Sermon: Pinchas – Justin Wise

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 27 July 2016

You might have to look closely, but it’s there. Thirty-two words into this morning’s parasha is a broken letter, a letter vav split in across the middle. Thirty-two words in, in a Torah scroll that can only be considered kosher if every letter is whole and complete, in the middle of the word shalom, peace, is a tiny broken vav. Indeed the scroll is only considered complete if this letter is broken, if the brit shalom, the covenant of peace in which it occurs, is a broken peace, a peace in fragments, a peace which is really no peace at all.

The broken brit shalom, the fragmented covenant of peace, is awarded to Pinchas as a reward for his actions. Faced with unprecedented uncertainty in the life of the Israelite people, at a time when existing moral and social codes are breaking down and it’s unclear how things are going to go, Pinchas seizes the moment, brutally murdering an Israelite man and a Midianite woman. Instantly the plague wiping out the people comes to an end, and Pinchas becomes the hero of the moment rewarded with a guarantee of priesthood and with the covenant, or promise, of peace.

It’s a troubling story to read, because Pinchas, like us, is living in a time of troubles, a time in which things are shifting and unstable, a time in which the future feels particularly unknown, and he is rewarded handsomely for acting with such unflinching and murderous certainty. In a world where we wake up so often to more news about the consequences and suffering brought about by murderous certainty, the idea that Pinchas ought to be considered a hero seems outrageous, immoral, a desecration. Which is why the broken vav is so important.

Because although Pinchas’ actions look heroic in a plain reading of the text, the Rabbis did not think so, and neither did the Masoretes, the scholar-scribes who shaped the way our scrolls are written. If you read the word shalom without the broken vav it becomes shalem, wholeness, completeness. And Rav Yehudah, in the Talmud tractate Kiddushin says that Pinchas cannot receive the covenant of peace, the brit shalom, until he is whole, shalem. And in his murderous certainty he is far from that. His actions fragment him, split him apart. They fragment peace, shattering it even as it looks like he’s saving the people. And as they glorify the turning away from the humanity of the other, they create a broken world in which destruction of relationship, and the destruction of life, are taken to be heroic, and necessary, and an answer to the confusion in which we find ourselves.

I am so grateful for this one tiny break in the middle of a letter vav that upends the plain reading, that shows us that our very certainties are what can make our responses so narrow and so destructive to the bonds of dignity and humanity that matter so very much.

It’s easy to read Pinchas as if he has nothing to do with us, as if the extremeness of his certainty is itself something other, alien, a way of relating to the world that we’d never consider. But I’m starting to be troubled by my own certainty about what’s happening in the world, and how it has its own fragmenting effect, closing me off to the world of others.

The trouble starts with my response to to last month’s referendum result. For days afterwards I was gripped by fear, and anger, and shame, and grief, not only because the result was not the one that I wanted but also because I was absolutely sure of what it would mean for us and for our children and for the world. I was certain the outcome would be calamitous. And I was equally certain also – though I did not really want to admit it to myself – that the vast majority of people who had voted differently to me were not only wrong but wilfully wrong, or not paying attention, or out to cause damage because of their own rage and despair.

But I’m starting to become troubled by my certainty. I’m starting to see that to a large degree it produces the rage and shame and grief, because the more sure I am about the bleakness of the future the more I have cause to feel that way, and the more I am gripped by the feelings the more convinced I am of my certainty in a self-supporting cycle. And, as I get caught up in both certainty and fear, the less room there is to move, the more judgmental I become of others who are different from me, the more alone I feel, and the more inclined I am to turn away. Why do anything but despair when nothing and nobody can help, when I am too small to change the world alone, when the future seems to have been written already?

So what would come from allowing myself to be uncertain? To say that I really don’t know what’s going to happen? To admit that I might very well not be right? What would be called for then?

I was pleased, in the midst of this to remember a book I read ten years ago, called ‘Turning Towards One Another’, in which Margaret Wheatley argues that the first answer to a frightening, fragmented, ever changing world should be to admit we don’t know and then to talk and listen to one another.

She reminds us that good listening allows us to bridge worlds rather than destroy them, and that listening holds out the possibility of re-finding the goodness in ourselves and in others that we so easily forget. That as we speak about what we care about, and are heard, we discover capacities for wise action within us that we may have forgotten and denied. And as we listen with care to those who see the world very differently from us, we find that it is a richer, more complex place in which we can act than our fear and certainty will allow.

I imagine that if the referendum vote had gone the way I wanted it, I would not have had to face any of this. I would not have had to face how much more listening I need to do, nor how convinced I can be that I am right, how sure I can be that people who disagree with me are misguided, or small minded, or selfish. I would not have found myself, as I did one evening this week, sitting with a group of people doing exactly what Margaret Wheatley advises – turning towards one another, listening to each others’ experience of the world as it is today and finding that the more I listened to what other people had to say, the more it became clear that my certainty only gives me part of the picture, a fragment.

And that as we listen to others we make it possible to gather together the partial, fragmented pieces of our experience into an understanding of the world, and what to do, that can be more accurate, and more truthful, and more whole. This is how we restore the broken vav to wholeness.

And how in allowing my certainty to dissolve, in allowing myself to not be certain, I’m quite surprisingly starting once again to feel hope. I’m seeing anew that hope is neither the imprisoning certainty of pessimism nor the murderous optimism of Pinchas. That hope comes from an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable and ultimately an embrace of relationship with others. And that hope allows us to take action to repair, to bring together, to undo fragmentation, actions that are valuable for their own sake even when we have no idea how they are going to work out.