Covenant of the Heart
“...this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my Law within them, in their minds and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God; they shall be my people.” — Jeremiah 31:33.
Fiddler on the Roof is the famous Broadway musical set in the Tsarist Russia of 1905. It is based on the short stories of Sholem Aleichem, the pen name of the writer Salomon Rabinovich. All of the stories by this author were written in Yiddish and Sholem Aleichem means “peace be with you” in Yiddish.
Fiddler concentrates mostly on one of those stories, the tale of Tevye, the dairy farmer, his wife and their five daughters. In the course of the narrative we see and hear about this family and their attempts to maintain both familial traditions and religious traditions while outside influences encroach upon their lives and the world around them changes in drastic ways.
The three eldest daughters in the family are strong-willed young women. The choice of husband each makes moves them away from the traditions to which the people in this small town on the Steeps of Russia are accustomed.
Further, these are turbulent times in the reign of the Tsar. Indeed, those sitting in the audience who are seeing and hearing this work and who have any sense of history know that, twelve years after the Tsar evicts these Jews by edict from their village, their town, Anatevka— those sitting in the audience with any sense of history know the very same government will be overthrown by the Communist Revolution.
Despite the forces of change or perhaps because of them, the story keeps coming back to the people in the town, keeps coming back to the personal, keeps coming back to the individual. Yes, the people are battered by change and by changing times, battered by forces beyond their control. But they find their anchor in the intimate relationships among their family and their friends in the village, relationships which have been built over time.
This concept is well illustrated when Tevye explains to Golde, his wife of 25 years, that their eldest daughter wants to get married. She has rejected the arranged marriage they envisioned for her, arranged marriage being normal, the custom in the village. Instead, she wants to get married to the one she loves.
In song, Tevye and his wife reflect on what it is love might mean. Tevye asks Golde: “Do you love me?” Golde responds: “Do I what?” In his heartfelt, gruff way Teyve asks again: “Do you love me?”
Goldie thinks all the change happening around them has overwhelmed her husband. “Do I love you? / With our daughters getting married / And this trouble in the town / You’re upset, you’re worn out / Go inside, go lie down! / Maybe it’s indigestion.”
Tevye will not be deterred: “Golde, I’m asking you a question... Do you love me?”
In responding, Golde becomes a little more reflective and even practical about their time together: “Do I love you? / For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes / Cooked your meals, cleaned your house / Given you children, milked the cow / After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?”
Turning to some unseen audience (it is God to whom she speaks?), she adds this: “For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him / Fought him, starved with him / Twenty-five years my bed is his / If that’s not love, what is?” (Slight pause.)
As the song concludes, together they admit that they love one another. “It doesn’t change a thing / But even so / After twenty-five years / It’s nice to know.” Hence, they end with this duet, they end as one, voicing a singular thought concerning their long term relationship. What developed between them over time clearly is love by any definition. (Slight pause.)
We live in our own tumultuous times today. Indeed, the well known comedienne and television personality Whoopi Goldberg just published a book titled: Is It Just Me? Or Is It Nuts Out There? And maybe we do live in a time which feels that way, a little nuts, with people acting just a little off... sometimes more than a little.
I recently heard the well known author Malcolm Gladwell tell a story about giving a lecture in a wealthy, suburban community. Best known for populist books that explore change in society, in this talk, as in his books, he offered facts and figures about population groups and economic conditions. Gladwell pointed out to this wealthy, suburban audience that in the 1950s the tax rate for the wealthy ran just over 90%. [1]
The audience refused to believe him. Some in the crowd started to hiss. [2] And, since it was a dinner function at which he was speaking, someone even tossed a roll in his direction. The reaction Gladwell experienced was one of anger, perhaps even fear— maybe the other way around— fear first, then anger. But why be fearful or angry? Gladwell did not make up these facts. It’s the truth.
The income tax rate for the wealthy in each and every year of the decade called the 1950s was just over 90%. You can look it up. And the wealthy were not being picked on. Whereas the lowest tax rate today is 10%, in the 1950s, the lowest rate was 20%.
But when someone throws a dinner roll at you for merely stating a fact, it proves that not only do we live in tumultuous times. It proves Whoopi Goldberg may be right: it feels like it’s nuts out there.
It seems to me that when people refuse to pay attention to facts, as did this audience, when people are willfully ignorant about the facts, as this audience certainly seemed to be, the result is often fear and anger. That is what happened, of course, in Tsarist Russia— a toxic combination of ignorance, fear and anger.
People were fearful about and fearful of the Jewish minority. But they did not really know the Jews. As a minority in that time and in that place, Jews were often isolated in small villages and ghettos. The ignorance about them morphed into fear. Fear morphed into anger. Anger then transform into violence.
The pogroms, the edicts from the Tsar and later from Central Committee of the Soviet Union, took center stage. In short, ignorance, fear and anger translated not just into violence but into systemic violence. All this was a result of failing to know the facts but, perhaps more tragically, wilfully ignoring the facts. (Slight pause.)
And these words are from the work known as Jeremiah: “...this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my Law within them, in their minds and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God; they shall be my people.” (Slight pause.)
What is love? Is love infatuation? Is it an attraction? Is love simply an emotional high? Or does love, as Tevye and Golde suggest, have its real basis in deeply knowing someone, have its real basis in growth? (Slight pause.)
Please notice, that the promise of God is to write knowledge— to write the knowledge of God on both the hearts of people and on the minds. Indeed, the claim God makes is that we are known so well by God that this intimacy produces forgiveness for our failings. Hence, perhaps the thing to which we need to be open is to also grow in our own intimacy with God, in our own knowledge of God.
This is clear: when growth is abandoned or simply ignored, fear is embraced. Covenant love is the opposite of that. Covenant love, as proclaimed by and in Scripture, is commitment to understanding, commitment to respect, commitment... to growth.
Love, you see, true love is not merely an infatuation nor is it only an attraction nor is it simply an emotional high. Love is something which develops and grows.
Why? How? Love comes from knowledge, cumulative knowledge, of others, knowledge which is intentionally pursued. When commitment to covenant love is made, deep, enduring love develops. When commitment to covenant love is made, growth happens. (Slight pause.)
I want to suggest that the love God writes on our minds and on our hearts is already there, already present. Too often we ignore it instead of embracing it. And there is only one way to embrace it. To love deeply and to love over time we must learn love by engaging it over time.
One more point: God starts with one assumption— that we will always be loved by God. Indeed, that is one reason why God insist we are forgiven— because we are loved.
Hence, the challenge for us is simple: God has made a commitment to us and invites us to be committed also. Will we become committed to loving God? Will we become committed to covenant love, covenant love which is embodied by growth? Amen.
10/17/2010
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, NY
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is an précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “The thought for the day in the bulletin is from H. Richard Neibuhr. He said: ‘Christianity is permanent revolution (here he uses the Greek word for permanent revolution or metanoia) which does not come to an end in this world, this life or this time.’ For me, ‘permanent revolution’ means not chaos or tumultuous time, but constant growth.”
[1] http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uskJWrOQ97I
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