Daily Prophets
Day 43
“Ah Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because by word and deed they insult Adonai, defying Adonai’s majestic sight. Their partiality in judgement accuses them, they avow their sins like Sodom, they do not conceal them. Woe to them! They have served themselves in evil.”(Isaiah 3:8-9)
Isaiah is calling Judah and Jerusalem to account. Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, cannot stop herself from stumbling because of words and deeds of her inhabitants. I see this as a teaching that nothing protects us except our own deeds and nothing defeats us except our deeds. And, our deeds either exalt God or insult God.
This point is so important for so many of us. We do matter, what we do matters, and we influence so many concentric circles of which we have no idea. Our deeds radiate out and cause vibrations throughout the Universe. Like the Butterfly flapping its wings or a tree falling the forest, our actions exalt or insult our very beings and so many other human beings. We are responsible and capable.
What is Isaiah’s complaint? The people of Judah and Jerusalem think that their false piety will save them, they think that the Holy City of Jerusalem will save them, and they are wrong. They think that they are doing right so they don’t hide, they believe the lies they tell themselves so they stand on the merits of their actions! Their blindness and conceit is their evil and they don’t even know it.
When we believe the lies we tell ourselves, we are the most susceptible to ruin. When we have to ‘clean up’ our actions by explaining the technicalities that allow us to do the deed, we are grasping at straws, according to the way I read these verses. Isaiah is exhorting us to stop thinking we are serving God when we are really only serving ourselves. This, I believe, is the greatest evil in the sight of God.
Rabbi Heschel says that verse 8 is a statement of God’s being at one with God’s people. “What was the purpose of planting the vineyard, of choosing the people? The vineyard was planted to yield righteousness and justice. Yet the fruit it yielded was violence and outrage, affecting God, arousing God’s anger.”(The Prophets, pg. 85). The anger of God is always aroused with sadness and as a last resort, according to Rabbi Heschel. God’s anger is a direct result of the stumbling, falling, defying, insulting, perversion of justice, and indulging in evil. While a lot of people want to say: ‘the Old Testament God is an angry, mean, etc. God’ it belies the responsibility of the people.
If only our leaders in Washington would study these verses. Our government has become a cesspool of people defying God’s gloriousness. The elected officials and the bureaucrats have joined to keep the status quo of racism, hatred, demeaning of the poor and the stranger, being partial to a certain constituency at the ruin and demise of the rest of the country. Some of the political leaders in Washington and in State Capitals have decided that perverting justice is a good thing as long as it serves them, keeps them in power. This, unfortunately, is happening in voter registration, vaccine rollouts, Covid-care, healthcare in general, and help for those who need financial assistance. I am calling on all of our elected officials to stop their evil ways and truly exalt the glorious presence of God in our midst through their deeds.
In recovery, we know all about falling and stumbling. We are so aware of our propensity to lie to ourselves that, in Chapter 5 of the Big Book of AA it says those who can’t give themselves to the program suffer from not being able to engage in rigorous honesty. We know the destruction that our sins have caused and we were like Jerusalem and Judah, insulting God, doing evil, being proud of our sins. Our recovery demands and depends on our being honest with ourselves and another(s). It demands that we continue to do “the next right thing” no matter what is going on right now. It calls us to be of service and, as the 12th Step says, “Practice these principles in all our affairs”. We do a daily inventory to keep our house clean and enhance the good things we have done. Our recovery bears its fruit through our actions.
In reading these verses this morning, I see how my own fallings and stumbling have happened. I, like all of us, am imperfect. I know the experience of the people who are bewildered because they are drunk with their own power and ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’. I have been there and still go there every so often. I also know the experience of Isaiah, who is holding God and human together. I know the sense of betrayal from both the betrayer and the one betrayed. I have been transparent in my living and this has seemed like I was arrogantly saying the rules don’t apply to me, while I was saying this is what I think is needed in this moment. Not as a clean up for any bad actions, just as an explanation of my own, at times, erroneous thinking. Daily inventory and doing T’Shuvah are necessary practices for each and every one of us so we can continue to honor and exalt God and stop the slide of our stumbling and falling. How are you still falling and stumbling through your arrogance? How are you letting go of the lies you tell yourself? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark