Rabbi Peter S. Berg said, “We remember losses. We fear losses in the future. Whether you are now or ever have been in a dark place or know that dark places inevitably come — my sermon is for you today.”
He preached at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “When Life Disappoints,” and the scripture reading was Deuteronomy 30:15–20.
Berg began his sermon with the story of Nachshon Wachsman and his mother Esther.
Wachsman with the third of Esther and Yehuda’s seven sons. Although slight, he was invited to join the elite Israeli commando unit, Orlev Golani. He spent eight months in Lebanon and then was invited to learn how to operate a highly technical vehicle.
On that one-day training course, he was captured by Hamas. A television station called the family and said they had a video of Wachsman bound to a chair with a gun to his head. Hamas wanted 20 prisoners released, or he would be executed. And he was. Esther spent that Shabbat in overwhelming grief. She buried her son the next day.
“God forbid we have an experience like Esther’s, but we are all acquainted with grief, and as many of us come to worship this morning, we too sit on a bed of pain,” Berg said.
The scripture in Deuteronomy urges us to choose life, Berg told the congregation. God says uvcharta chaiim, to choose life and live so that you and your children will prosper. “How do we choose life when life seems to be falling apart?” he asked.
One way is to simply feel guilty. “We say, ‘It must be my fault,’ or berate ourselves and say, ‘If only I had done this or if only I had done that.’ Is God punishing us?” Berg said.
He continued, “It is far easier to feel guilty than to believe that some things are out of our control. The Bible knows about guilt; remember the story of Sarah who died after she heard (erroneously) that Abraham killed Isaac. Guilt worked at her as she wondered if she could have prevented Isaac’s death.”
This summer he helped a family bury their 5-year-old daughter who drowned. (He assured the congregation that he only tells these stories with the permission of the family.) It was incomprehensible. There were adults and lifeguards around, but it was no one’s fault.
“If we are not careful, guilt can kill us — physically, spiritually and emotionally. To choose guilt is not to choose life,” he said.
If guilt is not the answer, sometimes we turn to anger, Berg told the congregation. “We don’t blame ourselves. We blame God or someone else. If the Bible knows about guilt, it also knows about anger.”
Rachel struggled because of her infertility, and she begged Jacob to pray for her. Jacob told her, “Can I take the place of God, who has denied you the fruit of the womb?” Jacob’s anger, Berg said, masked his own helplessness.
He recalled an unhappy widow, who years after her husband’s death had not gotten rid of his clothes or moved one piece of furniture in his study. She said she would not allow either of those actions “… until the doctors come over here and apologize for what they did — I will not touch anything. They should have caught this earlier!”
Berg said, “When we stay angry, our blood pressure rises, and we undermine our relationships and our integrity. People blame God for their pain. To choose anger is not to choose life.”
Another option people try is denial. “We pretend that the dark days will just magically go away,” Berg said. “Most of us will do anything to avoid a confrontation with the self. If the Bible knows about guilt and anger, the Bible certainly knows about avoidance and denial.”
He reminded the congregation that Jonah, the subject of his sermon on Sunday at the ecumenical worship service, “was the most celebrated runner in all of Jewish history.” Jonah resisted and jumped on a ship going in the opposite direction from Nineveh, where God had told him to go.
Berg said that the rabbis, in a parable, described the details of the storm that surrounded Jonah’s ship. All the other ships were sailing in peace, but Jonah’s was in distress. “How could this be? It is impossible.”
He continued, “For (Jonah), the storm is raging, but everywhere else he sees happiness and sunshine. Many of us feel that way — all around is laughter, but over our heads, the rain keeps pouring down. So we ignore it, avoid it or deny it. To ignore life is not to choose life.”
What is choosing life?
Berg suggested that the Deuteronomic text offered a clue. “I set before you life and death. But should you choose life?” He continued, “Notice that before God tells us to choose life, God says, ‘I set before you life and death.’ God places the possibility of life in every circumstance.”
We may miss the opportunity, he told the congregation, if we look for a golden street or a door with flashing lights when the opportunity comes in smaller, overlooked aspects of life. “We speak of phish-pash b-geder haginah, a small door in the fence of a garden. In every life there are small doors that open to a fruitful arena,” he said.
Berg continued, “Life remains futile until we realize our task is to find those small doors that can open up new horizons but will remain closed until we open them.”
In the Louvre, there is a painting of Faust and the Devil looking at a chessboard. The Devil is smiling, but Faust is dejected. The caption is “Checkmate!” People look and are overwhelmed by a message of despair.
“Yet one man made a phenomenal discovery,” Berg said. “He said, ‘There is still another way. Faust can still win!’ It looked like there was no option, but there was a small door. If we study the board of life carefully, we can always find another way, an overlooked way.”
How can we turn adversity into hope, courage and goodness, he asked the congregation. He suggested that Esther Wachsman is a model. Twenty years after the death of her son, she said don’t choose guilt, don’t choose anger, don’t choose denial. She said, “Will I become a victim of my fate, or will I choose to initiate a new destiny?” She decided to do one thing — tell her story to bring hope to the lives of others.
Berg said, “She saw a small door, she opened it and she acted. That is what it means to choose life. It is not always easy. Opening the door doesn’t always change the circumstances of our lives, but it does change us, and that changes everything. We don’t know what we will find, but we know God is waiting.”
God provides the small door; we have to open it. “Open the door and you will have offered God something with which to work. I don’t know what your small door will be, but I have a feeling God does. Find your door, open it and walk through it. Open the doors that God has provided and choose life,” he concluded.
Renee Andrews, former president of the Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua, presided. Les Adler, of the Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua, read the scripture. The prelude was Prelude, Op. 10, No. 2, by Joseph Sulzer, played by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir sang “Psalm 150,” by Louis Lewandowski, under the direction of Stafford and accompanied by Owen Reyda, organ scholar, on the Massey organ. The postlude, performed by organ scholar Laura Roberts, was “Toccata,” by Eugène Gigout. Support for this week’s services and chaplaincy are provided by the Harold F. Reed Sr. Chaplanicy and the Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund.
