Daily Prophets
Day 38
“Hear O heavens and give ear, O earth, for Adonai has spoken: Children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against Me. They have forsaken the Lord, turned their backs on Him(also despised Him). Why do you seek further beatings, that you continue to offend?(Isaiah 1:2,4,5)
Isaiah prophecies were to the Kingdom of Judah. He tried valiantly to get Judah to understand that the power was with God, not humans.. The first chapter of Isaiah is always read on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the day we commemorate all the destructions that befell us, beginning with the destruction of the 1st Temple.
Isaiah is employing a technique that Moses used as well to foreshadow God’s sorrow, anger, hurt and rebuke. “Hear O heavens and give ear, O earth” is a call for all of us to truly listen with our whole being. To hear with our souls, our spirits, not just our intellect. In fact, I believe this intro is for us to know that we have lived in rationalizations for too long and they are destroying us.
The love God shows in the next phrase is phenomenal, “children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me” expresses both this tremendous love and care, concern as well as the deepest sorrow any human can experience-children turning their backs on their parents. I hear the call of God to return, come back, yet….
No matter how the Prophet expresses God’s love and sorrow, the people refuse to hear and continue to turn their backs on and leave God. The ability to hear is key to our living Isaiah is telling us, yet we continue to be deaf. We continue to be deaf at the price of our freedom, our lives and no amount of beatings can get us to hear, return and stop offending.
Rabbi Heschel says: “the prophet pleads with us to understand the plight of a father whom his children have abandoned”(The Prophets pg 80) as proof that this is sorrow and not anger. Rabbi Heschel seems overwhelmed with God’s love of and rejection of God’s children. Rabbi Heschel speaks of the people’s lack of knowledge of God, God’s love and the Covenant to me. The people remained indifferent and even defiant in the face of further chastisements they could not hear the words of Isaiah, how sad.
In our country today, we are facing the same problem. People are not reaching out to each other with love, compassion, concern, rather we reach out to the people who agree with us and to anyone who doesn’t, we reach out with anger, hatred and, in some cases, violence. We have fallen into believing that authoritarianism is a good thing. Power by the minority is excellent, if we are the minority. We have stopped hearing the call of God, the call of democracy, the call of freedom and we are paying the price for it. Our political leaders will take us down to destruction, as the leaders of Judah did in order to keep power. Some religious leaders are paying lip service to the powerful thinking they are running the show while they go against the very tenets of the faith they profess to understand. We, The People, have to stop turning our backs on the principles of our democracy. We, The People, get to hear, give ear and take actions that our leaders will hear, understand and change their ways.
In Recovery, Hear and Give Ear are not just ancient instructions or techniques. They are real concerns and needs for all of us in order to hold ourselves accountable to something higher than our wants and desires. We are aware of our powerlessness and know that only God can return us to sanity/clarity. We do this through our 4th and 5th step, to begin with. The 4th step is our searching and fearless moral inventory. It has to be searching and fearless if are not top repeat our old errors and the errors that Isaiah is speaking to us about-turning our backs on God and loved ones, rebelling because we desire something else, etc. We have to give ear and hear the call of our soul/spirit to override the rationalizations of our mind and emotions to ‘clean up’ these behaviors.
Step 5 we hear ourselves tell God and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs (and rights). This telling is for us to hear the effect we have had on another(s) so we realize the depth of our betrayal and the sorrow another(s) have experienced at our actions. Only through this identification can we truly begin to appreciate the love, sorrow and pain we have caused. Only through this identification can we acknowledge our own indifference and how often we were called home and rejected the call.
As I sit here this morning, I am embarrassed at my own lack of hearing and giving ear. I am saddened by the myriad of ways I did/do not hear another and I was/am not heard and understood. Over these years, I have heard and given ear to many people and there are others that I did not/could not hear. I have betrayed them by not hearing and I have betrayed God when I don’t give ear today. I also have ‘brought up many people’ and they have forsaken me, so I do understand God’s sorrow and pain in these verses. I also am and have welcomed people back after this experience because God welcomes me back each time I turn back to God. I ask forgiveness for my lack of hearing and by being deaf betrayed your humanity. I ask you to “give ear and hear” how you have done this also. Stay Safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark