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Sermon for Palm/Passion Sunday – March 28, 2010
Originating in the teeming Jewish ghettos of 12th century Eastern Europe, spoken at one time by some 11 million people – the number is now down considerably following the Holocaust – the Yiddish language – a kind of low German - has worked its way into the parlance of thousands of people in this country. Its influence, I believe, can be traced to a whole generation of so called “Borscht Belt” comedians who played the Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains and later came to dominate early television; people like Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Sid Caesar and Jerry Lewis. The list goes on.
Yiddish vocabulary and expressions have caught on, I think, because the words are so much fun to say. Consider the “sch” words alone: “Schlep,” to drag; to carry unwillingly; “I schlepped that stupid suitcase all over town.” I’ve also heard it used to signify a long journey, as in “Chicago to Los Angeles? That’s a schlep.”
Most of us are familiar with schmaltz, literally chicken fat but used to refer to anything which is overly sentimental; a schmaltzy movie; and we likely know what it means to schmooze, to make small talk. These days it has connotations of chatting someone up to get what you want. Hollywood screenwriters go to parties to schmooze producers.
One word which has found its way not only into popular culture but also into legal jargon is “chutzpah,” which has its closest English synonym in “boldness” but boldness does not do this term justice. In the “Joys of Yiddish,” the late Leo Rosten defined “chutzpah” as “gall, brazen nerve, combining presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.”
The classic example of “chutzpah” is the boy who is on trial for murdering his parents and then begs the judge for leniency because he is an orphan. The legal analogy is significant, for lawyers and judges now consistently employ this term to describe what they consider outrageous legal proceedings. In fact, one judge has said that Yiddish is quickly supplanting Latin as the go to word in American legal lingo.
From the introduction to the “Opinion and Order” of Judge Sidney H. Stein in the 2003 case of Antoine Yates, plaintiff, against the City of New York and two New York City Police Officers. Judge Stein writes, “The word chutzpah…is now vastly overused in the legal literature. Yet in a case such as this – in which an individual, after being mauled by the 450 pound Siberian tiger he had been raising inside his fifth floor apartment along with an alligator, sues the city and the police who entered the apartment in an effort to rescue the animals for doing so without a search warrant – it is a most appropriate term to use.
Mr. Yates claimed that the day after he was mauled, the police illegally confiscated his tiger and alligator, along with other exotic animals he kept in his apartment. The police asserted that they had probable cause to enter and search the apartment after learning from a hospital that the tiger had bitten off a chunk of the Mr. Yates’ leg. The judge sided with the police.
Unfortunately, the city of New York did not fare so well in the case of one John Desoto who, after a night of drinking, arrived with his friends at a closed subway platform. Rather than return to street level, the men decided to walk through the tunnel to the next stop. When a train came by, instead of standing as far from the tracks as possible, Mr. Desoto decided to outrun it and was struck, losing both his legs.
Instead of lamenting his foolishness or giving thanks that he wasn’t killed, he sued the city, arguing that the conductor should have been able to stop before hitting him. A jury awarded him $1.4 million, despite a dissenting judge who said that Desoto’s injuries were, and I quote, “entirely his own fault.”
Entirely his own fault, now there’s a concept. The question we hear begging in the distance to be asked in the midst of all this chutzpah is this: when is anything ever our own fault? If people who knowingly keep wild animals in their apartment or drunkenly attempt to outrun subway trains attempt to evade responsibility for their actions, what does it mean to be held accountable for our decisions?
It appears to me that if there is one thing people are good at these days, it’s deflecting blame. Avoiding accountability for our actions has been elevated into an art form. Perhaps that’s a consequence of living in a culture dominated by therapists and attorneys. It’s easier on our psyches and potentially healthier for our bank accounts to pass the onus of our errors on to someone else and then wash our hands of the matter. Then again, such an attitude is nothing new. In 1911, the American satirist Ambrose Bierce in his “Devil’s Dictionary,” defined “Responsibility” as: “a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology,” Bierce wrote, “it was customary to unload it upon a star.”
A great deal of burden shifting goes on during Holy Week – a great deal of unloading responsibility from one hand to another as the one who winds his way to the cross remains faithful to his task, a task and a responsibility which faced him the moment the bright star shone in the deep desert sky and guided the Magi to his crib.
Indeed, the shadow of the cross falls upon the light of the stable, just as it does on Jesus’ entire ministry. The shadow of the cross falls on those who hailed “hosanna” and waved their branches at the Lord’s arrival in Jerusalem only to cry out for his crucifixion later. The shadow is there, all the while. It’s there as Jesus stands before Pilate, Jesus’ face set, his choices made, his responsibility accepted. Such holy chutzpah generates all sorts of reactions in those who encounter Jesus this week.
During Passion Week, some will mock him, some will flog him, some will accuse him, and some will simply pass him by. There will be some, though, like Pilate, who will wonder at him.
“Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews? He answered him, ‘You say so.’ Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, ‘Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.’ But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.”
In all the Gospels Gentiles are seen as more amazed by and responsive to the words and the works of Jesus than are his fellow religionists, those who tend to possess settled certainties, whose minds are often fiercely and rigidly made up. Those outside the confining fabric of the fold are more willing to wonder, more open to amazement.
Pilate, a Gentile, outside the bounds of a rigid orthodoxy, hearing the words of Jesus, wonders if Jesus really is who he says he is: the Beloved Son sent by the Father, the King of the Jews. His wonder doesn’t stop him from handing Jesus over to be crucified; after all he has a job to do and old bureaucratic habits of avoiding direct responsibility die hard. (Although, according to the Coptic Christian Church, Pilate and his wife later converted to Christianity; both are considered saints.)
We don’t go that far in the Western Church; still, you have to wonder what effect Jesus’ choices had on this man who was so skillful at avoiding responsibility. About the centurion – another Gentile – we know what his verdict is as we hear him proclaim, “Certainly this man was innocent!”
Perhaps Pilate’s and the centurion’s sense of amazement at God’s breaking into their lives will lead to a more mature faith for both of them, a faith which will endure even when it seems that there is no one else to blame and no one else to help; a faith which will lead them to claim an identity which will never be shaken, to rest in a love which will never let them go.
Perhaps, they will choose – perhaps we will choose - to follow the way to which God calls us; the way to life lived boldly and honestly; standing mature, as Paul says. Yes, it can be quite a schlep, but it is worth it.
And when we lose our way; when we shut ourselves up from the healing, saving mystery of God’s love; when we behave like children, grabbing what we want, blaming our brothers or sisters for breaking the window, even then when we acknowledge our errant choices and dare to ask for forgiveness, God will offer us pardon.
It can be hard, this choosing to live as an adult, this acceptance of responsibility, this taking ownership of ourselves and our actions. It can be hard, but, really, consider the rewards. As the American novelist and essayist Joan Didion once said, “The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect comes.”
Ms. Didion, whose memoir of her husband’s sudden death six years ago begins, “Life changes in an instant,” continued to write afterwards, as she did after her daughter died three years later. And when life changes, it seems to me, whether that change comes about because of our own choices or seemingly from blind fate, we can retreat into blame or we can move ahead, damaged but not defeated, finding our way through the darkness, knowing that shadows are impossible without light.
The great Israeli violinist Yitzhak Perlman contracted polio at the age of four. Since then, he has had to wear metal braces on his legs and walk with crutches. On one occasion he came out onto the stage to play a concerto. Laying down his crutches, he placed the violin under his chin and began tuning when, with a resounding crack, one of the strings broke. Everyone expected him to delay the concert by sending for another string. Instead, he signaled the conductor to begin, and he proceeded to play the concerto entirely on three strings. At the end of the performance the audience gave him a standing ovation and called on him to speak. When asked why he began playing while missing one string, Mr. Perlman answered, “Our task is to make music with what remains.”
Sometimes all that remains is our trust; sometimes all that remains is our assurance of God’s presence. When we act on that trust; when we behave with that assurance when we display a readiness for responsibility, then we become, to use another Yiddish word, a mensch; literally a human being but, as we have come to learn with this language, much more than that. To call someone a “mensch” is to pay them the ultimate compliment, for a mensch is a person true to the task of being fully human.
When we can commit ourselves to such a task, then despite our handicaps, despite our brokenness, despite our past, we can be true to our call as human beings created in the image of God, redeemed by the Son of God. We can make our own music and it will sing to the heavens.