Daily Prophets
Day 181
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to announce good news to the humble; he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
For I the Lord love judgment, I hate robbery with a burnt offering; and I will give them their reward in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.(Isaiah 61:1,8)
Second Isaiah is bringing strength, hope and courage to the people of Judah, the exiled ones. He begins by letting the people know he is not bringing false hope, rather he as been sent by God to imbue the people with an open heart to take in the words, the strength and courage to be ready for their redemption. The prophet is speaking to the people who can hear, the people who are desperate to hear and experience their redemption.
The humble, broken-hearted, and the captives are waiting for their prison doors to be open. We are the people who have learned through our experiences of being haughty, being closed and believing our power will save us, to seek and hear, wait and be ready as well as pray and call out to God for our salvation. We learned from our past and the history of our ancestors that we alone cannot save ourselves, we need God, we must seek God and we can only do this through humility and an open heart. We have been bound up in our glory, our power, our false sense of self and this has brought us low and imprisoned us. Second Isaiah is calling out to all of us, those who were in exile in Babylon and those of us who are in exile from God today that our wounds can be healed, our captivity will end and our humility will be rewarded. He is also telling us that without humility, a broken/open heart and the realization that we are imprisoned in our own self-centeredness and false ego, we will not be saved.
We are in a time when these traits are needed badly. While many people are proclaiming God speaks to them, they say it with haughtiness and pride, a sure sign as we see from Second Isaiah that God is telling them to return, not to continue to wrap themselves is some false sense of security. Being humble means to hear and listen to another(s) and to hear the voice of God through another(s) words and actions. Broken/open-hearts come from realizing our need to not be the smartest person in the room and be open to learning more and more each day. Realizing we are imprisoned and a captive to our own self-aggrandizement is the beginning of the end of our captivity.
The last verse above is so important to all of us. God loves judgement/justice! We know this from the Torah, the Prophets, the writings, etc. God hates false offerings, falseness in any and everything. Rabbi Heschel teaches: “sacrifice is an essential act of worship. It is the experience of giving oneself vicariously to God and being received by Him.(The Prophets pg. 249) and he goes on to say: “To love means to transfer the center of one’s inner life from the ego to the object of one’s love.” Just as God loves judgement and hates false offerings, so too do we, humans, have to love justice more than falseness. We employ falseness to cover up for our self-centered and egotistical drives. Second Isaiah is telling us to let go of our false egos, serve God in truth and we will be rewarded. The reward being an “everlasting covenant”. We have this and have been given an “everlasting covenant” many times over by God. God doesn’t leave us, we leave God. We have to be willing to surrender our falseness, surrender our coldness and hard-heartedness, surrender our hunger for power and prestige to God. We have to transfer the center of our inner life from our false sense of self to God. Only then will we serve God, self and humanity in the manner we were created for. Only then will we stay free, stay humble and stay open-hearted. Only then will we be able to bask in the everlasting covenant God has made, makes and will continue to honor with us.
In recovery, we work hard everyday to stay humble, open-hearted and out of imprisonment and captivity. It is a daily job and we do this by remembering who we are serving, God! We have transferred the center of our inner lives, the center of meaning for our life to serving God, to loving justice, to loving kindness and service from the self-centeredness and betrayal of our lives prior to recovery. We are not perfect nor do we claim to be. We know, however, our recovery is dependent on our spiritual condition and when we are not loving and living our spiritual principles, when we are not loving and living in God’s will, we are in danger of losing our recovery. In recovery, we have a daily practice of service, of kindness, of truth, of compassion and of love towards God and our fellow human beings.
I heard these words of Second Isaiah in a prison cell and I have kept them in the forefront of my being ever since. I miss the mark, of course. Yet, the majority of my life has been spent being open and humble to God’s words and will, to staying out of the prison of my mind and the captivity of my ego. I love justice and hate falseness, especially my own falseness. I am engaged in spiritual practices each and every day. I work at being of service to humanity more and more each day. I am engaging in the lessons life has taught me, engaging in correcting my errors, and engaging in transferring the center of my inner life to God, to Harriet, Heather, Miles, family and friends more each day. I pray you do the same. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark