BIG DREAMS Sermon #1 (Shelach Lecha)

BIG DREAMS Sermon #1

Rabbi Bernard Gerson

June 24, 2006 – 28 Sivan 5766

I am about to share with you a statement that may not wash over you with complete clarity, but I promise to put it into perspective and then repeat it at the end of my remarks this morning:

I dream of empowering others to discover their unique and soulful purpose through a daily diet of kedusha.

In the spirit of learning about life and its purposes from personal role models, allow me to introduce you to Jeff, the manager of the auto shop where I make periodic visits for work on our two cars. Jeff makes a good first and repeated impression upon the customer as being always cheerful, and eager to help. For someone you really do not want to see all too often, I miss Jeff when a lot of time passes between visits.

When, recently, I asked him how he is doing, he replied "Livin' the dream, Rabbi ... Livin' the dream."

Jeff runs one of the busiest auto repair and tire businesses on this side of town, not because he is the least expensive, mind you, but because he is knowledgeable, accountable, and makes it widely known that he loves shmoozing with his clientele and creating solutions for them every single workday. This is how he lives his dream.

As many of you know, I spent three days last week with sixteen other Rabbis who were gathered by STAR (Synagogue Transformation and Renewal) for a pilot program for congregational rabbis entitled "Good to Great," based on the best-selling book of the same title by Jim Collins. While most of us felt that upgrading from "Fair to Good" would be a sufficient investment of our time and travel to Philadelphia, the site of the conference, we were challenged to take our respective careers to the next level.

Shortly after the meeting was convened, we were introduced to a stimulating formula: BIG DREAMS, combined with COMPETENCE AND ABILITY, are what make for GREATNESS.

I confess to having had lots of dreams during my 18 years of time in the pulpit. Never before, however, had I seen dreaming in the context of personal and professional growth.

Think of all the things you do between the moment you wake up in the morning and the time your head hits the pillow at night. Think of how many thousands of actions your hands do, your eyes do, your legs do every day. Think of how many words leave your lips, how many sounds enter your ears.

Life is so full of wonderful, timesaving inventions that make our lives more frenetic than ever: Mobile phones, computers, cars and planes have all "upped the ante" of the demands that we make on ourselves and that others make on us. The fact that more can be done leads inexorably to more having to be done.

And very often, in the mêlée of this technological magic, we forget our destination.

One of life's most important distinctions is between tactics and strategy.

Tactics is about how you get there. Strategy is where you're going.

The "tactics of life" is about maintaining our bodies, eating, washing and exercising. The "strategy" is about what sort of life I want to live, who do I want my children to be, and what will they say at my funeral. Very few eulogies that I have heard focus on the fact that deceased brushed his teeth daily.

"Send out men for you and they will explore the Land ..." opens this week Parsha of Shelach Lecha.

The word that the Torah uses here for "to explore" is Vayaturu; the root of Vayaturu is tor, which connotes joining things together into a row; it is also the root of the verb "to sew". This word implies seeking out positive aspects for a defined purpose. G-d's command to the Jewish People was to examine the Land and understand how it was strategically suitable for its task as the homeland of a Holy Nation. The tactical aspect of how to uncover the Land's weaknesses was a subordinate agenda. Part of the spies' mistake was that their focus was on the negative and the tactical — finding the weaknesses of the Land. Had they focused on their strategic goal and recognized its unique suitability to their goal, they might not have made such a tragic error.

In life, tactics must always be subordinated to strategy.

The two spy stories that are featured in today's Sidra and Haftarah tell us a lot about faith in Hashem and the disastrous consequences of its absence. The mission undertaken by the two spies sent by Joshua to Jericho corrected the foolhardy and faithless endeavors of ten of the spies sent previously by Moses to the Land of Canaan.

In addition, we learn from these two texts how to adopt a general formula for greatness. When contemplating the settlement of Canaan, Moses asked, "Should we do it?" His faith in God should have given him the obvious answer and it ultimately came to him when Joshua and Calev reported back with a definitive "Yes".

Joshua's question was, "We know that we will now conquer the land, but how are we going to do it?" His mission to Jericho served to answer this very question. After the spies reported back to him, he acted immediately in order to accomplish his goal.

So, our Sidra and Haftarah together present a formula for effective leadership. First, one should inquire: should it be done at all? If so, one should ask: how should it be done? And then, finally, go for it!

Rev. Robert Hardies, Senior Minister of All Souls Church in Washington, DC, makes the case for dreams being the main ingredient to vitality and redemption in our world (excerpt from a sermon delivered on Martin Luther King Day Weekend in 2002):

Throughout the ages, in all traditions, mystics have believed that God speaks to us through our creative faculties. Through our imaginations. In our own tradition, Emerson was the strongest proponent of this belief. For him, the spark of God and the spark of his creative imagination were indistinguishable.

"But how," you ask, "can day-dreaming make any difference in our lives and world? Wasn't this what Marx said about religion, that it just allowed people to project their hopes onto some other world while enduring great injustice in this one?" Well, sometimes yes, but sometimes no. Sometimes it's the dream itself that gets us all worked up to make it a reality. Even such a skeptic as Freud wrote, "The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream leads us into the future." In other words, the dream of the wish fulfilled is the first step toward fulfilling the dream.

We "Conservative-Egalitarian Jews" pride ourselves on being a reasonable people. We like to think of ourselves as immune to the excesses or flights of fancy to which other folks might be susceptible. And we're correct that reason is vital to religious life. Without it, there is no check on the religious imagination. There is no way to test whether religion is serving or hindering its goal of human liberation.

But let me say this, we have overestimated the power of reason. Reason is rarely compelling enough to transform us. To compel us to make a difference in our lives and in our world. To do that we must possess a religious imagination that grasps hold of all of our selves. Our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our souls.

One of the lessons of the failure of progressivism in America is the realization that we will never reason our way to justice and peace. The answer to the world's problems is not just one new theory or best-selling book away. Our minds are perfectly capable of providing solutions to these problems. It's our will that's weak. And our will is transformed not by our reason, but by our imagination. We will never reason our way to salvation. But we might just imagine our way there.

I believe that all who share a moderate place on the religious ideological spectrum have a role to play. I believe in leadership that offers its following a faith that sets the spirit free. A faith that liberates our imaginations from the colonization of corporations and the dogma of fundamentalisms. A faith that lets us dream dreams again. Big dreams. Ample and supple dreams. Dreams worthy of dedicating our lives to.

For over 50 years now, this congregation has held a dream out to the community. It's a dream that's embodied in our very name: Rodef Shalom. Our name speaks to a dream of a religious community where Jews of different ages, demographic categories, sexual orientations -- all people -- can come together in the pursuit of peace. We understand that the differences of outlook and the hot buttons that have kept us inspired over our respective, Jewish lives, sometimes bring us to disagreement. Peace does not mean consensus, but it does mean inclusiveness. Peace is a plateau upon which we can sing together, pray together, dream dreams together and build a better world together. It's a vision we hold out not only for our shul, but for our world.

This is the dream that ennobled Aaron the High Priest, and endeared him to so many in his day; it is a hope brought us all here this morning and it's the dream that keeps us coming back. Because although we always strive toward it, our work is never finished.

There is so much more to say, but now tactics must overrule strategy, as the hour of Musaf and Kiddush draws near. But allow me to leave you with my opening statement, which by now, you might have guessed, is the iteration of my personal Big Dream:

I dream of empowering others to discover their unique and soulful purpose through a daily diet of kedusha.

More to follow!

In the meantime, may we all be stewards of our dreams, and may I be granted the ability to clarify and make accessible to you those of my own dreaming.

Shabbat Shalom.