All Will Be Revealed

You have to be careful how you explain things to little kids. They can be so literal minded. If you tell them that God is everywhere and invisible, they can become alarmed.

“God is everywhere? In my lunchbox? In the potty? Watching me change clothes? Everywhere?”

And grownups are sometimes just as black and white, and just as mistaken in their thinking when they imagine God is not anywhere, or that God is only involved occasionally when something extraordinary happens. Jewish tradition teaches that God is in fact aware of everything, cares about everything, and is ready to bless and guide us as soon as we humbly allow it. It’s like the hasidic master who stumped his students with the simple question, “Where is God?”

“In the heavens,” said one.

“In our hearts,” said another.

“No,” said the master. “God is wherever we let God in.”

In the Torah portion we read today, God speaks to all Jews who ever existed and who will ever exist, making this eternal promise: Remember where you came from and the suffering you have seen. Remember who is God, and what God can do, and don’t go chasing after easier, softer ways that will not draw out the holiness in you. Make the right choice and I will always be right here, your God. Make the wrong choice, and life will be brutal.

This is a God who is not easily fooled. This is a God who is familiar with the distractions, seductions, and weaknesses that make people sell out and give up. This God who made the human heart, who knows how gorgeous and valiant it can be, knows perfectly well how ugly and twisted it may become when misused. And this God will not accept responsibility for fixing what we ourselves knowingly choose to break. We are not little kids with God today; we are grownups who should know better.Many prayers and passages of scripture encourage us to understand God as totally conscious of our every thought, act, and bodily function. The prayer said upon using the toilet is one of my favorites. We are so humble there; so unable to be any kind of big shot. And we are still right in front of God. We are instructed to say:

Galui v’yadua lifnei kisay kvodecha …
It is utterly exposed, revealed, and known to you
That if one of these complicated little passages that should be open would close, or that should close would open, we would have no dignity to stand before you. Thank you for healing all flesh and doing wonders.

These little bodies that can be so embarrassing, that have so many needs, that bring us such pleasure and pain, that we spend hours and hours criticizing in the mirrors of dressing rooms…these little bodies carry our souls and provide us a way to act in the world. That’s what matters about them.

The prayer says these bodies of ours are “galui vyadua,” revealed and fully known, to God. God sees more than xrays or catscans or MRIs ever reveal. As Jeremiah (23:24) declares, “Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? Said the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? Says the Lord.”

The Psalmist sings, (Psalm 16:8):

Shiviti Adonai lnegdi tamid
I keep Adonai right in front of me always,
He is at my right hand, I shall never be shaken
So my heart rejoices
And my body rests secure…
Your presence is perfect joy…”

Have you ever been utterly, humbly revealed before someone else? A doctor, for example? People who are really sick or really in crisis quickly overcome any embarrassment about their bodies, and are simply grateful that kind and wise hands can bring them relief and recovery.

But outside of a situation that drives us to that point, we mostly don’t want to live in that glare. We prefer to imagine we can hide; make choices or keep secrets that even God would not find out about, so that we can avoid the consequences. We tend to think our dignity resides in how elegantly we cover ourselves, how cleverly we hide.
This trick was first tried by the very first people, and it didn’t work for them, either.

After Adam and Eve eat from the apple, and put on the first clothes, it says in Genesis (3:8): “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the Garden in the breeze of the day, and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called out to the man and said to him, 'Ayeka?' -- Where are you? They are quickly found, and they get in some big trouble.

Some people have read this, and asked, what kind of omniscient God is this? How could God not already know where Adam and Eve are?

The story is told that a few hundred years ago Rabbi Shneur Zalman, was jailed in St. Petersburg. He was awaiting trial when the chief of the guard entered his cell. The chief, who had been told this prisoner was a great rabbi, began to converse with Shneur Zalman and brought up a number of questions that had occurred to him while reading the Scriptures, that he could never ask his own priest. Finally, he asked, this question I just raised, "How are we to understand that God, the all-knowing, said to Adam, 'Where are you?'"

The rabbi replied, "In every era God calls to everyone: Where are you in your world? So many days and years of those allotted to you have passed, and how far have you gotten? You have lived forty-six years. WHERE ARE YOU?" When the chief of the guard heard his own age mentioned, he trembled.”

Ayeka? Where are you? That is a powerful question, coming from the One before whom everything is utterly revealed. Where are you? God certainly already knows; it’s time we tried to know as well.

The power of the fast and the confessional on Yom Kippur is that they break us down and help us step into that glare, or in fact, to know that is where we stand at all times. We have a chance to be completely honest with ourselves and give up our usual self deception. Here we are, fasting and "afflicting our souls," increasingly weary, cranky, smelly, sick, and tired. There is no vanity, no covering up. We have a real chance to be humble enough to face ourselves in the mirror.

If you want to see if you’re carrying around a load of secret shame and worthlessness and judgment, take a good look in the mirror and try to look yourself right in the eyes and say something nice. Various New Age teachers suggest this as a way to begin to change your life: look straight at yourself and say something positive like,
"I am beautiful and whole and worthy."

Try to get your kids to do it.

What I have found is that whether people are driven or lazy, observant or irreligious, this is very difficult to do without laughing or avoiding it or storming off. We are mostly all walking around full of unconfessed and unforgiven sins, full of places we have abandoned ourselves, full of secrets from ourselves about who we have harmed or let down, and feel very undeserving as a result.

The idea of teshuvah, of repentance and return, is to be honest about all this so that it can begin to be addressed and healed. It is not an exercise in how worthless we are; just the opposite. Most often our shame is wildly out of proportion to the events that caused it. Often we are holding a deep sense of being responsible for things we were too young, too helpless, or too naïve to possibly have had any control over. It is said that the Gates of Repentence close at the end of Yom Kippur, but that the Gates of Tears are always open. Often coming to consciousness of the things we have denied and hidden is a tearful process. But real honest contact with ourselves is fundamental to contact with God. Once you can really be open with yourself, face the people you’ve harmed and make it up, face the truth in your own heart about what has harmed you that you could not have controlled -- that is when you can feel a sense of knowing where you belong, and where you should be going next. The point, even of all the tears, is a loving homecoming to ourselves, and also to God.

Over and over our prayers remind us that Adonai, Adonai, el rahum v’hanun--God is loving, kind, patient, and forgiving, desiring above all that we seek forgiveness, willing to accept our atonement the moment we turn.
What God will not do is come into our lives and turn for us. We are given the choice. God will stay out of it, even if we choose terribly destructive things.

Many of you dislike the passage from Deuteronomy that we read as Biblical Selection 1, and I don’t blame you. It says, if you listen to God, there will be all these blessings, “But if your heart should turn away, and you do not heed and go astray, and you submit to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall be destroyed completely....”

What you don’t like about it is the simplistic kind of sense that everything that happens is proper reward and punishment for our actions. If your innocent child has a life-threatening disease or if you have been abused by someone who never had to suffer any consequences for the harm they did, then you might reject these words as being cruel and wrong.

But blessings and curses are not reward and punishment. It doesn’t say, follow God and you’ll get a good job and a new car and your cancer will vanish. It says, if you make the choice to turn toward what is holy, and keep turning away from all the distracting paths that seem to promise reward but are ultimately empty…if you keep turning toward the light, your life will be blessed. You may find healing for your wounds. You may come to feel abundant and fulfilled. Other people will see you and want to model themselves on you. Blessing will spread out in every direction.

It is not about following Judaism rather than other religions. It is not about simple reward and punishment. It is about being honest today, apologizing for wrongs done today, asking for the courage and power to do what needs doing today, staying humbly aware of how much help you need and how vulnerable you are, how short your days, how short your life.

In giving us choice, God gives us dignity. Human dignity would not exist if there were no freedom to make mistakes. It says in the Talmud, “Everything is foreseen but the right of choice is granted…” (Pirke Avot 3:15) Obviously, we have that freedom. And we also have a day like this to try to come to a realization of how our mistakes affect others, and to resolve to make other choices, better choices. Despite all the threats and challenges and fears, we can choose to behave with integrity and dignity. This impacts our own wellbeing, but also a broad and widening circle all around us.

Paradoxically, it is only brutal honesty that gives us any control at all over the worst impulses in us. If I can admit and know that I am jealous of someone, I can go out of my way to be kind and supportive to them. If I know I get enraged in certain situations because of harm done to me long ago, I can stop blaming the people around me now, and stop fuming at them. Honesty just lets all the air out of the urges to do terrible things.

The good news is that this same God who demands we clean up our own mess is the same God who looks into our hearts and souls and bodies; knows our pains, our challenges, our limitations and our weaknesse. In some sense, the fix is in and it’s all a game. This God who made us knows exactly how hard this is and how much courage it takes, and is therefore going to forgive us if we try. It’s said that while we are praying to God, God is also in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, praying too. And what is God’s prayer? That the attribute of mercy and forgiveness overcome the attribute of pure justice. In the kabbalistic scheme of the ten dimensions of God, judgment and mercy are always in tension.

So if God knows everything, there is nowhere to hide and no point in not admitting our shortcomings. Galui vyadua, it is all known and revealed. The confessionals of Yom Kippur, and our more private personal confessions to ourselves and others, are a relief from keeping up the pretense that we know what we’re doing and everything is fine. In the holy space of this holy day, we can sit here knowing how NOT fine everything is, and while such knowledge is painful, it is the only starting point to begin a lasting change. We must ask ourselves, how will tomorrow be any different from today? How can I take what I must realize is the truth about myself, and let it bring me towards a life that is lived more directly from the heart and soul?

And if today is more filled with questions than answers, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success. Asking ourselves better and better questions is definite spiritual growth. To simply dwell on that one word question--“Ayeka?” “Where are you?” -- is an excellent question for Yom Kippur. If we are willing to search deeply into our dilemmas, our fears, our obstacles, all the matters that make us dodge our real selves and instead come to be able to face ourselves and know our shortcomings and our grandeur, we will one day be able to answer that question in the way that Abraham and Moses did, the response that means so much more than yes, the ability to hear and respond willingly to God’s call with a simple, Hineni, here I am.

©Rabbi Alexis Roberts
Congregation Dor Hadash 2002