Daily Prophets
Day 190
“The angel who talked with me came back and woke me as a man awakened from a deep sleep. Then he explained to me as follows:”This is the word of God to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit-said God.”(Zechariah4:1,6,).
Zechariah’s description of his encounter with the angel is a description that happens to many of us, more often than we think. It is the same experience that causes scientists to exclaim ‘eureka’! It is the experience many of us have after we solve a challenge that we worried over and kept trying to solve and couldn’t for awhile. It is the experience that causes us to say “it was right in front of us all the time”, “how could I have missed it when it was under my nose”, etc. The prophet is also reminding us that the angel we need is always around us, yet we are too asleep to notice the angel and/or too self-reliant to ask for assistance, and/or too afraid to ask for help. When we allow ourselves to be woken by the angels around us, we are opening ourselves up to finding solutions rather than winning. When we acknowledge how asleep we have been, we are open to ask for and receive forgiveness for our willful blindness. The prophet is giving us a message from God as well as from his experiences: Wake Up, Lift up your eyes and see, Circumsize the foreskin of your heart, etc. When we listen to another with open heartedness and open mindedness, we are awake. We are awake when we hear the call of our soul and God to do the next right thing. We are awake when we stop taking advantage of another’s vulnerabilities, just because we can. We are awake when we see the Image of God in our fellow humans.
This awakening leads to the second verse above. In a world that worships power, prestige, money, buildings, etc, Zechariah comes to remind us that all the power and strength will not redeem us, will not make us worthy of being redeemed nor will it bring us closer to our authentic selves. Here is God, the All-Powerful, the Almighty, reminding us that it is by God’s spirit that we will succeed, survive, thrive. I can only imagine the response of the people of Judah, they have been captured and exiled by a human power that was greater than they and now they are hearing that what will save them in the future is God’s spirit and connection. These words are so antithetical to our way of being then and up to this day. Power is the only thing that matters to most of us. People use it for their own good and to strengthen themselves rather than using God’s spirit to wield their power for the common good and the highest good-care for one another. Debby Friedman, z”l, wrote a song-“Not by might, not by power, but by spirit alone will we all live in peace.” These words, from Zechariah, were true in his time and so very very true in ours. I ask the leaders of our country, our state, our city, our Jewish Community if they are following the prophet’s words/God’s words or are they once again using God as a battering ram to win and/or a shield to justify? Zechariah is clear that neither position is cool with God.
Rabbi Heschel teaches regarding this last verse: “those who have a sense of beauty know that a stone sculptured by an artist’s poetic hands has an air of loveliness… The prophet’s ear, however is attuned to a cry imperceptible to others. What is the highest good? Three things ancient society cherished above all else: wisdom, wealth and might. To the prophets, such infatuation was ludicrous and idolatrous.(The Prophets pg. 7-8). He goes on to say:”The prophets were the first men in history to regard a nation’s reliance upon force as evil. God’s special concern is not for the mighty and successful, but for the lowly and the downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor…the heart of God goes out to the humble, to the vanquished, to those not cared for.”(ibid pg.166-67). Rabbi Heschel once again shakes me to my core. I love beauty and I have to be on guard not to worship it; how many divorces happen because one member of the couple see someone else more “beautiful” in physical and/or spiritual ways than their partner? How often do we worship buildings and powerful people? Celebrity is not gained because of achievements in making the world better, it is gained through likes and views and making the world worse! “Why can’t we all just get along”, Rodney King’s words are constantly hanging in the air and should be ringing in our ears as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel today. We are idolators, those of us who forsake God to worship mendacious politicians to be able to have a seat at the ‘big people’s table’. I am embarrassed at how many of my colleagues in the Clergy have sold their souls to have power, who practice Avodah Zarah, idolatry to keep their jobs!
In recovery, we know that we live each day because of God’s grace and God’s spirit in us. We are sober one day at a time, depending on our spiritual condition, as it says in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. In recovery, we are constantly keeping our hunger for power in check so we can connect with God’s Spirit and make the world and our living one grain of sand better each day.
I worshiped power and went into alcoholism and criminality because of my idolatry. I have sat with powerful people in my recovery and I see the times I gave in to my need to exercise power for my sake and when I exercised power for the sake of God. I am painfully aware of my errors when I cherished wealth and might over spirit and care. I am also aware of my sending up for the downtrodden, the humble, the vanquished, etc. I am alive and well because of God’s spirit after my exile and my return is grounded in spirit and love. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark