Tzav Sermon
Years ago I was attracted to Buddhism and in particular the Zen
masters. Then I discovered some of the
vows that were required of them so that was a short lived fascination. Nonetheless my attraction was about the
sanctification of the everyday that I saw in Zen. Even the most mundane activities can be
infused with holiness. That is the point
of the Buddhists’ beautiful rock gardens.
Even the everyday is holy. It
might be better to say that their perspective is that holiness is more often
found in the ordinary, everyday than in sanctuaries and cathedrals. You can find it here in what you must do
today. You need not search elsewhere;
you need not travel far.
That was when I also realized that I did not have to look
elsewhere for such teachings. They are
found as well in our Jewish tradition. Such
ideas are especially prevalent in the Hasidic masters. Martin Buber writes in Hasidism and Modern Man.
I need not search in other traditions for this important
understanding of the spiritual life. Everything
can be infused with holiness. There is
no sharp line between religious and not religious, between the holy and
ordinary. This line is part of the
difficulty of religious life in our own day.
People tend to draw lines between business and home, between synagogue
and street. But there need not be any such
distinctions. All of life can be infused
with the holy.
That was part of the power of the sacrifices we read about
in this week’s portion. They were hands
on. You had to carry your sacrifice to
the altar. You had to bring your
unblemished animal to the priest. You
could in a word, touch and feel your prayer.
You took this ordinary, everyday, valuable animal and transformed it
into a prayer.
Today we don’t of course slaughter animals on the altar. And I am thankful that my job does not
involve killing your animals. But we
have lost something in the move from animal sacrifices to the prayerbooks’
words. While we hold on to the
prayerbook, we can’t hold these words. Our
prayers appear ephemeral and perhaps other worldly. They appear to belong only in the synagogue. They should only be sung by a cantor or read
by a rabbi. The ideal spiritual life
then appears to be divorced and set apart from the everyday. But Judaism seeks to bring these prayers into
the everyday. They should not remain
here. They must not remain here. They should be spoken and sung by everyone. They should be heard in each and every place.
Let’s look at but one example. The blessings for eating illustrate this
point. You are supposed to say a
blessing before you eat anything. Everyone
is familiar with the motzi. “Blessed are
You Adonai our God Ruler of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth.” Less familiar is the Birkat HaMazon, the
blessing recited after eating a meal. A
meal is so significant that is wrapped in blessings just like the morning’s
Torah reading. If you want to see what
Judaism deems really important see what we have a blessing for both before and
after. These are enveloped in blessings. The Torah reading and a meal are but two
examples.
The question is: why do we say these blessings? The blessing before serves to raise our
awareness. We pause and give thanks
before eating. Unlike animals we don’t
just eat to satisfy hunger. We can also
give thanks. We reaffirm this with the
blessing that follows our meal. We give
thanks to God again and again.
There is an even more important reason why we say these
blessings. The rabbis argued that when
the Temple was
destroyed and with it the sacrificial system we had to move the altar to
another place. The synagogue service
came to replace the sacrifices of old. But
even more important the home came to also replace the Temple .
The table where we sit to eat our meals became an altar. We transformed the ordinary, everyday act of
eating into something holy. It was no
longer just eating, it was a meal. Our
tables became altars. Our homes became
sanctuaries.
Everything is holy, even eating. Every place is holy, especially our homes. The power of this worldview is that there are
things in all of our lives that we have to do and that we don’t like to do—not
eating of course, but perhaps gardening, or cleaning. I would not suggest that you have to like
chores or menial labor. You don’t have
to love to do such things. But if you
refrain from calling them unholy or beneath you, as something that you must
never do, then even the tedium and chores are transformed. Then even the most mundane is sanctified. Everything contains a spark of holiness.
If you think that you might only find such sparks in a synagogue
or a service, or a grand and beautiful destination, then you will miss seeing
it each and everyday. If you wait for
the spark to unfurl itself when you travel from your home or go out to a fancy
restaurant then you will miss seeing it standing before you in your home. Such sparks are not just found at the Grand Canyon or Le Bernardin. They are in the here and now.
Back to the ashes that someone had to bend down and remove
from the sacrificial pit. Not a great
job I would imagine. But even that was
done by the same priest who offered the sacrifices. The priest was privileged to do the lofty and
he also had to do the lowly. The
distinction as seeing one job as privileged and the other as a burden was not
his worldview. Both tasks were holy.
The Hasidic master, Sefat Emet, teaches: “The commandment
here to remove the ashes hints that as we burn up the waste in our lives we are
uplifted each day, and then we are given new light. This redemptive process is with us every
single day.” The removal of ash made
room for the fires to burn. Likewise we
must make room for our fires to burn, for our passions to ignite.
It is here. It can be
found today. Sparks of holiness are no longer in
sacrificial fires. But they are also not
just here in these songs and prayers. They
are to be found each and everyday. They
are to be found in our homes, in the everyday tasks that we perform.
It is only a matter of not calling them tasks or burdens. It is as simple as seeing each and every
moment, each and every job as holy.