By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency
Apr 16, 2015
Q: When the current pastor arrived, our Catholic parish was a vibrant, singing community. Now, after many of his changes, it is not. Many parishioner have left. After a few attempts to speak to the pastor about what's been going on, I wrote a letter to Pope Francis, which I copied both the pastor and the bishop. The letter was signed by my best friend and myself.
To our amazement, we received a letter back from the pastor calling us liars and saying we were trying to scandalize him with false allegations. There were no lies in that letter. After licking my wounds, I decided to share his response, along with a copy of my letter, with the Pope and the cardinal.
We all know the story of the Good Shepherd who leaves his flock to find the one lost sheep. Well, due to this priest's response, a few sheep that have stopped going to church and are even questioning the very basics of our faith. I, being an older, more stubborn sheep, still attend Mass at my church, but in honesty, while physically I'm there, my heart and soul are not.
While my friend and I knew we wouldn't hear from the Pope, as He certainly has bigger fish to fry, we never thought we'd be treated so rudely and heartlessly by our parish priest. Would Jesus have been so cruel? So, we beg the question: What do the lost sheep do when the shepherd is not good? -- Anonymous, via cyberspace
A: I wish I could spend every column defending clergy. God knows some of them are bad shepherds, but let's just step back for a moment and take a breath.
You're describing a man who's taken a vow of celibacy, poverty and obedience in order to serve God and the Catholic Church until he dies in poverty, without a family to mourn him. Are you, Mr. Angry Sheep, ready to make that kind of sacrifice for God and your church?
Please understand, I don't mean to attack you the way you were attacked your pastor. Your pastor may, indeed, be in dire need of people skills and compassion. However, your accusations seem rather mild. They don't, thank God, include charges of pedophilia or other unforgivable and criminal behavior. From your letter, it seems as though your parish priest's principal sin, in your eyes, is that he doesn't sing enough!
You said you've tried to talk with your pastor. How many attempts did you make? In any event, your next step should have been to write the pastor a personal letter outlining your grievances and asking again for a face-to-face meeting to work out constructive solutions to the problems you've observed for the good of the parish.
Instead, you went over his head and ratted him out. Why you thought that would work out is bewildering.
I've seen such actions in synagogues (never my own, where everybody loved me all the time) and Protestant churches. Some congregants treat their clergy rudely, like employees who are at their beck and call. Then, when staff disappoint them, they go straight to the board of trustees and try to make life difficult for them.
Clergy are people who are only trying to serve their congregations and God. Sometimes, how they see that service doesn't always mesh with how their flock sees things. Do you think even a good shepherd is loved by every sheep?
When I interviewed at the synagogue I served for 33 years, I told them flat out: "I believe that working here will be a blessing for me and a blessing for you, but there is one thing you must know about me. There will not be one day when I think I work for you. Every day, I will be working for God. There are two reasons I'm telling you this. The first is that it is true, and the second is that if I worked for you, I'd have to do what you want, but if I work for God, I can do what you need."
I strongly urge you to apologize to your pastor and begin together the hard work of gathering the flock, which is ultimately his sacred task, and being part of a faithful flock, which is your sacred task. Being a shepherd is hard and being a sheep is hard, but both need each other so neither lacks anything that God has given.
(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com.)
By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency
Apr 9, 2015
Recently, I received some timely questions recently regarding the biblical Exodus from Egypt and the vexing problem of Pharaoh's "hardened heart." Here's a sampling:
Q: During the Passover celebration, in the prayer book at our table there was a phrase: "...and G-d hardened the Pharaoh's heart," thereby causing him to go back on his promise to free the Jews, and then G-d leashed more plagues on Egypt. Somehow, this doesn't seem logical or in keeping with free will -- to harden the Pharaoh's heart and then punish the Egyptians as a consequence. Is my version of the prayer book incorrect or incomplete, or am I not viewing this text correctly? -- A., via cyberspace
Q: Why did God tell Moses to ask Pharaoh to let his people go, then say he'd "steel" Pharoah's heart so he'd say no? After Pharaoh does what God made him do, God punishes him with 10 plagues. I'm sorry, but this whole story makes no sense to me. I've been told events occurred as they did to show God's great power. The God I love and worship is not so vain and illogical. Do you threaten people with all kinds of horrors so they'll LOVE and obey you? -- P., via cyberspace
A: The problem here, as both readers correctly observe, is that we don't hold people accountable for coerced actions; only for actions freely chosen. If Pharaoh had no choice but to refuse Moses, then God had no right to punish Pharaoh for his refusal. There are two ways to reconcile this very difficult part of Exodus.
The first is to see the story as God's way of delivering a totally just and appropriate punishment on Pharaoh and the Egyptians (who assisted Pharaoh) for imposing 400 years of crushing brutal slavery on the Jewish people in Egyptian bondage. You can't just say, "Oops, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking" any more than Hitler could have said that in 1945.
According to this interpretation, some crimes are so heinous that they must be punished, and the hardened heart is just a literary device to describe what justice demanded. It was also a way of showing spiritually primitive slaves that God was clearly more powerful than Pharaoh -- and if you were just about following the most powerful god, Pharaoh was not the best choice.
Don't forget that all of this came about before the revelation at Mount Sinai, where the higher nature of God's commandments was revealed. I don't favor this interpretation because, whatever its motives, it presents God in a morally compromised manner. Why harden Pharaoh's heart at all? Why not just crush him? It makes no spiritual or moral sense to me, either. This is not the God I know.
My interpretation of the story is, to simply say: Pharaoh hardened his own heart through a lifetime of evil. The biblical text is a metaphor for the way evil freezes us to the possibility of doing good.
Think about how people turn bad. They don't switch from being kind human beings into serial killers instantly. They descend into the depths of evil and depravity one step at a time. They begin by doing one small bad thing. Perhaps they're revolted by their own actions, but not enough to stop them from doing something bad again, and then again.
Eventually, they lose any shame, guilt or moral pangs of conscience at doing evil. I explain this to children by asking them to remember how their hands feel after they've been out in the cold without mittens for a while. Eventually, they lose feeling in their fingers.
The same is true when we do bad things; we lose the feeling of doing good. Over time, evil freezes our hearts, makes them hard and we die. Pharaoh was dead inside -- and that's what is meant by God hardening his heart. He could no longer change because he'd been bad too long.
What the story teaches us is that repentance is theoretically possible for everybody, but impossible for truly evil people. God says to Moses at the beginning of his mission: "But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him." (Exodus 3:19 NIV). That was the reason for the plagues. Pharoah could only be defeated; he could not be changed.
In this hopeful season, during which we focus on salvation, it's sobering but necessary to remember that some, by their own accumulated moral lassitude, are forever hardened and forever lost.
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By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency
Apr 2, 2015
Q: At this time of year, I love to watch TV shows about the Bible, and a recent program sparked some questions. The Old Testament contains many prophesies that God will send a Messiah. Christians believe the Messiah has already come, while those of the Jewish are still waiting. For Jews, what will reveal the Messiah's arrival? And do you think the Messiah will be accepted as such? -- D., via cyberspace
A: I'm glad your question is about how we'll recognize the Messiah in the future, not why the Jewish people didn't recognize Christ as the Messiah in the past. If a new Messiah appeared on earth, it would indeed be a challenge for the Jewish people to recognize him (or her!).
Judaism does have a list of criteria for messiahship, which include gathering into Israel all the Jews living in the diaspora, fighting a decisive and victorious battle against the forces of evil, resurrecting the dead, and ending all violence in the natural world (the lion will lie down with the lamb). It's hard to believe that if somebody did all that, that he or she would still be doubted. Of course, it was the obvious fact that Jesus did not do any of these things during his time on earth that led the Jewish community to reject his messianic claims.
However, the capacity for cynicism and disbelief runs deep, so I'm forced to admit that some people would never recognize the new (or the returned) Messiah, no matter how many miracles he/she performed. There's an old Jewish commentary (midrash) on the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea.
The question that prompted the commentary was: Why did the people who'd just seen the greatest miracle ever performed rebel against Moses so soon after crossing the sea? The answer given: Some people didn't see the miracle because they didn't look up, so all they saw was mud. I think there are mud walkers in every age.
These are the people who want proof, and then when they see a sign or a proof, they deny it or want another proof. They take from faith the decision to believe and turn faith into just another empirical or scientific claim. Reason can bolster faith, but it cannot replace faith.
What I would ask you to pray about this Easter Sunday is whether you think Christians would recognize Jesus if he returned. Christians have in their religious narrative a story of a messianic visit, but would that really make it easier to acknowledge the second coming of Christ?
If a long-haired Galilean appeared in your church claiming to be Jesus, would he be lauded or laughed at? There are certainly Christian mud walkers, too. The arrival of a Messiah is a cataclysmic and glorious event, but not everyone wants their golf game interrupted to go eat loaves and fishes. Just as not every Jew saw the miracle at the Red Sea, so not everyone, even in Jesus' inner circle, recognized the full dimensions of the miracle at the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
I give to beggars. I give to all of them, even the ones I suspect are conning me. I do this and encourage all my students to do this because there's also a Jewish legend that when the Messiah comes, he will appear on earth as a leper at the gates of Rome, and will only announce himself when someone passing by stops and offers to change his bandages.
I don't pass many lepers in my daily travels, but I believe the Messiah will appear as a beggar and only announce himself when someone pauses and shares their material blessings with him. My children asked me once why I gave money to a beggar and I told them, "He might have been the Messiah and I didn't want to be the one who kept him from saving the world." They never asked me again.
There's another Jewish legend that says when the Messiah comes, he'll be riding a white donkey over the hills to the north of the city of Safed in Galilee. He'll be led by the prophet Elijah. May that happen, and when it happens, may we see it not with our mud-stained eyes, but with our pure and believing souls.
Happy Easter Sunday to all my Christian brothers and sisters!
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By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency
Mar 26, 2015
Passover and Good Friday fall on the same day this year ( April 3 ), and Easter Sunday and the second day of Passover are also on the same day ( April 5 ). Although Easter Sunday was on the same day for all Christian denominations last year, that will not recur until 2017.
The close proximity of Passover and Easter on the calendar is no accident. It was the clear consequence of the gospel accounts. All the synoptic gospels record that the Last Supper was either a Passover Seder meal -- Matthew (26:17) and also Mark and Luke), or a meal the night before Passover -- John (18:28).
Since Passover , like all Jewish holidays (but unlike Christmas), is calculated on a lunar calendar, that makes Easter float with the springtime and thus with the Jewish calendar forever and ever. I, for one, am glad it does.
Passover and Easter are the only two holidays in Judaism and Christianity that have the theological power to bring us together. True, there's also much in the account of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus that has split us apart and caused terrible suffering for Jews accused of deicide and terrible distortions in Christian theology.
However, the essential meaning of the two holidays is the same: Freedom to serve God often calls for bloody sacrifice, but freedom is God's will for us all.
Both holidays transform wine and bread into symbols of God's salvation. The matzah and the Eucharist wafer (in the Catholic tradition) are both unleavened bread. Leaven--yeast-- is a symbol of arrogance and wealth. Unleavened bread is modest and simple and teaches us humility as an indispensable religious virtue.
At the Last Supper, the bread is the body of Christ. So the Seder is eaten for God, and the Eucharist is eaten of God, but both transform bread into a symbol of God's saving and powerful love for us.
Wine at Passover is the symbol of joy and of the promises in Exodus chapter six that God would bring us out of the house of bondage and to God and freedom. Wine at the Last Supper and at the Eucharist feasts for two millennia is the blood of Christ, but that blood is not the blood of a murdered man. It is, in Christian teaching, the blood of the Messiah, and as such it is a symbol of victory over sin and death and not an unjust stain from the body of an innocent man. Both meals remind us that salvation is not easy but it is promised and that promise will be kept.
Both holidays also give more than a passing nod to the natural world created by a supernatural God. These are, let us never forget, springtime holidays. Seeing how the natural world is reborn in the spring helps us to believe that we can also be reborn by a rededication to our faith and our God.
The close connection on the calendar between Passover and Easter has special personal resonance for me. Easter fell on Sunday, April 12, 1987 . The first seder meal that year was Monday, April 13 . I first met my dear friend Fr. Tom Hartman that Sunday, having agreed to appear on News 12 Long Island's cable news show to discuss with him the similarities and differences between Passover and Easter.
I got a little chirpy during the interview and just blurted out, "Look, it comes to this: There are no chocolate bunnies in Passover and there is no horseradish in Easter!" If not for Tommy's gentle grace, I'm sure I would never have been invited back. Two hours later, we were still talking in the parking lot. This season is when our friendship and the God Squad began.
The Hebrew word for Egypt is mitzraim, meaning "a narrow place," like a gorge hemmed in on both sides by high rocks. To be a slave is to live in a narrow place. Anyone who's depressed or in need of hope is still living in mitzraim, but there's a place beyond Egypt. That place is the desert, where we try to find our way, but we're still suffering and still not free.
For Christians, that desert place is Calvary. But there's a place beyond the desert. That place is the promised land, and for Christians that place is the Garden Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where Jesus rose from the dead.
When I met Tommy, I was in a narrow place, and because of my love for him and because of his love for me, we both journeyed to wide places where we could celebrate many Passovers and Easters together and apart. This season and these holy days changed my life. I pray that they may also change yours.
Happy Passover !
Happy Easter!
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