November 4, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

Presence

Edwin Estevez
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Deuteronomy 6:1–9

Sometimes, as a people stumbling on our journey of faith, we forget, neglect, or worse ignore our Jewish heritage. Biblical scholars such as N. T. Wright, who has been called the new C. S. Lewis for a number of reasons and who has spoken here at Fourth Church, has attempted to reclaim the context of the Palestinian Jewish identity of Jesus and set it as a context for textual study.

Tonight I wish to reclaim this context with tonight’s Hebrew scriptures. Tonight’s text is from the Torah, and you will be getting more of a dosage of Hebrew than you’re used to. Here we read the famous Shema Yisrael, prayed three times a day by devout Jews and for special ceremonies. Taught to children to pray before bedtime and said just before one’s death, it is traditionally prayed by covering one’s eyes with a blessing sign in the form of a Shin. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad.

Hear it again, in its strangeness: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad. Foreign to the ears of some of us, spoken for thousands of years by our ancestors in the faith, hear it as the prayer that has united people across space and time: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad.

The Adonai here, often translated in English to “Lord” and which in the Hebrew context could mean husband or master, is substituting the name for God as a practice, as it’s not in the text. The Jewish people reference this with the term Hashem, meaning “The Name,” so as to avoid using God’s name in vain. I would like to share with you this name, pronounced as some scholars think it should be, and I do so with all reverence and respect for Jewish practice, because I don’t believe it to be in vain, but rather central to our message. The name in the text is YHWH, taken from the call story of Moses. Through the burning bush, God tells a mumbling and fearful Moses, “Tell the people my name is “THE I AM THAT I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE,” which some prominent Jewish and Christian theologians such as Paul Tillich have translated as “The Present One, Beingness Itself”—the One who connects all things.

In fact, a friend, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a Jewish feminist theologian, replaces the practical use of Adonai—which she suggests can have a destructive meaning in our culture of possession and objectification—and renders the translation as such: “Be attentive to this, you who walk the Spirit Path, Shekinah, the Being One, All Spirits, Shekinah, the Being One, embraces all Being.”

Shekinah is taken from the context of the wilderness years of the people of Israel, when the cloud accompanied them, and is said to be the Eternal Presence, the very Presence of God with God’s people. It is taken from the word for “dwelling” or “abiding place” in Hebrew, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb translates it, as it is a feminine noun, as She Who Dwells Within.

Israel she translates as "you who walk the Spirit Path,” which she’s taking from the meaning of the word, which is the name given to Jacob who “wrestles with God.” To be Israel, to walk the Spirit path, is to wrestle with God.

In this “wrestling with God,” we are told, Hear, pay attention, The I Am That I Am, Beingness Itself, the Being One who is present, is our God. THE I AM THAT I AM is one.

In her book She Who Dwells Within, Rabbi Lynn tells us that the Shema warns us about objectifying life and to treat all creation as sacred mystery, that creation is a vast embrace between Creator and cosmos, harkening back to the Genesis when God proclaimed that creation was very good. The unity of the cosmos, that all exists as an interdependent network, makes us like gossamer fibers in a grandiose woven quilt.

The power of this text is its emphasis on the unity of God, God’s oneness, God’s connection to all things. Jim Corbett, who passed away on the August 2, 2001, was one of the founders of the Sanctuary movement, which aided people crossing borders from civil war-torn countries like El Salvador and Guatemala who found themselves in danger because of the elements but also because of government agents from their home country sent to murder them and even because of U.S. law enforcement practices. In fact, Jim Corbett was even taken to court on the ground that he had broken the law that he vehemently opposed on the grounds of the human rights that had grown out of the fallout of World War II and the Holocaust. He tells of some of this in his book, titled Goatwalking, which is about, well, goat walking—mostly.

But toward the end of it, he enters into discourse with politics and theology, taking from his Harvard education and his mystical experiences within the Sanctuary movement and even his own goat herding and ends it by discussing the Shema, describing it as the clearest expression of “all the high wisdom I’ve gleaned from nearly three decades of errantry.” He goes on to say, “Historically, the Shema is the form of the community betrothal to the One Presence.” He says that this is much more than a bystander’s description that reality means that everything must be viewed and understood in relationship to everything else; it is, in his words, “a pledge of steadfast love to the Creative Presence, . . . a dedication to . . . cocreative unification, through a covenant people. . . . I can go out to the Creation’s Eternal Presence, just as this love came to me, because it doesn’t split into loving and being loved.”

The Shema calls us to relationship, to deeper relationship with ourselves and with the other. The Shema call us to love God with our whole being. The Shema is a call toward wholeness. It is quite a contrast to the divided world we often inhabit and to the divided selves we often witness. There is war, greed, enormous abundance for few, and dearth and scarcity for many. Even in this wearisome election season, we find ourselves polarized, bombarded by hateful speech, each side warning of apocalyptic consequences should the candidate they dislike win.

We often are at conflict with ourselves, with our world, our neighbor, and those who have made us enemies and those we make our foes. We say one thing but do another, or in fact say one thing and then say another that contradicts it. We deceive one another; we’re not honest in our relationships. We’re not honest with family, friends, or even with ourselves.

We are divided selves when we are overwhelmed with the tragic elements of our lives, such as illness, death. We feel disjointed, out of place, not ourselves, like something is off, disintegrated, fragmented; our friends and family might even mention “you need to get it together,” bringing to our minds the image of something falling apart.

Being from the East Coast, I’ve been particularly affected by Hurricane Sandy. Houses and restaurants have been replaced by piles of sand; streets submerged in water; gas lines disrupted; power lines down; trees blocking entrances and exits to homes and roads; and people have lost lives. My own family and many friends continue with no power. Things are falling apart. Things have fallen apart.

You know this. In some deep way, you know this storm-wrought mix of devastation, cold, and darkness in your own life, where, like storm-torn trees, you feel bare, vulnerable to the elements that burden you, that and all of your color fades, your leaves fall, at autumn’s end. Things are falling apart. You have fallen apart.

You feel isolated, disconnected, fragmented. All around you there are those who feel threatened by you or who have yet to welcome you; there are the failures at your feet, the disastrous program, the loss of income, unmet expectations, the work that overwhelms and the injustices that anger; critical funds have been pulled, relationships have broken, we’ve lost loved ones to bitterness, illness, and death; faith falters, the kingdom of God seems not at hand, but certainly far off.

I will read a litany of words. See which ones resonate with you.

Divided
Broken
Disjointed
Dislocated
Out of place, isolated
Twisted
Bent
Unsettled
Wandering
Disconnected
Disintegrated
Splintered
Torn
Fragmented

We are broken, hurt. Hurt people. Deuteronomy reminds us, THE BEING ONE IS STILL THERE. The Present One is still present to us. THE I AM IS ONE and is present to us, and we are called to be healed and whole, to be in relationship with God and with one another, for God connects all things.

This is a covenant God, who makes a promise and commits to it, who pursues us; a God who has chosen to be God for us and not God against us, right at the outset of creation. We are called good. Right at the outset of Abraham’s journey, God makes a promise to be our God and for us to be God’s people: God with us, God Emmanuel, in the person of Jesus the Christ, and not God without us, but walking with us, present to us. God among us, by the power of the Spirit, God within us, whose Shekinah, She Who Dwells Within, is present to our innermost self, yes even to the broken self.

As we struggle, the Presence has promised to be with us, in the silence, in the darkness, in the pit of hell, in our brokenness. The Presence, The One Who Connects All Things, has promised not to leave us alone, isolated, abandoned, or forgotten.

A choice soon approaches: you know you cannot live on this way, fragmented and divided. You make a choice to believe, if only out of a desperate need and not some noble ability on your part. It is not even much of a choice, for the belief is something you must believe if you are to get through this.

You choose to believe that God, the One whose very presence connects all living things, the One who has called you, sustains you just as all creation is sustained, this One, this God is good. You realize that as clichéd as it can sound, or as poster-perfect but intellectually unsatisfying it can be, believing that God is good is like gathering around a warm fire on a long, cold night or having friends and total strangers gather around you after a storm to help put your life back together again.

Shema Yisrael, Yhwh Elohenu, Yhwh Echad. Hear, be attentive to this, those who wrestle with God, who walk the Spirit path, the Present One is our God. The Being is One and embraces you, along with all creation. Be divided no longer. Healing is offered in your brokenness—wholeness, God’s shalom.

Love your God with all of you. Be connected to all things. Do not make enemies. Do not be estranged, and do not exclude others, for you were strangers, aliens, slaves in Egypt. Love your neighbor as yourself, and in this you are caught up in the Eternal Presence, for God is love.

There, even in the darkness, God is present, at work. Even in the trees that now seem bare and dying, there is life anew, resting some, renewing. Even after the storm, the community has gathered around you. There in the darkness, you will receive your strength. And from there, you will offer your life’s song to others. Sing along with the psalmist:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you covered me in my mother’s womb.

Shema Yisrael, Yhwh Elohenu, Yhwh Echad. Amen.