Transformed by Hope:  Choosing Wonder
Psalm 150 and Abraham Joshua Heschel*
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

Jesus was Jewish.  You would think it unnecessary to remind Christians of this fact.  But this does not seem to be the case.  Amy-Jill Levine's book, The Misunderstood Jew:  The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus concludes with this sentence:  "If the church and synagogue both could recognize their connection to Jesus, a Jewish prophet who spoke to Jews, perhaps we'd be in a better place for understanding."

Christian Theologian Paul Tillich once said the following about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "Abraham Heschel is the most Christian person I know." This is a strange, and perhaps scandalous description, but it is fitting.  We have much to learn from Jewish spiritual teachers, especially who Jesus was, and just how Jewish Jesus was. Today, Choosing Wonder, I want to share a a glimpse into the life and the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.  I hope that this glimpse will lead us to wonder and to a desire to know more of this holy man and his faith.

Rabbi Heschel once said,
"It takes three things to attain a sense of significant being:
God
A Soul
A Moment.
And the three are always here."

The Psalmist sings, "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!"
Let every moment be an occasion for prayer and praise.

Toward the end of his life, Abraham Heschel suffered a massive heart attack. When his friend Samuel Dresner came to visit he got out of bed for the first time to greet him and whispered:
"Sam, when I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of despair or anger. I felt only gratitude to God for my life, for every moment I had lived. ... I have seen so many miracles in my lifetime." Then, after a moment, he added, "That is what I meant when I wrote, 'I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.  And you gave it to me.'"  Those were words he had written in the preface to his book of Yiddish poetry ... "I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And you gave it to me."

Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1907.  He was a descendent of a long line of Hassidic rabbis. He studied, taught and wrote from the depths of Jewish intellectual and religious traditions. His friends and family, his community of childhood, died in the Holocaust.  Rabbi, scholar, mystic, activist, he immigrated to the United States and taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City until his death in 1972.  Poetic mystical religious teacher and writer of startling simplicity, Heschel also marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. against racism, against the Vietnam War, and for interreligious understanding.

Out of this context, these struggles, Heschel wrote,
"We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being... Awe...enables us...to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. Who lit the wonder before our eyes and the wonder of our eyes?"

Wonder at creation, wonder at God‚s real presence, wonder at life sung by the Psalmists... "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!"

San Francisco beat generation poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem, "I am waiting," that reads, in part:
"I am waiting for my case to come up
And I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for someone
To really discover America
And I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
To drop dead
...And I am waiting for the last supper to be served again
...and I am waiting for the storms of life to be over...
...and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder..."

Waiting for a rebirth of wonder.  We expect it from poets and mystics, holy ones and children.  We expect it at births and meteor showers.  But we choose wonder where we do not expect it.  In the everyday, in our bodies, in breath, in tenacious love in the face of crushing betrayal, in anguished waiting.  This Advent we choose a rebirth of wonder.

Rabbi Heschel insisted that wonder does not only inspire us, it mobilizes us. He wrote,  
"The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder and amazement.  The root of religion is the question of what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder and amazement.  Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us."

Abraham Heschel knew that God asked something of him.  At his bedside when he died were two books:  one, a Hassidic spiritual classic, the other, a text on Vietnam.

Moved by wonder to engage the world for justice, Heschel was a poet, mystic, philosopher, scholar, teacher. And he was also a leading voice in the Religious Coalition Against the War in Vietnam. He and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had "a relationship of mutual inspiration." He said, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."  Dr. King was planning to attend Heschel's Passover Seder when he was assassinated in Memphis just days before he could do so.

 Heschel spoke out steadfastly on behalf of Muslim brothers and sisters. He helped shape Vatican II.
"Let everything that breathes praise the Lord."

Heschel described himself as the most maladjusted person in society.  He said,  "An individual dies when he ceases to be surprised.  I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I‚m not accommodated....I'm still surprised... We must learn how to be surprised.  Not to adjust ourselves."

We do not stop choosing wonder because we know too much, because we have seen, or experienced too much.  We stop wondering because we see too little, we stop paying attention. To each breath. To the ground beneath our feet. To our feet. To each moment. To life.

We can learn to be surprised by slowing down and paying attention... to everything.  We can learn to be surprised from children who have not yet learned not to wonder.  In recent days I learned from two members of this community under 2 years of age.  I was privileged to be present when one beloved child awoke from a nap to rediscover the world! I also witnessed a small one, surrounded by elaborate playground equipment, delight in the wonder of stepping off a curb, and stepping back up, and up and down, sensing the physicality and delight of movement.

Choose wonder at creation.  Choose wonder at the startling reality of God. Choose wonder at suffering.  Choose wonder that the God who created all the heavens and the earth still searches for us, needs us!  Heschel wrote,

"We tend to read the Bible look for mighty acts that God does and not seeing that all the way through the Bible God is waiting for human beings to act."

In the last interview of his life Rabbi Heschel said:
"...The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests.  The primary purpose of prayer is to praise, to sing, to chant.  Because the essence of prayer is a song and (we) cannot live without a song ..."

* Texts for further study and Sources:  I Asked For Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology. Samuel H. Dresner, ed.; God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, No Religion Is An Island, Man Is Not Alone, by Abraham Heschel.