[Sermon delivered at yesterday morning’s service. Read on if you’d like a unitarian (sic) hug.]
This drash may sound a bit like a promotion for November 25th’s interfaith Thanksgiving service, or our Thursday afternoon KSVY radio show. And it is! But please stay with me – I’m going somewhere else with it too.
Our Torah portion, Toledot, is devoted to the early lives of twin brothers Esau and Jacob. Esau, a hunter, comes off pretty badly in classical Torah commentaries. The sages and rabbis complain about him as lazy, cruel, and for preferring a bellyful of beans over his birthright inheritance. They judge Esau unfit to carry forward the holy nation-building mission bequeathed him by his grandfather and father, Abraham and Isaac.
But the Torah also shows glimmers of Esau’s decency. When he learns that the local wives he’s married displease his parents, he tries to make amends. Earlier in the portion, the text implies that Esau wears his best clothes when feeding his father Isaac the food he craves most.
Nevertheless, these small kindnesses don’t count for much in the rabbinical mind. The Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai even puts it this way: “It is well known that Esau hates Jacob.” In fact, the Talmud paints Esau as the progenitor of the most Jewishly oppressive authorities in ancient and medieval times: the Roman Empire and the early Church.
But the Romans are now dust, and ever since the Vatican II reforms of the early 1960s, the Church has largely welcomed us as long-lost siblings. And there’s even a Hebrew ambiguity in the Torah that prophesies – well, let me back up to the beginning.
In Genesis 25:23, Rebecca asks G?d why her pregnancy pains are so intense. G?d replies: “Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people shall be mightier than the other, and the elder shall the younger serve (v’rav ya’avod tzair).”
Scholars like Richard Eliot Friedman and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tell us that the grammar of “v’rav ya’avod tzair” is very fuzzy. These words can be translated as either “the younger shall serve the elder” or “the elder shall serve the younger.” The word “ya’avod” shares the same root as “avodah” – “service.” This service can refer to worship, but also to serving other people.
So important is avodah that Pirkei Avot calls it one of the three things on which the world stands: “on Torah, on service, and on acts of kindness.” Seen this way, G?d’s ambiguous prophecy might envision Esau’s and Jacob’s descendants serving each other. And you may (or may not) be surprised to find that this happens right here at home.
We all know that Sonoma Valley is a special place to live. One of the many, many things that make it so is Sonoma Valley’s Interfaith Ministerial Association. Once a month, more than a dozen members and leaders of Valley faith communities sit down together in our Community Room: Catholics, Presbyterians, Jews, Christian Scientists, Episcopalians, and Native Americans, to name a few. This group invites various city and county officials and nonprofit representatives to attend, and asks them a simple question: “How can we help?”
Those answering that question range from Sonoma’s Mayor and Chief of Police to Vintage House’s new elder care concierge. La Luz’s executive director. The founder of Care Partners dementia support. Hanna Center’s mental health team. Disaster responders. And a throng of others whose mission it is to serve – and by doing so, to build a better world.
It’s not everywhere that people of different faith traditions get along so well. In many places, it’s almost unheard of. But In Sonoma Valley, “interfaith” is more than a pretty and aspirational word. It’s a way of life – and of mutual service.
Shabbat shalom.