Sermon: Rabbi Mychal Copeland on Psalm 36:5-10
Rabbi Mychal Copeland of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, from whom we rent space, shared this sermon on Psalm 36:5-10, which was the Hebrew Scripture reading from the narrative lectionary for this Sunday.
GOOD MORNING! What an honor to pray with you this morning – what a milestone – 50 years- your Jubilee year. Our community is right behind you. Our 50th is in two years. You are also celebrating 20 years of being in this building.
The reading for today is Ps. 36, so it makes sense that your leadership asked me to speak on it. So I’ll tell you what I told them: I have not once in my life given a sermon about a psalm!
I honestly never thought about it before this invitation, but when Jews sermonize, we don’t use the psalms. We use the portion of the Five Books of Moses that is assigned to that week for Jews to chant in Hebrew and expound upon – all over the world. We might love that portion, or we might hate it, or struggle with it. But we have no choice – that is the topic. If the portion is about how men shouldn’t sleep with men, even an LGBTQI synagogue has to wrestle with it!
When we chant the Torah for that week, we use a musical system called trope in which every word has a little musical notation that tells us how to sing it. We also read a section of the prophets and it has a slightly more melancholy tune, but with the same markings.
This isn’t to say that psalms aren’t important in our tradition.
We sing them. We use them as proof texts in our commentaries.
We read them for solace. We study them in the Hebrew original, trying to tease out their meaning. We recite them when we’re sitting with a dead body – so they are not left alone until they’re buried.
A couple of weeks ago, I used psalms in a new way. Our community is in heavy mourning and panic right now at the state of the country, worried about our sizable trans population, immigrants, our disabled members, our democracy. We decided to hold a Public Lament. We invented a service, based on the sacred chanting of the book of Lamentations once a year on our day of mourning. For our Public Lament, in addition to chanting Lamentations with its special mournful melody, we also sang psalms of lament. Because the psalmist is just so pained at the world in a way that cuts right to the heart of what we’re feeling right now.
Another way we use psalms is that some are used as part of our daily liturgy, others part of our Shabbat liturgy so they become familiar and well-rehearsed. Like…95, 121, 150…
Ps.36 is not part of any of our liturgies, so I had my work cut out for me getting to know it for today! Including another unexpected twist that didn’t come clear until I looked it up in a Christian Bible: ou number the Psalms differently than our Torahs do! So your verse 6 is my 5.
Now that I’m on the right verse, let’s delve in.
Ps.36 reads: “G!d, in heaven is your love.
“Your faith is in the clouds, Your justice is like the high mountains!”
“Your judgements are like the great deep-human and beast -you deliver! How precious is your love, G!d”
And then it reads: “Human beings seek refuge in the shadow of your wings.”
This is where I want to sink in.
First: Whose wings are we talking about? Cherubs have wings-but G!d?
This winged G!d image appears elsewhere in psalms:
Ps.17: Hide me in the shadow of your wings.
Ps.57: In the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until calamities pass. (p.183 Keeping Faith with the Psalms)
In Jewish tradition, G!d does have wings… when G!d is referred to as Shechinah. Shechinah is the feminine aspect of the divine, and references to her date back to the Talmud in the early centuries of the Common Era.
Jewish tradition teaches that when we as a people went into exile after the destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem, part of G!d went into exile with us. That part of G!d is the Shechinah. She wanders the globe with us, she cries with us, she holds us.
The image in Psalm 36 of her providing refuge under her wings is central to our tradition. It’s as if G!d is a mother bird, protecting her children.
In fact, we chant a traditional prayer at funerals, El Malei Rachamim, G!d of compassion, in which we ask for the soul of our loved one to be sheltered under Shechinah’s wings.
In our weekly reading schedule, we just read from the Book of Exodus chapter 25:8. So that piece was chanted right here – yesterday. This text details the building of the Mishkan – a portable sanctuary that the Israelites were to carry through the wilderness to keep G!d close to them.
The verse reads: “Build for me a holy place so that I might dwell within.” In Hebrew, this sentence can mean that G!d wants a home on earth in order to dwell among us. OR that G!d wants each of us to become a home for G!d to dwell within us.
This is what it sounds like chanted:
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם
That holy place, that tabernacle that G!d desires, is then in the next verse called a Mishkan -meaning: “dwelling place”. The word for “I will dwell” is from the same root as Mishkan: maybe you can hear the similarity…shachanti. And from the same root …comes Shechinah…
Mishkan…shachanti…shechinah. All related.
In the words of one of my teachers, Rabbi Shefa Gold, this mishkan – this sanctuary we are supposed to build – makes it possible for shechinah to dwell within us.
We did not plan this, but it seems remarkable to me that your sacred text for this week, Psalm 36, is deeply connected to this verse from OUR weekly Torah reading.
I’d like to go a little deeper into this concept of Shechinah. Not only is Shechinah that part of G!d that dwells among and within us. She is with us wherever we go. She is that part of G!d that we can most feel in our daily lives; She is imminent.
At Sha’ar Zahav, we call THIS sanctuary our Mishkan Dolores. Our sacred Dolores space. The place where Shechinah shochens-dwells-among us and within us.
This is especially poignant in our community because when we were founded almost 50 years ago, it was hard to find organizations willing to rent space to gay Jews. After over 20 years of hopping from rental to rental, we finally raised the money to have what we call, “a home of our own.”
I stand here today in OUR shared sanctuary – our collective mishkan. The sacred place where both of our communities speak with G!d, find solace and joy, where we feel G!d’s closeness…
When I look back at these verses from Ps.36, they began with imagery of a G!d whose love and justice seem far away, hard to reach. All is just and good up in the heavens or in the deep. But what about us here on earth? The mood turns, and we receive imagery of G!d as loving, as close by, imminent. Utterly reachable.
Writer Daniel Polish in his book, Keeping Faith With the Psalms (P.199), writes of these verses: “the psalmist gives voice to what sounds almost like a love song. The verses radiate with the nearly ecstatic sense of delight at God’s nearness. The psalmist conveys the feeling that God is with us at all times and in all places.”
That is shechinah. She is so very close. I would think that right now, she weeps for those who are displaced around the world. For our ailing planet. For those most vulnerable.
But if G!d is not just close to us, but within us…if we are G!d’s partners…even G!d’s hands on earth, then we must have a major role to play in all of this. It must be US who can bring judgment from the deep. It is us who can bring justice down from the mountains, and love from the heavens. It is us who can shelter the most vulnerable under our protective wings.
We have a lot of work to do. And in our spiritual communities we find solidarity, strength, and renewed vision.
Our communities share a special song- the Sanctuary Song. Especially on those shabbats when we are talking about immigration and the need to create sanctuaries in our communities. Sometimes at rallies. Other times-when we, ourselves, are feeling the need for protection and sanctuary.
After the English and Spanish, we add this Hebrew Torah verse I spoke about today from our Torah weekly reading.
Va’asuli Mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham. Please join me in any verses that might be familiar to you!
Sanctuary
Yah prepare me, to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true
With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living
Sanctuary, for You
***
Yah prepárame ser un sanctuario
Bendicho y sagrado
Lleno de gracia, seré un santuario
Siempre, para ti
***
V’asu li mikdash
V’shachanti b’tocham
Va’anachu nevarech Ya,
Mei atah v’ad olam