Right at the opening of this week’s reading God calls Abraham.
Get the sense that God has been looking for someone
to be in a relationship with. Sense that been looking for a while.
God’s tried turning to Adam and Eve, and then
Noah, sense that hasn’t worked, quite.
Now with Abraham it feels different, sense that it
works.
What is the thing that God is looking for, and
finds in the call to Abraham, that didn’t find, or didn’t work previously?
Wonder if God has the same problem many parents in
the room might recognise?
God wants human beings to do exactly what God
wants entirely through the act of free choice.
Feels familiar to me, as a father. I want my children
who will do exactly what I think they should do, without me telling them twenty
seven times, bribe them with treats or threatening to withdraw television. If
that’s what God is after then I’m feeling delighted to be in such good company.
Or maybe it is a little more complicated than
that. Maybe what I am really after isn’t exactly children to do precisely what
I think they should be doing. Maybe it’s something more complex and, actually, much
more interesting. And maybe, by thinking a little more deeply about what God is
looking for in Abraham I can learn more about what this search is really about.
In the mind of the Rabbis long before there were
humans on this earth God would hang out with Angels - and the wonderful thing
about Angels, if you are God, is that Angels do whatever they are told. And so
there’s God, surrounded by Angels who will do whatever God wishes. And it’s not
quite enough. God wants more.
Naaseh Adam, says
God, Let’s make a human, and - the Rabbis imagine - the Angels throw up their
wings in horror. How can you do that, humans will lie, and cheat - what about
us, aren’t we perfect enough for you? Apparently not - here we are.
Look at what happens a moment later. The first
human is lonely, so God creates an Ezer Knegdo - a help against. That’s
the relationship between Adam and Eve, the model for all paradisiacal love -
help against. The model isn’t someone who simply does everything we wish - like
some sci-fi avatar created only to embody our every wish. That isn’t the model.
The model is someone who pushes back.
Or have a look at what goes on in any Yeshivah -
any house of Jewish study. Yeshivot are full of Chavruta pairs - pairs of
students arguing with and against one another trying to work out what a
particular text does or does not mean. Truth comes from the encounter with
others, it emerges out of argument. There’s a great story in the Talmud of a
great Rabbi, Rabbi Yochanan, whose long-time Chavruta dies and the Rabbis find
another person for him to study with. But the new Chavruta only finds ways to
agree with the great Rabbi. And Rabbi Yochanan isn’t impressed. He wants a
Chavruta with a bit of fight in ’em, someone to bounce ideas around with.
That word Chavruta - it’s as close as it could be
to the Hebrew word for friend - Chaver, Chaverah. Friendship, real friendship,
emerges from precisely this sort of vigorous exchange. Real friendship isn’t
about a person telling you what they think and you just say, ‘Oh yes, you are
so right.’ A person who only tells you how wonderful you are isn’t really a
friend. They don’t help you grow. They don’t help you understand anything you
don’t understand already. In fact maybe that’s the very point of friendship,
the very point of a partner - an Ezer Knegdo, maybe that’s the very point of
having children - the very point of life itself - to understand things that we
don’t already know.
Maybe that’s exactly what God is looking for in
Abraham.
It’s not the first time in the Torah that God has
called on someone to do something. Just last week we read the story of God
calling on Noah. God announces God is going to destroy the world, and calls on
Noah to gather the animals and build an ark. And Noah gathers the animals and
builds the ark. Sounds fine. But there is a wonderful criticism levelled
against Noah by the great Chasidic master, the Kotzker Rebbe. The Kotzke
accuses Noah of being a Tzaddik in pelts - a righteous person in a fur coat.
There are, the Kotzker taught, two kinds of people who find themselves in a
cold room, full of people. One puts on a fur coat - that’s the Tzaddik in pelts
- the other lights a fire. Noah’s failure, in last week’s reading, was not
lighting a fire for anyone else. He should have challenged the people, urged
them to improve their ways. He could have challenged God not to destroy an
entire world - imagine the destruction.
Abraham, of course, is the paradigm of the Tzaddik
who doesn’t just pull on a fur coat when things get a little cold. We’ll read
this story next week. God tells Abraham God is going to destroy Sodom and
Gemorrah and Abraham pushes back. ‘Shall not the God of justice act justly?’ I
debates, provokes, teases God into relenting. Perhaps he didn’t save the
cities, but he tried. A true friend. A Chavruta, a partner - an Ezder Kenegdo.
And ultimately the partner God is looking for.
The relationship between God and the descendants
of Abraham is still going.
And the attitude is still going strong too.
Just one example, from much later in the Jewish
journey. King David. The story in Second Samuel is that David is overseeing the
ark of the God on its return to the Jerusalem and the ark slips on the wagon
carrying it and is about to fall on the ground. Uzzah jumps forward to stop the
ark falling, and God - affronted by someone touching the ark - smites Uzzah and
kills him.
וַיִּֽחַר־אַ֚ף יְ-הֹוָה֙ בְּעֻזָּ֔ה
וַיַּכֵּ֥הוּ שָׁ֛ם
And God was angry with Uzzah and smote him there
And how does David, the beloved of God, the one
God chose to be King respond?
וַיִּ֣חַר לְדָוִ֔ד עַל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר פָּרַ֧ץ
יְ-הֹוָ֛ה פֶּ֖רֶץ בְּעֻזָּ֑ה
And David was angry with God’s striking, striking
Uzzah!
And David refuses to take the ark back into
Jerusalem until God calms down and stops smiting people for trying to help.
That’s Ezer Kenegdo, that Chavruta, that’s the
thing God was looking for that God found in Abraham - but missed in Noah.
There’s a wonderful rabbinic teaching where the
Rabbis pick up on the fact that God tells Abraham ‘walk before me’ - it’s as
if, they say, God has asked Abraham to light the way for God - as if God needs
Abraham to light up a path for God to find the way. I know - we don’t usually
talk about God in these human terms - but this is the language of the Torah and
the greatest of our sages. And it’s true. All of us need other people to light
the path for us, to allow us to see things we cannot see, to allow us to
experience that which we cannot experience if we surround ourselves with those
who simply do precisely what we ask of them. Even God.
And this brings me back to my attempts to get my
children to do their homework, or tidy their plates up after dinner, or all the
rest of it. At a certain level I just want to be to be obeyed. I want
everything I want done by everyone I come across, instantly and all the time.
But that’s not really, deeply, the case. Really, deeply, I know I need to be
challenged, disagreed with, objected to, criticised and ... and this is the
really important piece - improved. And I can only be improved by reaching out
to those who oppose me.
Sorry parents among you.
And I whisper this to the teens and the nearly
teens, and even the younger kids who are here.
It might sound a lot, as if your parents only
want you to do what they tell you to do, precisely as they tell you to do it.
But that isn’t really the case.
What I want, what they want, is really someone to
push against us. Stand up for what they feel is right, even if it’s different
to what I say I want.
We are all looking for Chavruta, we are all
looking for an Ezer Kenegdo. We are all looking for an Abraham.
Because as attractive as it sounds to live a life
surrounded by everyone doing exactly what we want, instantly. It’s not what we
need. It’s not even really what we will - quietly - admit that we need.
Shabbat Shalom
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