Dare To Care: A Sermon for Tisha B'Av

Almost all of us are driven to distraction. Just climb on a bus or a subway car, open your eyes. Notice how many people are looking at a screen. Looking at their phones. Distracting themselves.

Some people would say that it's technology that has driven us to distraction, and they would be right.  Based on recent data,

• The average American spends approximately 7 hours per day looking at a screen.
• This equates to just over 49 hours per week.
• Media consumption for adults (including TV, internet, etc.) can be as high as 60 hours per week.

It’s not only technology that drives us to distraction. It is anxiety that drives us to distraction: we disappear into the digital world in order to avoid the hum and the crackle, the background static and also the boom of anxiety in all its sizes,

Tisha B’ave comes to challenge our distraction reflex. It comes to require us to look at a whole list of things that we would rather avoid and forget.. 

Tisha B’Av calls us to engagement instead of distraction, and to caring instead of indifference.

It calls us into a deeper humanity, an engagement with things that matter.

But what's the benefit for us? What is the benefit of embracing sorrow?

1. Godly sorrow will move you toward repentance and move you toward God. Our Torah reading, D'varim/Deuteronomy 4:25-40, reminds us of the benefits of sorrow. Moses foretells the future of Israel and sadly reports that she will fall into idolatry and will face severe consequences. That's the bad news. The good news is that when Israel repents in their far-away pagan countries where they've been driven, then God will bring them back to the land and richly bless them. So we see that sorrow over their sins is the pathway to blessing.

As with the Prodigal Son, it is when our people sorrow over the right things, that redemption breaks in and they return to a proper relationship.

Jeremiah, sorrows deeply over the destruction of the Temple, the pillaging of the city, all the carnage and exile. But after focusing on his sorrow for three and a half chapters he turns toward God, and says this:

But in my mind I keep returning to something,
something that gives me hope —
²² that the grace of Adonai is not exhausted,
that his compassion has not ended.
²³ [On the contrary,] they are new every morning!
How great your faithfulness!
²⁴ “Adonai is all I have,” I say;
“therefore I will put my hope in him.

Make your turning toward sorrow a turning toward God.

As Yeshua said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

2. Godly sorrow will move you toward righteous and compassionate action.

 The righteous pay attention. They notice. They care. Then they act.

Yeshua drives this home in one of his most powerful parables, the parable of the sheep and the goats, recorded in Matthew, chapter twenty-five.

³¹ “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. ³⁶ I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

³⁷ “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? ³⁹ When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

⁴⁰ “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

⁴¹ “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. ⁴² For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. ⁴³ I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

⁴⁴ “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

⁴⁵ “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

Yeshua calls this failure to notice, failure to care,  failure to pay attention and take action, refusal. They didn’t want to be bothered. They preferred the distractions of their comfortable life, to the actions of a righteous life, earning the scorn of the Son of Man.  Let that not be us.

3. Godly sorrow is the opposite of worldly sorrow.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, contrasting Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow as being as different as life and death (2 Cor 7:10):  

 “¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret . Godly sorrw brings positive change in the  world. By engaging with what’s wrong, we become agents of what’s right. Godly sorrow looks out from its shell making us agents of change in things as they are and should not be.  Godly sorrow is altogether life-enhancing.

But Paul says worldly sorrow brings death. Worldly sorrow is a trap in which we are focused only on ourselves, and like quicksand, it pulls us down.

Instead, let's orient ourselves to these brilliant quotes from three spiritual giants. The first is Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk who said:

‘There is nothing as whole or as perfect as a broken heart.’

The second is from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, when speaking of our responses to social evils, said, "Some are guilty, but all are responsible." We are never exempt from caring.

And the third quotation is from Bob Pierce, the founder of a multimillion dollar compassion ministry, World Vision, who famously said:

“Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”

That’s  tall order for all of us. But isn’t better than tuning out and abdicating the responsibility that Heschel spoke of, refusing the perfect wholenss of a broken heart, and failing to care about the things that matter to the Holy One?

The state of our society and the Word and Spirit of the Holy One, demand that we dare to care.

Do you?