There is a group of retired men who gather at a café in Tel Aviv every morning and talk about the state of the world. “Given the state of the world,” said Rabbi Peter S. Berg, “the talk is pretty depressing.” Then one day, one of the men said, “You know, I am an optimist.” Another man asked, “Then why are you so worried?” The first man said, “It’s not easy to be an optimist.”
“This year is a difficult one to be an optimist,” Berg said. “In a world of trouble and turmoil, what can we think, feel, expect?” He preached at the 9:15 a.m. Monday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Buy a Field of Hope,” and the scripture reading was Jeremiah 32:1–9.
In a world where a wife gives up on a marriage that is too much struggle, parents give up on a son with drug problems, a daughter gives up on parents who won’t accept who she is, an employee walks out of a job for not being appreciated, and a cancer patient fights despair, where does one look for hope?
Berg suggested that the story of a man who lived in the seventh century BCE in the town of Anathoth, called Jeremiah, might provide some answers. Jeremiah woke up every day surrounded by hostile enemies, his country Judah was threatened by Egypt and Babylon, and he had criticized his own government because of the moral vacuum in its leadership.
“The court prophets were telling the king (Zedekiah) that God was on his side — everything would be OK. Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet, expressing his personal distress over the situation around him. Jeremiah was under attack for who he was and what he believed,” Berg said.
Jeremiah saw the world, Israel and himself realistically, Berg noted. Jeremiah’s joy was gone. He was heartsick and dismay took hold of him. He was under house arrest, and Jerusalem was under siege by Babylon. “In his very darkest day, Jeremiah heard the voice of God,” Berg said.
God told Jeremiah that his cousin was coming with an offer Jeremiah could not refuse. “It did not seem like a good time to buy land in Jerusalem — it was not a great real estate moment — but buy it as a sign of hope that the city will be rebuilt,” Berg said.
He continued, “That was crazy real estate advice, like buying a lot in mid-town Atlanta after Sherman burned it down.”
Jeremiah knew he had heard the word of God and bought the field. He bought a field in occupied land while sitting in jail, and he made a show of it, so it was on the record. “How did he muster the hope to buy it, to take the risk?” Berg asked the congregation. He made three suggestions for how this was possible.
First, Berg said, Jeremiah was a Jew. “Without hope, we would perish. Our music and liturgy express the hope that is possible for ourselves and the world.”
Rabbi Hugo Green, a Holocaust survivor and a broadcaster on the BBC for many years, was sent to Auschwitz at age 13. He and his father were sent to work; his brother and grandfather were sent to the gas chambers.
In spite of the horror in their lives, Green’s father looked for ways to find scraps of Jewish observance. On the first night of Hanukkah, his father made a menorah out of scraps of metal, made a wick from the thread of his uniform and used butter he had gotten from a guard to help the wick burn.
Green protested that the butter could better be used on a scrap of bread. His father said, “We can live a long time without food but not a single day without hope. The menorah is a symbol of hope, not just now but everywhere.”
Abraham had hope when God promised him children; Moses had hope that he could speak to Pharaoh; the Exodus provided hope that the people would be free of slavery; the homecoming from exile provided hope that the people could start again; Jewish worship was transformed after the Romans burned the Temple; after the pogroms, inquisitions and the Holocaust there was the return to the Holy Land.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said that Jews invented hope. The Greeks believed that your fate was determined by your past. Jews rejected determinism. “Jewish hope is a protest against escapism, against the blind acceptance of fate,” said Berg.
The second reason for Jeremiah’s hope was that it was rooted in the God of Israel. God had not abandoned Jeremiah and the people, and he believed that God would surely rebuild the city.
Berg noted that hope is often like a wish list — I hope my daughter will get into the University of Michigan, I hope I can find a parking place, I hope it won’t rain. “This is not how hope is in faith,” Berg said. “It is not a wish list. It is an orientation of life.”
Author Peter Berger has said hope is a signal of transcendence. Hope is future-focused and only humans are able to think in the future tense, to live in the present in the same body in which we think about in the future. Hope looks at the world that is and the world that might yet be.
To be hopeful is to look at the long view and see “that the arm of God bends toward justice,” said Berg. He cited the website “Ashley Madison,” with the motto “Life is short, have an affair.” The website was hacked in 2015, exposing users seeking out an affair. The message, Berg said, was “life is short, the long view does not matter.” But, the long view “tells us to be generous, kind, just, to look at our responsibilities not just our rights, goodness over gain, justice over power.”
The third aspect of Jeremiah’s hope is that he took concrete action to recognize the good in the world. In the book of Genesis, Berg said, after each day of creation God said, “ ‘Hakarat ha tov, it is good.’ And at the end it was very good. Jeremiah is our model for recognizing the good even in times of trial. When we recognize the good, we can perform the good.”
Itzhak Perlman, renowned violinist, had polio as a child and wears leg braces and uses crutches. The journey from the wings to center stage is a long one; but when he plays he soars, said Berg.
At one concert, as he was playing, one of the strings on his violin snapped. The orchestra stopped playing, and the audience thought Perlman would have to stop or leave the stage or bring out a new string. Then Perlman signaled he was ready to begin.
“We know it is impossible to play with only three strings,” said Berg. “But Perlman refused to know that. He raised his bow, remembered the music and changed the music to play with the instrument he had. Sometimes the artistic task is to see how much music you can make with what you have left.”
Berg continued, “This is our mission — to recognize the good in the world and practice it, to uphold people rather than embarrass or belittle them. I have a challenge for you. Think of one person you completely disagree with and imagine the one good thing in them. Do this for yourself as well. Even if you have a broken string, you have something to be hopeful about, a reason to play music.”
Jeremiah expressed his hope in recognizing the good and bought a field. “Do it in the face of unfair gun laws, lack of racial understanding. Move from being separate to enter into interfaith understanding. Speak with kindness,” said Berg. “To do these things is to buy a field of hope. Let us buy a field as people of hope.” The congregation applauded.
The Rt. Rev. Eugene T. Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua, presided. Renee Andrews, former president of the Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua, read the scripture. The prelude was “Allegretto,” from Sonata No. 4, by Felix Mendelssohn, performed on the Massey Memorial Organ by Owen Reyda, organ scholar. Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, directed the Motet Choir in singing “Verleih uns Frieden,” music by Felix Mendelssohn and text from Latin, circa the sixth century CE translated by Martin Luther. Reyda accompanied the choir on the Massey organ. Stafford performed the postlude, “Introduction zur Thodenfeier,” by anonymous. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Harold F. Reed, Sr. Chaplaincy and the Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund.
