatry of idol worship is not bowing down to statues give the Ancients a little bit more credit than that. They understood the statue is not God. It is a symbol of representation of God idol worship in the Bible is human beings were. I (00:07:27) think the work of their own hands worshipping the human as if (00:07:32) it were the highest source of value and there is nothing (00:07:35) greater human being saying we are the ultimate (00:07:39) and the problem with idol worship is not simply that it offends God the problem is it cannot help us? We cannot lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. The conclusion I have come to is that technology is the enemy of reverence technology drives out reference because technology is the (00:07:59) worship of the man-made (00:08:00) now, I am not a Luddite. I am not putting down (00:08:03) technology. I am grateful for the jet plane that brought me to Minneapolis st. Paul this afternoon. I am grateful for the computer that I use to edit my writings. I am grateful for the medical breakthroughs which have been put at the service of members of my family. I have nothing against technology. I have a lot against the worship of Technology because it is a way of worshipping ourselves. It is a form of idolatry. Technology drives out reference because we get so stuck on ourselves. We forget that there are limits to human power. Let me give you my favorite example of how this works. I would like to say you will all remember but then I have to tell myself. I am older than some of you here (00:08:41) many of you will remember that summer (00:08:43) evening in 1969 when human beings walked on the moon for the first time you recall we all stayed home to watch Neil Armstrong on television theaters were deserted (00:08:56) restaurants were empty downtown streets were free of cars. Everybody was home to see human beings walk on the Moon (00:09:04) live the first time everybody had to (00:09:07) watch (00:09:08) the second time men walked on the moon. We didn't stay home. We said what time is it on if I'm back I'll tuning in. If not, I'll catch it on the news tomorrow. (00:09:18) The (00:09:18) third time astronaut walked on the moon you may recall they had to play a game of simulated lunar golf. (00:09:25) Let's see how the golf ball (00:09:27) carries on this low gravity (00:09:28) surface because otherwise the television networks were not going to carry it live. We'd seen it. You know, what's on the Today Show man walking on the moon. I seen it what's on the other channel. Here was perhaps the greatest technological achievement in all of history. I still don't understand how they did it to calculate precisely where the moon will be to send a rocket with human beings in it a quarter of a million miles through space to land precisely on the right spot to get the astronauts safely onto the lunar surface equip them to breathe in the lunar atmosphere get them back to the mother ship and return them to Earth safely. What an incredible achievement and by the third or fourth time, we saw it we were bored with it. So they had to send first a senator and then a schoolteacher into space just to get people to notice. Why because ultimately technology cannot Inspire we got tired of looking at men land on the moon. How often can you watch a (00:10:31) Sunset and not be bored with it. (00:10:34) How long can you sit by the shore of a lake and look at the water and you? I feel Restless you feel tranquill. Why is it that whenever we have a weekend whenever we have a day off we feel this impulse within us which we can't understand to get away from the men made to get away from the officers with their artificial light and heat and air conditioning. You can't even open the windows to get away from these skywalks, which guarantee you can go for a week and never breathe fresh air in (00:11:03) Minneapolis. St. Paul. (00:11:06) We need to get into the country to go to the lakes to go to the forest. We need to be some place away from a man-made environment freed from technology and seeing the world that God made just to remind us that we are not the ultimate less December a member of my synagogue ask me a question. I had never been asked before in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah in (00:11:28) December when you light the candles in the menorah, are you (00:11:32) permitted to say the blessing if you use electric light bulbs instead of candles Nobody ever asked me that before so I looked it up and the answer is no you're not (00:11:40) you can't say the prayer over a lightbulb only over a real flame. Why (00:11:44) picture yourself looking at a (00:11:46) candle? It's fascinating you sit there looking at it. You're (00:11:50) almost hypnotized by the flickering flame of the (00:11:52) candle. You can sit there for a minutes for almost an (00:11:56) hour just (00:11:57) concentrating on this flame of the candle. How long can you sit and look at a light bulb? Ultimately, (00:12:09) we need to be reminded that (00:12:14) human inventions (00:12:15) marvelous as they (00:12:16) are go to a certain point and stopped and beyond that God takes over (00:12:23) that is not a put-down to say that there are limits to human creativity is not a put-down. It is reassuring to discover that if there is a question, we can't answer. It doesn't mean it's unanswerable. If there is a problem. We can't solve we don't have to despair because there is a power beyond the limits of human (00:12:42) power. We need to ReDiscover the sense of reverence that there are limits to what human beings can do and this brings me to the second of the ingredients of the religious Faith commitment when you believe in God it is the grounding for Morality to say as are Jewish and Christian Traditions alike say that there is one God is (00:13:04) not a mathematical statement. It is a moral statement. To say that the Lord is one is not the census returned from heaven. We've taken a survey of how many Divine beings live there. The total is 1 to say that there is only one God means it is possible to talk in terms of right and wrong of permitted and forbidden if there are many gods what one forbids another one favors what what approves of another one prohibits remember reading The Iliad and all these gods exist? And the question is not what does God want of me. The question of which God is powerful enough that I should serve him and he or she will protect me there is no issue of right and wrong to affirm that there is a single God means you can talk in terms of what is right. And what is wrong? What is the will of God and what we teach in the monotheistic judeo Christian tradition is that just as God has built in the law of gravity and loss of chemical reactions. He has built-in (00:14:10) laws of moral right and wrong just as firmly (00:14:14) I have seen only one Clint (00:14:16) Eastwood Dirty Harry movie in my life. I (00:14:19) don't remember the name of (00:14:20) it. I was home with her. Television one night and I was tired and I tried I don't know why I'm apologizing to you. But anyway. (00:14:31) I was describing the movie to some people who are big Clint Eastwood movie fans. I told them the plot and they gave me four (00:14:38) titles that fit that clock, (00:14:39) but you know, that's okay. I mean listen, I'm a congregational Rabbi (00:14:42) if there's one thing I understand it's telling the same story year after (00:14:45) year. (00:14:48) If we do it, why can't Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone do it? But what I remember about that movie I have never (00:14:55) responded to a movie the way I did to that one (00:14:58) with as sharp a (00:14:59) sense of Divergence between my head and my gut I'm sitting there at home alone watching this movie on television. (00:15:06) My head is (00:15:07) saying to me, why are you wasting your time on this trash? This is cheap manipulative junk. Have you nothing better to do (00:15:15) and my gut is saying yeah blow him away get out the Magnum and shoot them down. Don't let them get away with that. (00:15:26) What I learned (00:15:27) is not that Hollywood knows how to make movies that reach me emotionally. I knew that what I learned is that there is in me and there is in every one of us and instinctive sense of outrage in the face of Injustice somebody once wrote. I cannot define justice, but I respond to Injustice instinctively. We have the sense of outrage of don't let them get away with that. I can't tell you how many people have come up to me in the last nine years because they had read my book and said Rabbi Kushner. I got a great idea for your next book. Why don't you write when good things happen to bad people because that's what really gets me. (00:16:16) Let me prove it to you. When you read stories in the newspaper (00:16:20) about insider trading on Wall Street, I suspect your reaction is (00:16:25) oh that's wrong. They broke the law. They ought to be punished. They should get what they have coming to them fairly cool fairly calm when you read stories about the abuse of children. When you read stories about the Central Park jogger case when (00:16:38) you read stories about that family in California who kept their little girl locked in the closet. Your response is different, isn't it? It's not. Oh they broke the law it's outraged. It's how could anybody do that? Punish them throw them in prison get rid of them make them suffer the way they met her suffer. (00:16:55) Who teaches us to respond instinctively with this sense of outrage (00:17:00) who teaches little children to know how to say that's not fair and not only will we do something to them. But when we do something to somebody else, where do we get this unless God has planted in us a sense of instinctive Justice a sense that some things are absolutely wrong Bertrand Russell. Perhaps the most articulate spokesman for (00:17:21) Atheism in the English language in the 20th century Russell once wrote (00:17:26) philosophically. I cannot accept the notion that there is a God who ordains right and wrong but emotionally I must concede that there has to be something (00:17:35) wrong with torturing little children besides the fact that I don't like it, you know, if you don't like (00:17:40) it don't torture. I like it. I'll torture them and how can you say I'm wrong in my Congregation of Massachusetts. I would teach the teenage classes in Jewish history and we would study the Holocaust and when I finished I would say to these adolescents (00:17:55) Why was Hitler wrong? (00:17:57) And they would say what do you mean? Why was Hero game either permitted? You can't take people and kill them because you don't like their religion (00:18:03) and I'd say was it against the law and they say I don't know and I should know wasn't he passed laws that permitted everything he did. So why was it wrong (00:18:10) they say because she can't do that and I say are you telling me (00:18:14) that right and wrong are not matters of personal decision, but they're sort of fixed in the universe and these idealistic adolescence would kind of look up at me and say well, yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying. I never thought of it that way. Again, the good news is all of these moral laws built into the fabric of the universe are not a limitation of restriction. They are a Liberation. This is what causes us to be taken seriously because we are can do things that no other living creature can do we can respond to a situation in terms of right and wrong our Deeds matter (00:18:48) a lot of people don't understand this. I mean, I'm a traditional Jew many people assume I go around all day saying, oh you've a would I love to eat pork chops, but that mean old God won't let (00:18:58) me Not so (00:19:14) fact of the matter is I go around all I go around all day saying isn't it (00:19:17) incredible four (00:19:18) and a half billion people in the world and God cares what I had for lunch. And God cares how I earn and spend my money and God cares who I sleep with and God cares how I use language and God cares, whether I tell the truth or not. You see how all of a sudden this sense of right and wrong redeems my life from in significance and gives it value. You know what it's like, can you remember when you were in high school and you stayed up all night working on a paper because you wanted it to be really good and you handed it in on Wednesday and you got it back on Friday with a little check mark on the upper left hand corner and nothing else on the paper. It was clear. The teacher had never read it. You just gave you credit for handing it in. Remember how you felt you felt cheated. What's the point of knocking myself out to do it? Right if nobody cares? This is what we are saying when we say in the name of religion that God cares about all the little moral (00:20:19) decisions we make day in and day out. Many years ago. I saw a program on television what's been on the Twilight Zone? (00:20:28) It's program about a man who dies (00:20:29) and wakes up a moment later at the end of a long line at the front of a line are two doors. One is marked Heaven one is marked hell and there's an usher and the (00:20:39) Usher says Move Along keep the line moving go through either door choose one and go right through the man says the Usher wait a minute. We're is the last judgment. Where am I told if I did more Good Deeds or more bad Deeds (00:20:51) the Usher says, you know, I don't know where that story ever got (00:20:53) started. (00:20:57) We don't do that (00:20:58) here. We've never done that here. We don't have the staff to do that here. (00:21:10) I mean look, seriously a thousand people arrive here every 10 minutes. We're supposed to sit down with everyone and go over his whole life story. We'd never get anything done. Now keep it moving. You're holding up the line choose either door heaven or hell go on through and the guys just wait a minute. Where am I judge? Where am I told if I was a good (00:21:27) person or not, he or she says, yeah. I'm trying to tell you I know place now, please move along and the man walks through the door Mark hell. The understand why (00:21:37) the understand the star of the point of the story (00:21:39) we want to be judged (00:21:42) we want to be judged not because we are so sure that we did so well not because we're so proud of how we've lived. We want to be judged because we need to know that we are taken seriously that we are being taken seriously as human beings that are moral decisions matter at the highest Cosmic level and the only way you get that sense of significance as a human being is if you believe in a God who not only exists believe me, I am tired of talking to college sophomores about whether God exists. That's not the issue. I mean if God exists the way New Zealand exists what difference does it make The question is not that God exists. Does God demand righteousness of us and are we responsible to God for how we live only if you believe in the god that we who come from a Biblical tradition Advocate a God who recognizes our Humanity demands righteousness of us only then can we feel that our lives take on (00:22:46) significance? And this leads me to the next of the gifts the next of the items that were selling when we urge people to accept faith in God faith in religion as the Cornerstone of their lives it is what I would call a sense of radical forgiveness. And for this I will tell you a true story the further I get from Boston the more detailed I can be in sharing this with you because they're too many people in Boston Who would know who I'm talking (00:23:11) about. (00:23:14) There was a family in a community near mine (00:23:16) who had a very bright very beautiful 17 year old daughter. She was a junior in high school and she was getting a little bit bored at age 17 with her life. And so she fell in with a fast crowd and started to fool around with drugs (00:23:30) managed to graduate (00:23:30) from high school because it's not really that hard went off to (00:23:33) college and could not handle (00:23:35) the freedom and the independence of her freshman year in college started to use drugs and to deal drugs more heavily dropped out of school drifted into a life of promiscuity. The only time her parents heard from her was when she wrote asking for money and when they stopped sending money, they didn't hear from her at all. They didn't know where she was living. They didn't know if she was alive. One day about a year and a half later this young woman woke up in the apartment of a man. She didn't even like and she said to herself. I don't have to live like this. She left the apartment found a pay phone called her parents collect and said if I come home, will you let me in? Well, of course they did they welcome their prodigal daughter back from the dead they say, you know, it's wonderful. What can we do for you? How can we put your life together again? She said before she started to live again. She needs to do two things. She want to take a long hot bath and wash your hair and she wanted to go to synagogue. Wonderful. What could be better bathes washes her hair Saturday morning the go to the service. It's a disaster. There is a large opulent Bar Mitzvah celebration going on all the relatives are there with the fur coats in the purchase purses that looking at their watch through the whole service. The sermon is about the need to be vigilant against the Resurgence of anti-Semitism. The name of God is not mentioned once in the entire sermon. The family comes home disappointed they were looking for something and they couldn't find it parents say it's okay. We'll send you to a psychiatrist. The girl says no you don't understand. That's not what I need a psychiatrist forgiveness comes to cheaply (00:25:08) I don't want somebody to tell me I'm (00:25:09) fine because I'm paying him to say that I don't want to be told forget it. It's in the past think of the future. I don't want to be told there was a lot of craziness going on in the late 70s and you just got caught up in it. I need to be told that what I've been doing for the last two years was sinful was wicked and sorted and defiling and I need to be told by somebody who recognizes how bad I was that I am still acceptable and I don't know where I can get that except the hear it from God. I can't take it. Seriously when you say it to me, I can't take it. Seriously when a therapist says it to me. I need to hear from God that he knows exactly how far I fell how bad I was and he still loves me. (00:25:51) That sense of acceptability that (00:25:54) sets of no longer having to pretend that we're fine that we're perfect (00:25:58) letting ourselves stand naked before God and knowing he can (00:26:02) still accept us. We need that those of you of a traditional Jewish background. You will remember that on the eve of Yom, Kippur before the call nidre prayer. There's one line we recite before the cancer begins to chant called the Drake it goes something like this. By consent of the authorities above in the authorities below. We permit Sinners to join the congregation for this service. Kol nidre is the only service all year that everybody comes to at the beginning and stays for the entire service and they don't understand why and I don't understand why but I think we need to hear that. I think we need to be told that no matter how bad we've been in the past year. We're still acceptable in the sight of God some years ago. I was invited to give a speech at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. I was asked to speak to the professional staff the doctors the nurses the hospital workers at noon and a public lecture at night (00:26:57) when I finish my talk to the staff the chief of (00:26:59) chaplaincy services at Johns Hopkins Medical Center came over to me said Rabbi Kushner. We have a patient here, who would love to meet you he heard you were coming. He's read your books as was very important to him. He asked me if I would ask you to come say hello to him for five minutes. I want to make it very clear to you. If you don't want to you're under no obligation to do this. I'll tell him you're tired and had a busy schedule. He'll understand. He is a 32 year old Episcopal priest who was dying of AIDS. I thought about that for a while I said, yeah, I'll go second. I follow the chief of chaplaincy down the hall toward this Men's Room feeling terribly Noble and virtuous. You know, I am the Jewish Mother Teresa. (00:27:41) Come into this room see this (00:27:43) frail initiated figure in the bed hooked up to tubes. I say them. How are you doing? He says not too good, but I'm getting used to it and we chat for a while and he said some nice things about what my book is meant to him (00:27:54) and I say to him because I know this is an (00:27:55) issue for a lot of religious people who have AIDS (00:27:58) I say to him. Do you have (00:28:00) the sense that you're dying without God that this is in some way a punishment from God? And he looks at me and says no just the opposite. He says the only good thing about this is that I've learned in this hospital that what I always hoped was true really is true that no matter how much you miss up. Your life. God is still capable of accepting and loving you. He said to me all my life. I tried to be perfect. So people would love me. I thought if you're perfect, what's not to love? I mean they got to love you. If you're perfect. I probably went into the priesthood as a way of structuring my life. So I would be perfect and every time I did something which I knew was wrong and every time I told a lie to cover up for myself, (00:28:43) I was sure that God was as (00:28:45) contemptuous of me as I was of myself. But now in this Hospital terminally ill I have learned that whatever I thought of myself God could still love me. God was capable of knowing who I was and accepting me. Anyway. He said I'm leaving the hospital next week not because I'm getting better. But because there's nothing more they can do for me. I don't know if my congregation will take me back Having learned that I'm homosexual that I have AIDS. I hope they will because there is one more sermon. I need to preach to them. I need to tell them what I've learned here that no matter how much they've messed up their lives. God is still capable of loving them for who they are. But what about most of us who haven't felt defiled we haven't done anything. So terrible, we need radical forgiveness. What does God offer us along those lines? He offers us what I would call spiritual replenishment. What is the difference between me and the atheist the difference is not that I do good things in the atheist does bad things you would be the first to tell me (00:29:51) you all know atheists (00:29:52) who are the most honest generous reliable sensitive people you've ever met. So that's not the difference the difference. I think is this (00:29:59) when he and I have both (00:30:01) spent ourselves working for things. We believe in for world peace for understanding between the races for helping the poor and the homeless when we (00:30:10) have spent ourselves trying to hold the hands of The Grieving and The Afflicted the sick and the dying when we have no more strength and no more love to give if the atheist can only look inside himself for more love and more strength and there's none there. He's used it up. What does he do? Then? He burns out he can't go on. But if I believe in a God who is not simply a construct of my imagination, but who really exists a god outside myself who renews my strength I've used it up so that I can run and not grow weary so I can walk and not feel faint. Then. I don't have to be afraid of expending my last drop of love because I know that there's (00:30:49) more where that comes from ultimately for me. The proof of God is not the cosmological argument of the ontological argument of the first cause, you know, all that stuff they teach you in theology 101. It's very important for passing theology 101 and for nothing else in life. For me, the real proof of God is the incredible resiliency of the human soul. I think of the family my congregation who 18 years ago gave birth to a severely brain damaged child and every day for 18 years, they wake him up and they dress him because he's never learned to dress himself and they feed him because he still can't feed himself and they sing songs to him and they play games with him and they look for settings where he can be with other young people equally handicapped. I look at these people and said, you know, I think I thought I knew them average people not terribly spiritual not terribly well educated. Is it conceivable that in 1972? They had a an 18 year supply of love and strength and courage and they're still drawing on it. How could people do this? (00:31:57) I mean, I think a lot of us could do (00:31:58) it for a week for three weeks for a month for a year for 10 years for 18 (00:32:04) years to do a day after day with no promise of a happy ending to the story. How could anybody go on that long? Unless it's really true that when you use up your strength and your love God gives you more. I think if somebody had said to my wife and myself on New Year's Day 1963 that before this year is out. You will have a child who will have the following physical and psychological (00:32:29) problems ahead of him. Can you handle it? I'm sure that my wife and I would have said on January 1st 1963. Please spare us that (00:32:38) we know our limits we can't take it. It's too much for us. But nobody asked and we found ourselves with a son with a very rare (00:32:45) disease which Afflicted him for his entire 14 year lifespan and (00:32:49) somehow when we needed it. We looked (00:32:52) inside ourselves and discovered qualities, which were not there the day before but somehow got there when we needed them. Where does this come from? This for me is the proof that God is real and that when we turn to him he gives us (00:33:06) more strength to replenish the strength (00:33:08) we have used up gives us more love to replenish the love we have given away so that we can run and not grow weary so that we can walk and not feel faint. What does the faith commitment do for us? It helps us withstand? What I think is the most serious plague afflicting human society today and it's not cancer and it's not heart disease and it's not AIDS its loneliness (00:33:36) loneliness the absence of meaningful human (00:33:38) Connections in our lives. That's what makes people stop enjoying life. This is why teenagers and sometimes their parents go to the shopping center when they have nothing to shop for they just need to be where other people are (00:33:53) in the hope that somewhere in that crowd. They will find a (00:33:56) friendly face. (00:33:57) This is why people come home after work. And as soon as I walk in the door, they turn on the television not because they want to watch the program. They don't even know what the program is. (00:34:05) They need the sound of another human being in their lives. (00:34:09) How did we get to this point (00:34:12) where there are more Americans alive today than ever before were there are (00:34:15) whole Industries books Cosmetics dedicated to helping us deal with loneliness and we're still only part of it. I'm convinced is the American (00:34:24) emphasis on Independence that if you really strong you do things for yourself. I give you my favorite example, I will measure the validity of this example by watching the audience here very carefully and seeing how many wives nudge their (00:34:37) husbands as I tell the story. (00:34:41) Here's the situation husband and wife going out for a drive (00:34:44) in the evening. They're not sure that they know how to get to where they're going. (00:34:49) You know what I'm going to say. (00:34:53) The wife says let's pull over it as for (00:34:55) directions. (00:35:03) And the husband says now let's go a little further. I (00:35:05) think I can find out. (00:35:08) Why do we men do this? What do I do this? Because we have been taught that it is a sign of weakness to ask for help and it's a sign of strength to be able to do something all by yourself think of all those John Wayne and Gary Cooper movies. We were raised on Gary Cooper in High Noon. All right, none of you guys are going to help me. No big deal. I will handle this all by myself. What he should have done is gone to the next town and checked into a hotel under a false name. But no to be an American Hero is to say I can handle this by myself. I don't need any (00:35:43) help what happens to the family when people are raised to say I don't need anybody. (00:35:50) It's nice to have them around (00:35:52) but I don't need them. (00:35:54) What happens to community (00:35:56) what happens to society when we are trained to see everybody around us as a potential rival or a potential customer (00:36:04) and it's so hard for us to see them and accept them as friends and open ourselves and be vulnerable to them. and the cure for this endemic loneliness I think is found here in the synagogue and in the church in the religious community (00:36:20) in one place where you can come and you know that there is no striving and no competition because here we are all equal where the man in front of you can be an insurance salesman. But for this hour he's not going to sell you anything where the man across the aisle from you can be the owner of a rival business, but for these several moments of prayer, you are equals you are bound up in this sense of community when a religious service works and I preside over a lot of services that didn't work (00:36:45) in every now and then it just clicks when it (00:36:47) clicks. What happens is all these individual discrete people come from separate directions come as separate people singing and dancing in the presence of God and when you walk out you have been (00:37:00) transformed and you don't feel nearly as alone. The final perhaps the most important gift of the religious affirmation my faith in God cures me of the fear of death. It can't cure me of (00:37:15) death. Nobody has (00:37:16) invented a religion which you'll teach people to live forever and not die. (00:37:20) Although I do recall the story of the congregate who came (00:37:23) to his Rabbi and said if I stopped drinking and chasing women and staying up late and I come to services every Sabbath. Will that make me live longer and the Rabbi says no, but it'll feel longer. (00:37:48) No kind of Faith. No (00:37:49) God can prevent us from dying. (00:37:51) But as the author of the 23rd psalm understood it is not death. It is the shadow of death which Rob's Our Lives of joy and confidence people are not afraid of dying people are afraid of nullification of disappearance that when their time is over. They will be like a stone dropped in a pond that for a little while makes Ripples and then the water settles (00:38:15) smooth again, but the stone isn't there anymore. What we really need is a sense that when we have lived we will have made a difference to the world that is enough to cure us of the fear of death. And that's what I get for my faith Oscar Wilde once said something marvelous. He said the nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out (00:38:47) I believe that I believe that and it's become very important to me. I believe that when I do a good deed and nobody thanks me for it. And nobody applauds me for it and nobody gives me a plaque for it somewhere. It is recorded and somehow the world is different for it. And not only the good things I do. What about the bad things? I don't do what about the Temptation. I managed not to give in to the the Angry Words. I am tempted to speak and withhold and nobody could possibly know how hard it was for me not to do these things and nobody can appreciate me for it. I have to believe that God understands what I have done and that somehow all of this (00:39:28) is known and matters and the world is different for it. (00:39:34) I don't know what happens to us (00:39:35) after we die. Well part of it. I know I know that our bodies are buried and they decay in their return to the earth. (00:39:42) I also know that the part of us which is not (00:39:45) physical the part which I'm comfortable calling my soul and some people are more comfortable calling their personality my values my memories my sense of humor my friendships (00:39:56) my priorities everything about me that makes me me that is not physical and the part of me which really defines me, you know, my physical appearance can change I I can gain weight. I can lose weight. My hair can fall out. I can have a physical accident. I can look different than I'll still be me when I start acting differently people start saying, hey, he's not himself anymore. The part of me which is not physical because it's not physical cannot die. And so my soul I know is Immortal, but that's all I know. What I don't know is what does it mean for a non-physical soul to exist without a physical body (00:40:32) to Incarnate it? (00:40:33) What do I look like do I look like me but transparent do I look like Casper the Friendly Ghost? Will I be able to recognize the incorporeal souls of people I knew and loved who are dead. If I don't have eyes and optic nerves will I be able to feel glad to see them if I don't have glands to control my feelings. It's not only that. I don't know the answer. I can't possibly know the answer even if somebody told me I couldn't understand it's like trying to explain to a fetus what it's like to be alive. So I don't think about that at all (00:41:05) except when a Christian asked me a question about it. (00:41:14) What I have determined is that the world to come does not refer to a different place but to a (00:41:21) different time isn't that what the phrase the world to come means? Hell is not a place where they stick you with pitchforks and dip you in oil (00:41:29) hell is the realization that if I was sarcastic (00:41:32) to my daughter when she was a little girl, she will be sarcastic to my grandchildren and it'll be my fault (00:41:39) hell is the realization that if I told a lie two years ago somebody two years from now will be deceitful and somebody will be deceived (00:41:47) because I made the world a less reliable place (00:41:50) and Heaven is not Harps and (00:41:52) sunshine Heaven is the understanding that if I took a stand for an unpopular position and lost and I thought I wasted my time and energy it's not wasted no deed No Good Deed is ever (00:42:04) wasted somewhere down the line. Somebody will take a stand and (00:42:08) win because of the difference I (00:42:10) made. Just as in the world of physics. There is a principle of the conservation of matter. (00:42:15) Nothing disappears. It's transformed into a different shape in the world of the spirit. There is the principle of the conservation of spiritual energy. No good deed ever disappears it lingers and it changes the world in its own small way some years ago. I was reading a book on Liberation theology. I don't know how many of you are familiar with it. It is this radical idea that especially in Latin America the church should Ally itself with the poor and the oppressed not with the rich and established. (00:42:48) In this book the author tells the story of a small band of guerrillas (00:42:53) fighting against the government in some Central American country. And one of the guerrillas is a Catholic priest who has cast his lot with these insurgents. They're surrounded by the Army. They're outnumbered. They're outgunned. They're about to be captured and probably executed and one of the guerrillas turns the priest (00:43:10) and says well father, what does your God have to say (00:43:12) now and the father of the priest has no answer (00:43:15) but as I read that story it occurred to me, I think I know the answer the answer might go something like this. I think God would say to people in that situation. I cannot (00:43:24) guarantee that you will survive and I cannot guarantee that you will prevail but I can guarantee that your sacrifice will not be wasted that somehow the world will be a cleaner and braver place because you were willing to put your your life on the line for this (00:43:39) that somewhere down the line, even if you lose today, even if you die today, somebody will be (00:43:45) Moved (00:43:45) by your example, even if they've never heard (00:43:48) of you the world will be different because of what you've done for me. This is the immortality I claim and I look for in this life beyond that. I have no idea what awaits me. I want to tell you two stories. And with that I'll conclude and we're going to try and deal with some questions from this vast crowd. (00:44:06) The first story is from the classic Spanish (00:44:08) novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, (00:44:14) Garcia Marquez tells the (00:44:16) parable of a town, which is afflicted by a very strange (00:44:20) ailment a kind of a contagious Alzheimer's (00:44:22) disease people forget (00:44:25) starting with the oldest inhabitants of the town and (00:44:27) working its way down to the younger ones people forget their names forget the names of the members of (00:44:32) our family forget the names of the most common everyday objects one young man still unaffected by this strange plague tries to limit it by going around and labeling everything. This is a table. Is a window this is a cow. It has to be milked in the morning after he has labeled every object in the village. He goes to the town square and puts up two signs. One sign says the name of our village is macondo and the other sign says God (00:45:02) exists. That's the story. What is (00:45:06) Garcia Marquez trying to say to us in this strange Parable. I think what he's trying to say might sound (00:45:12) something like this as we get older we will (00:45:15) forget most of (00:45:16) everything we ever learned. It's already started. You've already forgotten your high school trigonometry, haven't you? (00:45:24) You (00:45:24) want me to test you on it you forgotten your college history course you forgotten the name of the guy who (00:45:30) hired you for your first job you forgotten the phone number of the first house you lived in after you were married you (00:45:35) forgotten most of the stuff (00:45:37) you once knew and it hasn't done you any harm and you're just fine as long as you don't forget to things. Don't forget the community of which you are a part because religion (00:45:51) is not a series of statements about God (00:45:54) religion is the community through which we learn what it means to be human. (00:45:58) That's why you can have a lot of religions which teach different Notions of God and they (00:46:03) are all equally valid think of it this way (00:46:06) when my neighbor says to me. (00:46:08) My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. I don't take that as a statement of fact, I take it as a statement of love and loyalty. (00:46:16) And so I am not obliged to say to have no I think you're wrong Mother. Teresa is more wonderful and Margaret (00:46:22) Thatcher is more wonderful and Meryl Streep is more wonderful. (00:46:27) I say to him. Hey, I'm (00:46:28) glad that your marriage is so happy in your wife means that much to you. (00:46:31) Why am I when my neighbor says to me? My church is the only path to Salvation. I don't take that as a statement of truth. I take it as a statement of loyalty and instead of getting angry at him and saying you trying to tell me your religion is true and mine is wrong. You're crazy - true when yours is wrong instead of saying that I can say to him. Yes. I'm glad that your faith is so important to (00:46:52) you because I know how important mine is to me (00:46:55) because it is a matter of community. We can all believe in families, but we all live in different families. The story is told of high in vitamin the chemist and Zionist leader who (00:47:06) would go on to be the first president of Israel in 1948 that 30 years before that. He was lobbying the British government to support the Zionist (00:47:13) movement one member of the House of Lords said to him vitamin. (00:47:18) Why do you Jews insist on Palestine when there are so many undeveloped countries? You could have much more conveniently and fights one answer. That's like my asking (00:47:27) you why did you (00:47:28) drive 15 miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there's so many old ladies living on your (00:47:32) street. (00:47:45) We are loyal to our parents not because we have compared them to others and decided (00:47:50) that they are the best parents in the neighborhood. But because there are parents and they give us life and we owe them something for that (00:47:57) and we are loyal to our religious Traditions not because we have taken a comparative religion course and objectively decided that the theological claims of our religion are the most (00:48:08) valid we are loyal to our community because it is the community in which we have grown up and the community which taught us what it means to be a human being in the sight of God. So that's the first thing we cannot let ourselves forget the community of which we are members and the second thing we can't let ourselves forget is that God exists. This brings me to the second and final story. It's a story I found in the writings of Elie Wiesel the story of the day that men came before God Seated on his Heavenly throne (00:48:35) and said to him, which do you think (00:48:36) is harder to be man or to be God. God says so what are you talking about? It's much harder to be God. I mean, what do you have to worry about wife kids job there. You've said it. (00:48:46) I got the whole universe galaxies planets meteorites. It all depends on me. A man says, yeah I suppose so but you know, you have unlimited power and unlimited time. I got to work with deadlines if I had all the time in the world. I could run a universe to God says you don't know what you're talking about. It is much harder to be God, man says, I don't know how you could say that so (00:49:07) confidently you've never been human. I've never been Divine tell you what let's change places for one second. That's all one (00:49:15) second. I be God you be man, (00:49:17) it will change back, (00:49:18) but we'll have settle this once and for (00:49:20) all. God doesn't like the (00:49:23) idea but man pleads and whines and begs him and finally just to shut him up. God says, okay one second. Then we change back. (00:49:30) God gets off his throne man gets on and as a result tells a story in that one second that man was Seated on the Divine Throne. He refused to give God his throne back. (00:49:42) And ever since then man has been in (00:49:45) charge of the world in place of God. (00:49:48) I tell you I find that a frightening (00:49:50) story for to recently the first reason that probably comes to mind is as we have seen in the 20th century men without God to inhibit him is so capable of the most astonishing cruelty. What is it that the year - Karma's off says in the dust Lasky novel if there is no God everything is permitted if there is no God, why shouldn't we kill and why shouldn't we steal and why shouldn't we lie? And why shouldn't the strong take things away from the week if there is nobody to say that it is wrong if there's nobody higher than us to keep us from doing what we feel like doing but that's only one reason. The second reason is if there were no God if man were in charge of the world, it's such a big world. How could we run it if there is nobody to warm Us and nobody to guide us. Nobody took Comfort us nobody to forgive us nobody to pick us up and wipe us off when we fall in and soiled ourselves. Nobody to replenish our love and our We've used it up and nobody to assure us that when it's over. It's not really over. How could we live in a world like that without a God man is so alone in a world, which is too vast too cold and too unmanageable for him. So who needs God, I know I do and I know we do. Thank you.