"Purim"

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 28^th of February 1999

Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening Words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
on a late winter’s morning
to worship.
to lift up the joys and sorrows and questions of our lives
and hold them close to the ideals which have shaped us for centuries:
spiritual freedom, and mutual devotion,
inclusive openness, and reasonable limits.
May we praise the gift of another day,
and find in this ancient rhythm of song, silence, and word
sufficient nourishment for the living of deep and loving lives.

The First Reading [Next] [back to top]

The First Reading is taken from what the Jews call one of the Megillot, or the five Special Scrolls. In Hebrew, it’s called Hadassa in Greek and English, Esther. It was written by an anonymous author sometime early in the second century before the beginning of our era.

Then Mordekai wrote down the whole story, and sent letters to the Jews living in all the provinces governed by Xerxes, near and far. He asked them to set aside the fourteenth and the fifteenth days of the month of Adar, year by year, as a festival to celebrate the freedom of the Jews from their persecutors, and as a feast to mark the passage from sorrow to joy, from a time of weeping to a happy holiday. They were to set them aside as a time of great suppers with food and drink, and as days for sending presents of food to one another, and gifts to the poor among them.

And so the Jews undertook to continue the practice that they had begun in accordance to Mordekai’s letter. The days were called Purim,which means the day of dice, (or since the wicked Haman, son of Hamedatha, had used dice to decide the fate of the Jews, with the intention of crushing them utterly.

And Queen Esther threw her royal power behind the letter, making the festival, with its lamentations and feasting, fixed for all time by royal decree.

The Second Reading [Next] [back to top]

The Second Reading comes from the poetry of the Israeli Jewish poet, Yehudah Amichai, who wrote this poem in the 80s of our century. It was translated from the ‘Ivrit (or Modern Hebrew) into English by Stephen Mitchell. It’s called “Psalm.”

A psalm on the day the building contractor cheated me. A psalm of praise.

Plaster falls from the ceiling, the wall is sick, paint cracking like lips.

The vines I’ve sat under, the fig tree---it’s all just words. The rustling of the trees creates an illusion of God and Justice.

I dip my dry glance like bread in the death which softens it, always on the table in front of me.

Years ago, my life turned my life into a revolving door. I think about those who, in joy and success, have gotten far ahead of me, carried between two men for all to see like that bunch of shiny pampered grapes from the Promised Land, and those who are carried off, also between two men: wounded and dead.

A psalm. When I was a child, I sang in the synagogue choir, I sang till my voice broke. I sang first voice and second voice. And I’ll go on singing till my heart breaks, first heart and second heart. A psalm.

Sermon: Purim [Next] [back to top]

When I was about to leave Detroit for California to attend seminary in 1975, my father sat me down and said “We need to have a little talk about what you are doing.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,”said my father, “your mother was happy enough as longas you were attending church again.. Even though it’s not a Catholic church, she thought it was better than not going to church at all. But now that you are leaving for California, which is two thousand miles away, we want to know a little more about this “Universalist” church you go to on Sundays. So what does this church of yours… believe?”

I have to admit I was taken aback by the question. I had not seen this coming at all.

You see, my folks had taken my announcement that I was moving to California to go to Seminary with plenty of sorrow and a bit of shock, but they did finally say with love, “If it’s really what you want to do, fine. We want you to be happy.” They seemed to have accepted my decision with remarkable grace.

But now I wasn’t so sure where my father was going with his unexpected question on theology. So I said to him, with an admitted touch of wariness:“Well, I cannot recite a creed for you or anything like that…we don’t have one. Actually, there are many different beliefs among us. That is partly what we are about in fact, that several beliefs can exist side by side,

you know, kind of like grandpa (Umberto) being a strong atheist even though he is happily married to grandma (Anna) who goes to Mass a lot.They have figured out how two different beliefs can exist side by side with love, and that’s sort of what we Universalists are trying to figure out how to do gracefully.” Having drawn my grandparents into this discussion as an example, I felt pretty smug with my response, and thought the matter was over.

“Well, OK, then,” said my father, blithely throwing me a curve,“how about telling me about what you believe personally?”

I was not prepared for his question, but I knew I had better answer it pretty well. So I told him, in language I thought he would understand, something of what I believed in, and, perhaps more importantly at that time, all that I did notbelieve in. It was a long and strong list.

When I had finished, my father said, “So?”

I said, “So? Dad, that was a very difficult thing for me to do just now. I think I need to hear something better than ‘So?’ What can you possibly mean by saying ‘So?’”

Well, what I mean is this,” my father began. “Look, Mark, I don’t believe in everything they teach at church either. Not many people that I know do accept all of it.When the priest breaks the bread on Sunday morning it remains bread, and not very good bread at that. It certainly doesn’t become anything else. And Jesus was a good man who lived a long time ago, but that’s it. And when he died, he stayed dead just like the rest of us. And as for the “Man Upstairs,” I’m not so sure about Him either. I pray sometimes when I am in pain, but that’s about it. And because my pain never goes away when I pray, I’m not so sure Anyone is there. So you see, Mark, when I said ‘So?’ I was asking you basically ‘So what?’Idon’t believe the same things you don’t believe in. But ‘belief ‘ is not why most people go to church anyway.”

Now this last comment really threw me, so I said: “Well, why do you think people go to church then if it doesn’t have much to do with what they believe?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mark, I guess people really go to church to get together with other folks, to get married, to get buried, to get their kids blessed, and to be reminded on Sunday morning that being good is better than being bad, because sometimes you can get really tired and kind of forget. No, Mark,I know for a fact that there are many Catholics who believe no different than you. So, I guess what I want to know is, since your family has been Roman Catholic for over a thousand years, why would you change religious affiliation just because you have serious doubts not much different than my own? I’m not changing my religion, why should you?”

Now I have to tell you that this is notthe path I had imagined my father and I would be walking when the conversation began. I felt lost in the woods ….and without a flashlight. I didn’t know what answer to make. I remember saying something like “Well, for me, the words and the meanings have to be a little closer together. I find it hard to translate all the time.” But over the years, I have to admit I’ve been haunted by this conversation.And over the years since, I have used a lot of other sources to explore my father’s question.

Since that day with my father I have met agnostic Catholic priests, and skeptical Methodist pastors. I have known many Jews who are clear both that they do not believe in God, and that they are Jewish enough never to miss a seder.

I know Baptists who think Jesus stayed in his tomb on Easter Sunday, and rose only as an ethical influence on others.

I know Buddhists who don’t believe in reincarnation; and I have met self-proclaimed atheists who do.

What gives?

In order to address this, I am going to have to do something that drives my good friend and colleague Jane Rzepka right up the wall. She just hates it when people use the following formula: “There are two and only two kinds of people: those who are like this, and those who are that.”

Jane is justifiably convinced that things are more complicated than that. She knows that each of us is quite unique and cannot be cramped into only two neat boxes just like that. However, in this case, I will have to disappoint Jane. I think that there really are two distinct poles that a lot of folks seem to gravitate toward in this matter of religion.

The first group thinks that religion is basically a kind of culture. My father is in this category. You do certain things in certain ways for hundreds of years, and it gives you a sense of belonging, rhythm and identity. It does not need to be based on the literal acceptance of any actual metaphysical reality. Atheist rabbis, agnostic Catholics, and Marxist Baptists, like my Hebrew scripture teacher Norman Gottwald, gravitate toward this pole. So do some eclectic Unitarian Universalists, who borrow lightly from a variety of religious cultures without subscribing to their formal creeds, and while maintaining a critical approach.

The second group consists of those folks who think that they clearly have the whole truth, and that anyone outside their program is somehow just plain wrong.They don’t allow the “cafeteria approach”…some of this, some of that, a little Buddhist meditation mixed with your Mass. You either believe the whole program or you are out. Some people in this category are the much praised and honored Billy Graham, the now often lampooned Mr. Falwell, and of course, the present Pope and the Chief Orthodox Rabbi in Israel.. These are the “true believers” even though they believe different things. They may really and truly think their land was given to them by the God who chose them; or, they may really and truly think that the Bible is literally true and that everyone who does not believe their way will burn in hell forever, or they may really and truly think that the Bishop of Rome is the final authority on religious matters, leaving all evangelicals out in the cold, or they may really and truly think that the Qu’ran was recited by Muhammed, word for Arabic word, in a trance given of Al’Lah, or they may really and truly think that atheism is the only correct point of view, and that every religious and spiritual belief is of need false.

Orthodox Jews, literalist Christians, conservative Muslims, and even some atheist political types often gravitate toward this second pole of “true belief.”

And of course, some Unitarian Universalists gravitate toward this second pole, too. They are folks who are really convinced in the inevitable rightness of their approach, as defined by themselves, and who truly wonder why “our” way is not self-evident to all thinking people.

The way I spoke to my father that day, I am sure he was convinced that I was part of the “true believers” group, and I have to admit that, back then, I did think that Unitarian Universalism was indeed self-evident, and that

I was right and most others were wrong. True belief vs. culture. Culture vs. true belief. It makes for difficulty in communication if someone from one pole wants to talk with someone from the other pole. Or even if two folks who live at the “true believer” pole want to talk.

For example, when the Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my home in Oakland, I would sometimes talk with them. I’d invite them in for a conversation. Several days in a row sometimes. Now, you need to know that I know the Bible as well as they do for the most part. We could exchange chapter and verse easily, which indeed we However, when they questioned me and found out that I did not believe that the Bible was the Actual Word of the Almighty, but rather a human collection of books which could be criticized like any other library of books, they got up and left at once. They slammed the door behind them and never came back.

Why? Because we were no longer talking about the same book, you see. For me the Bible was a relative cultural reality; for them it was a supernatural visitation where every word had final authority. Culture vs. true belief. It’s a tough polarity. It makes communication tough between people of all sorts.

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Now this week, as you heard earlier this morning during the children’s story. Jews all over the world are celebrating the festival of Purim. It’s not as famous a holiday as Passover or Hanukkah or Yom Kippur, to be sure. But I am moved that the rabbis used to say this about Purim:“

One day, all the other holidays shall perish off the earth. Only Purim will still be celebrated in the golden age to come.”

Purim is a holiday that asks you to fast for day, then asks you to celebrate wildly. In parts of Europe, getting completely plastered was thought to be an essential part of the celebration, even though Jews on every other day stress and ordinary sobriety. Purim is more than tipping a glass of wine though. There are wonderful plays and gifts of food and the playful shaking of rattles by the children. It’s a lot of fun for everyone.

Purim is an example of a religious practice as a cultural event. As the reading from Hadassah (Esther) this morning makes clear, the reason for celebrating Purim boils down to a letter written by a human being named Mordekai. It’s not a festival established by divine decree, or written about in the Torah. In fact, the word “God” does not appear even once in the whole scroll, a reality which raised many rabbinical eyebrows in an earlier era.

Purim is a time of revelry mixed with fasting, which means it’s something like a Jewish Mardi Gras and Lent combined, but in reverse and shorter.

But I say that all of these holidays, Purim, Mardi Gras, and even Lent, are cultural. They do not involve any particular metaphysic or claimed supernatural origin. A supper on a certain day, a few glasses of wine, some songs, and toasts to the freedom secured by the clever queen Hadassah, or Esther, is no miracle story, no visitation from another world. It’s culture. It’s somewhat arbitrary in fact.

I’m sure you could say that the spring itself has something to do with it, as it undoubtedly has something to do with the Christian-based holy times of Mardi Gras and Lent…Lent, after all, just means “spring” in old English. And Mardi Gras is just the French for “The Tuesday where you gorge yourself all day on fatty foods you won’t see again till Easter.”

But any celebration of Spring is cultural too, and somewhat arbitrary and subjective. When, for example, does spring actually begin? Does spring begin on March 20 which the calendar calls the “spring equinox,” or does it begin when the first white crocus blooms two weeks before that? Or when the cherry blossoms glow on the trees on the first warm day two weeks after the equinox? I submit that spring is ultimately not the equinox, but an arbitrary and subjective time. We set up precise dates like the equinox to help us celebrate something with no clear beginning or end.

Yehudah Amichai, one of the great Israeli poets of this century, also speaks to this issue of religion as culture. You may remember that he is not much of a believer.. “The rustling of the trees creates an illusion of God and Justice,”he writes with brutal, if lyrical and lovely, clarity.

And yet, he calls his poem “a psalm” and says so three times in the course of that poem. “A psalm” is a poem clearly tied to his Jewish religious roots. So, for that matter, is the image of the “shiny, pampered grapes” a metaphor taken from the Book of Joshua, as well as the lovely image of the fig tree, which comes from the famous passage of Isaiah, which we can sing from our own hymnbook: (#399) “And everyone ‘neath a vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid, and into plowshares turn their swords, nations shall learn war no more.”

But Amichai does not live in a nation ---Eretz Israel--- where you can easily count on peace. He writes painfully that it is no longer some biblical cluster of grapes that is carried out on poles between two strong men, but rather, he writes, these days it’s the bodies, the “wounded and dead”…and I have to imagine that he means both Jews and Gentiles. How often the poor poet must have witnessed such horrors in his life there. Wars, attacks, bombings…all the time.

Amichai plaintively remembers the synagogue choir of his youth. But he associates that ancient cultural reality with the present and quite authentic breaking of his spirit, his very heart of hearts. The very fact of admitting his brokenheartedness is for me a real expression of the religious impulse. Invulnerable people are not at all religious or spiritual in any way I can think of.

Thus, I’m convinced that Yehudah Amichai is a deeply religious person, even though he does not believe that the Lord is anything more than an illusion…mere wind in the trees.

Amichai has been cheated by his contractor, he writes; he has witnessed death and war; and he has known the envy of those better off than he. And this deep expression of emotion he calls a psalm, even though he is not a believer. “A psalm of praise” he adds. He is not professionally bitter, crying out forever, “Why me?” No, he lives by hope and thanksgiving yet, despite the calamities of his life. He has not given up. I think he is profoundly religious, or spiritual if you will. But he is not a believer.

This is, I suppose, what my father meant.You can be faithful to the full horror and joy of your life’s experience, and doubt both the doting of a caring deity and the possibility of inevitable peace on earth under fig trees ….and still use some of the culture of the religious belief you rejected because you take comfort in it. Psalms. Quotes from scripture. Church on Sunday. Religious leaders called “ministers.” Hymns. Or in the case of Jews on Purim, a few days of feasting in the spring.

I changed “religions.” I am a Unitarian Universalist and glad of it. But I think, in the end, I am closer to my father’s position now than once I was. I will not go back to being a Catholic…my faith and culture are here now, and I am happy, even if I personally do not gravitate toward some of the more austere New England cultural expressions of our great faith.

But I also cannot, and will not, bemoan and denounce my upbringing as a monstrosity, and think of it as a terrible disease from which I need to “recover,” as once, I confess, I used to say. I see my ancestral religion as a human culture like all the rest, human-founded, often quite clumsy or unseeing of human need; but there remains in its culture, however tainted by hierarchical bureaucracy and sexual confusion,something of great beauty and comfort. And there is also great comfort and beauty, too, in the Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, and Unitarian Universalist cultures around the world, and even newer Humanistic cultures with complex development, like you might find in Holland.

I guess, although I started off as a true believer, or rather, a true disbeliever, I am not as sure of anything any more as once I was…even my complete disbelief.

I know my style, and my approach. I will always want to get to the bottom of things, and analyze my words till I wear the pages out the dictionary. And I will always move through the world with considerable passion, despite my lack of security in many matters of belief. I will always ask the question, “What really happened?” and I will even ask the deeper question, “Why is that so important?” just to keep myself honest. I will be a skeptic till the day I die. But I will not pretend that there is no mystical side to me either, or that it’s of no consequence.

So I guess Jane was right after all. There are more than two poles, two categories for approaching religion. Yes, of course, there will always be true believers in this world who know that everyone else is probably, or even assuredly, wrong, and who imagine theirs is not so much a culture as a final reality.

And yes, there will always be those who doubt a lot, but choose to remain within their particular cultures and work with them despite their clumsiness.

But I also know there will always be a lot of folks, like me, I guess, who are “true believers” enough to choose not to stay put in their stated culture of upbringing, but who also cannot, and will not, purify every word and phrase until we can all agree on their absolute meanings, and toss out all the ones we don’t like as belonging to someone else.

My father was right. For a thousand years at least, my ancestors were Roman Catholic. And now I am not. But I am not without religion, culture, or passion, or love, and that, I guess, is enough for the living of a life.

A Prayer of the Heart [back to top]

The seasons are a wheel,
and I am on the wheel like paint on the rim.
Snow and sunflowers,
snapdragons and small red leaves, crisp as parchment
are of a piece to me.

They sing their songs, and I drink in the songs like wine,
and then the songs sing me
even when I would rather turn to stone
or shout curses.

Singing in my heart,
this prayer asks for nothing,
requests no miracles,
shrinks from desires that revolve around me…

No, I am not the wheel,
just a patina on the rim, lovely and fragile for a time
but no hub and no center.

Oh blest are you, wheel within the wheel,
spirit at the heart of all that I was, am or will be.

You are the whole, I the part;
you are without a name, I have more than enough.

Sing in me now, and turn me, and turn us all
on the wheel of your unrestrained, uncontrolled, and nameless joy.

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