Sages and psychologists tell us that we shape our lives around the stories we tell.
Our stories about who we are and how we are to act.
Our stories about what it means to be a family.
Our stories about what it means to be responsible whether in our relationships, in our work, in the community or as a citizen.
A part of what we do when we gather in this place is retell the stories of the Bible and to remind ourselves that these stories are also ones around which we can and are to shape our lives. That being true, here is a story for today. A portion of Psalm 8:
O Lord, our God,
When I look at your heavens,
The work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have established;
Who are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Mortals that you care for them?
Yet, you have made them a little less than God;
And crowned them with glory and honor.
Little less than God.
Really?
For all our foibles and all our failings?
For all the craziness and chaos that swirls around in our lives and in our world?
You and me?
Human beings…little less than God?
Can you believe it?
And so I wonder…
Is this a story we can tell?
A story you can hold?
A story around which you and we can wrap our lives so that it begins to shape our understanding of who we are and who we are called to be?
So, what does that mean?
Little less than God?
And, might that look like in your life and mine?
My response to that question has three parts.
Part 1
This week, a young woman whom I have known since she was 8 or 9 years old sent me an email with a link to a Rosh Hashanah message which a friend of hers had posted on Facebook. The word she used to describe the Rabbi’s message was powerful. Here is a part of that message which connects to what I would have us think about today. The Rabbi tells the story of Abraham who believes God has asked him to sacrifice his only son Isaac, only to have an angel intervene at the last minute to save the child. He begins this portion of his message by telling a story from the life of the famous Rabbi and teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Heschel tells the story of how, as a seven-year-old, he first read the text of the [the story the sacrifice of Isaac]. He recalls that, as he read the tale, he began to weep in empathy and fright. His rabbi knelt down next to him. “’Why are you crying? You know that Isaac was not killed.’ And Heschel remembers, “I said to him, still weeping, ‘But Rabbi, supposing that the angel had come a second too late?’ The Rabbi comforted me and calmed me by telling me that an angel cannot come late. “An angel cannot be late,” concludes Heschel. “But , [we] made of flesh and blood, may be.”
The angel was right on time for Isaac. And the angel came too late for Michael Brown.
For so many years, we [Jews] have been the ones bound by hate and bloodlust, helpless on that altar. For generations, the [story of the sacrifice of Isaac] represented Jewish suffering, Jewish trauma, Jewish death. We were Isaac. That insecurity hasn’t left the Jewish soul. How could it? But after millennia of being Isaac, on this day, as the sun peeks over Berkeley, as another train pulls into Fruitvale Station, as evening looms in Ferguson, the Jewish people, you and I, can be the angels.
Not the ram, silent, defenseless, a martyr.
Not the ram.
The angel.
The angel who comes on time.
The angel who is not afraid.
The angel who speaks for God.
The angel whose voice is clear, cutting through fear and cynicism and suffering:
Avraham! Avraham!
(Sometimes it takes more than once to get the message.)
I am here. I am accountable. In this nation. At this moment. (Rabbi Michael Rothbaum, Congregation Netivot Shalom)
The angel.
Little less than God.
Part 2
I don’t believe in guardian angels.
At least in terms of some hovering spirit that somehow watches over me and protects me.
Some of you might.
And, it seems that Pope Francis does.
At least according to the headline I saw recently in the news which said he believed in them and encouraged others to believe in them, as well.
But, as I read and thought about the witness of Psalm 8 and the story it tells about your life and mine, maybe I have begun to change my mind. But instead of the hovering cherubs of Renaissance art, what if the guardian angels are you and me.
Meant to watch over.
Meant to protect.
Meant comfort.
Meant nudge in the direction we are to go.
Isn’t that the job of what guardian angels are to do?
You and me…
Little less than God.
Guardian angels for those, whoever they are, who find themselves in the circle of our lives.
Part 3
Psychologists and psychiatrists tell us that we all have to ask and answer developmental questions as we grow up and grow older.
When we are younger the questions is: “Who am I?
When we are older the question is: “What is the purpose of my life?”
While I am neither a psychologist or a psychiatrist, it seems to me those two questions are basically the same just asked in a different way and at different stages of life.
Who am I?
The witness of Psalm 8 answers the question this way.
I am little less than God.
(Yes, I know how that sounds, but you are.)
What is the purpose of life?
Being little less than God, your purpose is to do what God does.
To help
To heal.
To rescue.
To care for.
To listen to.
To lift up.
To remember the forgotten.
To build foundations for peace.
Professionally you may be a banker, a teacher, an accountant, run a business, be in sales, be a parent, be a volunteer, but the purpose of your life…?
That is something else.
Something more.
Who are human beings that you are mindful of them, O God.
Mortals that you care for them?
Yet, you have made them a little less than God;
And crowned them with glory and honor.
Can you believe it?
You and me.
Little less than God.
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