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Rabbi Micah D. Greenstein My dear friends, what an honor it is to represent a state where ordinary people are doing such extraordinary things, for Tennessee, our nation, and beyond. Our state’s religious community is a model ministry for faith in action. I know of no other state, for instance, where the Governor’s Commissioner of Health is not only a doctor, but an ordained minister too. Dr. Kenneth Robinson leaves the Capitol to work weekends as a pastor in one of America’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Or take the State’s other celebrated doctor and minister, Dr. Scott Morris, whose Church Health Center in Memphis has become a model for the entire nation in providing health care for the working poor and uninsured. And what about our youth?! From the 8th and 9th graders at Whitwell Middle School and their Paper Clips Holocaust project in East Tennessee to the National Civil Rights Museum and Rhodes College Learning Corridor for public school students in West Tennessee, the different roads, rivers, and highways in our long state represent the different paths Tennesseans are taking to serving others. “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,” the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “tied into a single garment of destiny.” A special word of shalom to Senator Lamar Alexander and the other elected officials with us today, to Bishop Chane, and the Bishops of the Great State of Tennessee, from Bishop vonRosenberg in East Tennessee to my own Bishop and cherished friend in West Tennessee, Don Johnson, and Dean CB Baker of St. Mary’s Cathedral. And how honored I am that the President, officers, trustees and members of Tennessee’s largest synagogue, Temple Israel, have made the trip to Washington along with so many Episcopal, Catholic, Protestant and other partners in faith from throughout the State. We are here from Memphis to Murfeesboro, from Knoxville to Nashville, from Chattanooga to Union City, and all over the country. Yet another reason why I’m so thrilled to be here is to celebrate this day in the presence of the Cathedral’s new Dean, Sam Lloyd, with whom I feel a special affinity. Dean Lloyd is still remembered fondly in Tennessee from his years as Chaplain at the University of Sewanee, and when Sam Lloyd described the primary purpose of this cathedral, he articulated the parallel mission of my home synagogue in Tennessee. “This cathedral,” he wrote, “is a significant voice for an intellectually vibrant and compassionate Christianity in a world torn apart by conflict and division.” Change the words “cathedral”and “Christianity” to “synagogue”and “Judaism,” and it’s easy to see how we Christians and Jews are truly different branches of the same family tree. For the aim of Temple Israel in Tennessee is to be “a significant voice for an intellectually vibrant and compassionate” Judaism in a world torn apart by conflict and division. It feels so comfortable being here today in this house of prayer for all people. If it weren’t for a bat-mitzvah, baby naming, and Sabbath services, I’d come back next week to witness that glorious moment when Sam Lloyd is consecrated as Dean of this awe-inspiring Cathedral. If any of you are timing my sermon, please start now! We are gathered in the setting the great preacher F. Forrester Church had in mind when he said: “We all stand in the cathedral of the world. In cathedrals, there are a multitude of stained glass windows. Each of us is born into one part of the cathedral, and our parents and grandparents teach us how to see the light that shines through our particular window, the window that carries the story of our faith and heritage.” The same light of God shines through all the windows of the cathedral, but we interpret that light in different ways, through the lenses of our particular faith traditions.” There are many different responses to life in the cathedral of the world. A relativist would say, “All the windows are basically the same, so it doesn’t matter where you stand.” A fundamentalist would say, “The light of God shines only through my window.” And a fanatic? He would break all the other windows except his own! Clearly, one of the great Judeo-Christian contributions to the world is the notion that each of our faith traditions, and each of us, is a refraction of God’s light, and that we are therefore here not to denigrate, demean, or refute each other, but to help each other see the light of God in all humankind. The papacy of John Paul II, of blessed memory, who did more to further Jewish-Christian relations than any Pope in history mirrors the sense of shared mission and purpose in this cathedral today. The religious diversity of today’s assembly suggests one of the greatest achievements of our lifetime. And that achievement is the realization that religious pluralism is the will of God. Forty years ago, the hope was expressed that the relationship between Judaism and Christianity might someday be one of “mutual reverence, that without denying our profound differences, Jews and Christians would seek to help each other in understanding what our faith in God requires of us.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel) I want to suggest today that what our faith in God requires of us may be summed up in three words. Deed over creed. Our Judeo-Christian faith is fundamentally about deed over creed, the doing over the talking. For a living faith does not mean preaching God’s language. Living our faith as Christians and Jews means being God’s language. And I can think of no better example of what it means to be God’s language than the story depicted in a stained glass window in this very cathedral. It’s the story of four WWII chaplains. A Methodist minister named George Fox, a Dutch Reformed minister named Clark Poling. A Roman Catholic Priest, Father John Washington, and the fourth was a rabbi from this city named Alexander Goode. These four chaplains of different faiths became what their biographer calls, “an immortal symbol of brotherhood. As their torpedoed ship, the U.S.S. Dorchester, plunged into the depths of the North Atlantic in February, 1943, these men—a priest, a rabbi and two ministers of diverse denominations—gave up their life jackets to passengers who didn’t have one. Then, arm in arm, they joined in prayer, comforting each other as they sank together into eternity.” The fire and brimstone they preached was not one of eternal damnation, but one of our common humanity and what it means to live in God’s image. The camaraderie of these four chaplains was highly unusual in the 1940s. Catholics and Protestants didn’t mix with each other, and neither mixed with Jews. So to see ministers in the same American uniform of different faiths working together as a team was virtually unheard of in 1943. When this ship carrying 900 terrified young soldiers was struck by a Nazi torpedo, one young man, Michael, was thrown from the boat. Though injured, he was brought back on to the ship before it sank. Michael hobbled along the starboard side of the ship when he suddenly saw the four chaplains. Three of the chaplains had already given their life jackets to boys who didn’t have them. Dan Kurzman, author of the recently published book, No Greater Glory, writes that Rabbi Goode, the fourth chaplain, “removed his life jacket and knelt beside another wounded man.” Michael, the narrator of this story, was mesmerized by the scene he watched from about five yards away as the rabbi gave the man his life jacket, and unlaced his boots for the wounded man. The rabbi put the wounded man’s unaffected arm through an armhole in the life jacket and he tied the other side of the lifejacket around the wounded shoulder with the bootlaces. When the ship went down, this improvised life preserver would permit the solider to float in the water. Rabbi Goode then joined his three spiritual brothers and they started praying together in English, Hebrew, and Latin.” “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu…Our father, Who art in heaven…Hallowed be Thy name…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…Adonai Echad.” One survivor said that seeing the chaplains continue to minister to the soldiers as the ship went down is as “close to heaven as I ever hope to be.” “Rabbi Goode’s efforts to save the wounded man with the bootlaces,” Kurzman concludes, was more than an attempt to rescue one last person. That act symbolized the essence of these chaplains of different faiths. “It reflected their aim of saving humanity by ridding it of its inhumanity.” Whether you come to God by the way of Torah, the way of Christ, or any other way, shouldn’t that be the goal of our faith traditions? For the Jewish mission, says Elie Wiesel, is not to make the world more Jewish; and the Christian mission is not to make the world more Christian. Our shared mission is to make the world more human. That’s the message and legacy of the stained glass window in the Heroes’ Chapel in this National Cathedral. It’s also the message of our State’s namesake. Tennessee is not called “The Believers State.” God forbid. We are the Volunteer State, known for the voluntarism, valor and courage of volunteer soldiers and citizens of very different creeds in the 18th and 19th centuries. We provided three U.S. Presidents, Jackson, Polk, and Johnson, whose deeds mattered much but whose creeds few can recall because they matter very little. Tennessee’s crowning distinction isn’t about creed, it’s about the great deeds wrought by some for the benefit of all. We became the 36th state to ratify the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution thus giving America’s 17 million women their long overdue right to vote. That’s our crowing distinction, not saving others for God but living a life that is worthy of being saved! The most repeated command in the five books of Moses, too often ignored by religious people, is not about belief. The most repeated command in the Torah is to remember the widow and most vulnerable members of society. That was Jesus’ message too. What matters more, my friends? That we believe what is right, or that we do what is right no matter what our divergent beliefs may be? There are some devout and faithful religious people who sincerely believe that the world is going to hell so why be engaged with it. That’s not what my faith or the mother church of this cathedral teaches. God puts each of us in a particular place and time to make a difference in this world in the here and now. Pray as if everything depended on God, the rabbis teach, but act as if everything depended on you. One week from this Saturday night, the Jewish festival of Passover will begin. There is an unforgettable moment in the ritual seder meal when the door is opened for Elijah to enter. Jews do this to teach that maybe this will be the year when Elijah will arrive and announce the Messianic Age, the transformation of the world that is into the world that may someday be. Harold Kushner, in his book, Living A Life That Matters, speaks of the Christian thinker Harvey Cox who witnessed this Elijah custom, after which he offered the most compelling interpretation I’ve ever heard. He suggests that when we open the door for Elijah every year, and he’s not there, we should realize something very important: Elijah is not coming! And the Messiah isn’t coming either. We have to be the Messiah. As Kushner puts it, “we have to act together to clean up the mess we have made of God’s world because nobody else is going to magically appear and do it for us.” When we place deed over creed, when we set aide our own interests and priorities and give of ourselves generously instead of being our usual selfish selves, we become the messiah for somebody if not for everybody! So if Elijah doesn’t appear in Tennessee or DC on Passover eve, instead of saying, “We’ll just have to pray harder and wait for next year,” we should say, “If Elijah the prophet isn’t here to take care of the sick, the poor, the hungry, and homeless, then let me be Elijah! Let me do whatever I can. After all, isn’t that why God put me here?!” Even with the deep faith I have in the afterlife and world to come, would I take off my life preserver and give it to a total stranger to save his life instead of mine? I honestly don’t know if I would. How many of you would do it? Thank God, we’ll probably never be tested that way, but the heroism of those chaplains, their selflessness, their willingness not only to pay the supreme sacrifice for their country, but for a total stranger, is the kind of religious example we must hold up to the world, not because of their beliefs, but because of what they did because of their beliefs. So when we head back to our homes in Tennessee and everywhere else, let us deepen our love and faith by showing our love and faith. And may we do that not only through the beautiful rituals and prayers which add meaning to our lives, but even more, through the deeds we do for others. May we consider becoming even more religious by rededicating ourselves to serving others. After all, in the cathedral of the world, every person is a refraction of God’s light. A-M-E-N |