By Rabbi Stuart Dauermann
Ahavat Zion Messianic Synagogue, Beverly Hills

This week we have been hearing about disputes about where Yasser Arafat is to be buried, after rumors of his passing are substantiated.  The 23rd chapter of B'reishit/Genesis shows us Avraham making elaborate burial arrangements for his wife Sarah.  For both Arafat and [l'havdil] for Avraham, the choice of a burial place is important. Why is this?

 

In each case, Arafat and Avraham are both laying claim to a certain territory as the land of their descendants.

As we learned last week, Avraham is the model Jew, for us as well.  And again, as mentioned last week, his diligent attentiveness to the burial of his beloved Sarah is a model of a life that honors G-d, helping Sarah to fulfill the mitzvah of "dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return," doing for her something for which she cannot repay him.

In the next chapter, Avraham attends to his own final arrangments.  And here we get a window on what was important to Avraham-what he lived for.  In this chapter he makes provisions for the coming generations, that they should inherit the blessings and the values that he has come to value in his long life of 175 years.

He wants Isaac to have a wife from among his own people-the perpetuation of the Jewish people as a distinct people is important to Avraham-and it is important to God as well.  We know this is true in this account because God miraculously guides Eliezar, Avraham's servant to find the household of Avraham's family, some 1500 miles or so away.

I am reminded of the story of Dave Wilkerson, the founder of the work known as Teen Challenge.  In the 1950's he was a poor Pennsylvania country preacher who was reading in Look Magazine about some murderous teenage gang members in far away New York.  He felt God leading him strongly to go to far away, very different New York City, where he began driving around, praying, hoping to find one of those gang members, Nicky Cruz.  He knew he lived in Spanish Harlem, and managed to find that area of the city.  He parked his car, and with fear and trepidation, went up to a young Puerto Rican guy and asked him if he knew where Nicky Cruz lived.  The young man said, "Are you kidding, man? He lives here!  It turned out that Wilkerson had parked his car right in front of Nicky Cruz's house!

Now, the same God who guided Dave Wilkerson to Nicky Cruz, guided Eliezar to find Rebecca. And the same God who wanted Teen Challenge to be founded, wanted the Jewish people to grow as a distinct people.

This was important to God. It was important to Avraham.  I know it is not as important to some of us: we live in a day when it is politically correct to say that everyone's just the same.  Well, God didn't make us all the same.  It doesn't mean that any of us are any better than someone else, but God made people different.

Avraham wanted his people to be a unique people.

He also wanted his son and his descendants to inherit the blessings and the values he held to.

This is a challenge to us.  Ladies and gentlemen, despite all the hard work of some of our best people for many years, our children's program has always struggled to find people who will invest in passing on to our children the blessings and values we hold to as Messianic believers.  It has always been difficult to find people who will commit long-term to the work of training up our children. So it is that the work falls on a small corps of people who are willing-and who get burned out because there are too few of them.  Right now we are seeking ways to hire professionals to do this work, because the work must be done.

Like Avraham we need to become people who are positively driven to see the coming generations inherit the blessings and values we have inherited from Avraham, and from previous generations, and through which we know and honor God.  And if we don't have that passion, that appetite, then I wonder if, in this respect, we can rightly call ourselves children of Avraham.

In today's haftarah, [1 Kings, chapter one], we again see someone making his final arrangements. This time it is King David.  And we see as well the values driving his son, Adonijah, a very contemporary young man.  He has a fancy car, er, chariot, actually a number of chariots, and quite an entourage.  He is a Big Man on Campus, and he is spoiled rotten: "His father had never scolded him: 'Why did you do that?'"

Like I said, he is a very contemporary young man.  If there was a bumper sticker on his chariot it would have read, "So many women, so little time," or perhaps, "He who dies with the most toys wins," or maybe, "Go for the gusto!"  He wants everything this life has to offer, and he will do whatever he can to get it, even if it means plotting against his brothers and his father. As Nathan the prophet tells Bathsheba, mother of Solomon, "take my advice, so that you may save your life and the life of your son Solomon."  In other words, Adonijah will do whatever it takes to consolidate his wealth, his pleasure, and his power-even if it means killing his brother and Bathsheba.

This young man has a different vision of life than Avraham.  Avraham lives for the honor of God, and seeks to pass on to his descendants his legacy of blessing and values.  In fact, we read earlier in Avraham's life of how he turned down a huge fortune offered him by the King of Sodom, because he didn't want anyone to ever be able to say, "The King of Sodom made Avraham the rich man that he is today."  Avraham lived for and depended upon G-d.  He didn't "go for the gusto," he lived for things that would outlive him.

Our tradition and our Scriptures are full of this message: to live for something beyond the pleasures of this life, rather than simply for the pleasures of this life.  It is not that pleasures are unimportant or bad: after all., G-d created these pleasures.  However, when we live for these pleasures as our highest good, when we go for the gusto rather than become servants of destiny-we are fools.

Yeshua brings this lesson home to us with unmistakable clarity.  We see this in the parable of the Rich Fool, in Luke chapter twelve.

Notice how this parable is introduced with a man fighting with his brother over money. This is another guy who wants to go for the gusto.  This is a person like some of us when we are at our worst, and like people we know. He wants power, pleasure, prestige, money.  His life is about accumulating more stuff than the next guy, and squeezing the juice out of all of life's pleasures.

Yeshua then tells a parable about a very savvy and capable business man.  This is a parable about the kinds of people who surround us, about values that live inside of us all in varying degrees at different times in our lives.

We will miss the impact of this parable if we don't realize that this man is respectable, successful, and just like all of us want to be.  At first glance there is NOTHING wrong with this guy, and in fact, he is someone to envy and admire.  He is making plans to multiply and conserve his assets, and to retire in comfort.  I hope to God that this parable makes all of us uncomfortable, because it is supposed to.  This guy is us!  His values are the values of the general culture!  He is an icon, an example of success.

But from God's point of view, he is a fool.  And so am I, and so are you, if we don't do the hard work of distancing ourselves from the values that drive him.

What is wrong here? What is wrong is that power, prestige, security, protected assets, and pleasure are what he really lives for: even if he goes to Temple every week, it is these other things, not God, that he lives for,

In the introduction to this parable and in its conclusion, the lesson is made crystal clear: "Real life is not measured by how much we own", and, "a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God."

I want to close with some challenges to us all.

1.  You and I may feel we can have it both ways, but in many cases this is not true. Those cases in which it is not true are where people believe they can both serve God and the Almighty Dollar or their own lust for pleasure, power, and prestige.  Our tradition, the Scriptures, and our Messiah say otherwise: "You cannot serve God and mammon, for when push comes to shove, you will choose one over the other."  On a priority level, you must establish clear boundaries and clear priorities.  You and I must set up patterns of living and choosing where we habitually learn to choose the ways of God, the will of God, and the values we ought to be passing on to our children as over against pleasure, security, prestige, power.  You and I must develop a disciplined habit of choosing the right values and the invisible things of God's kingdom instead of the visible and palpable joys of power, prestige, and pleasure.

2.  Make no mistake about it.  This is a war and a fierce one, with many battles to be fought time and time again.  At different stages of life and in different circumstances, the battle intensifies in an excruciating manner. Young people fight certain battles over pleasures and over priorities, older people fight others.  Those who find themselves growing older and less desirable make compromises of their morals in order to have flings with members of the opposite sex.  People my age realize they are not going to live forever.  At that point the temptation is to "go for the gusto" to reach out and grab as big an armful of pleasure and power as one can because the store of life is going to close soon.  But our Messiah, our tradition, the Scriptures, and common sense remind us: you can't take it with you, and some day you will give an account for how you lived.  As Yeshua says in this parable: 'You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get it all?

3.  We need to realize that the battles we face are not simply against flesh and blood.  Just as God's influence is usually undetected except after the fact when we realize that he worked in some situation, so the influence of the dark side is almost always undetected but nonetheless real.  Behind the scenes of our life and our culture, unseen and undetected forces are at work promoting either our rescue-the forces of God-or our ruin-the forces of the dark side.  We need to keep this in mind, and include determined prayer in our arsenal of weapons.

4.  We will not and cannot win this battle without the help of the Holy Spirit.  The Divine Presence will refresh and empower us amidst our struggle, but we must struggle. God provides us the help we need, but we must seek it diligently.  We must do the hard work of unwrapping the provisions he sends our way. Even with the help of the Ruach HaKodesh, these are on occasion horrific battles, and we will lose some, while winning others only through determination, vigilance, and aggressive appropriations of the resources of the Spirit.  C.S. Lewis reminded us that Aslan is not a tame lion. I remind you that the Evil One is no tame lion either.

5.  If we are to win this war, and win more battles than we lose, we will need awareness, resolve, perspective and support.  We need to expect these battles and prepare.  We need to be determined to fight.  We need to be steeped in the values that really matter: not just familiar with these values but deeply immersed in them and committed to them.  And we will need the help of others.  This is one of the reasons why I am so concerned about community building at Ahavat Zion.  It is a hard struggle in 21st century Los Angeles, a struggle we may not succeed in.  But I can guarantee that without a community to nurture and support us in these values, many of us will lose the battle to live for the right things.  This is not a battle we can fight alone

In the Los Angeles Times some months ago, a Saudi journalist identified Yasser Arafat as one of the richest men in the Middle East.  In a world of oil sheiks, that is saying an awful lot.  Arafat probably controls over a billion dollars in assets. But as he lies dying or dead in Paris, he is learning the lesson of this parable: you can't take it with you.  And soon must face his Maker to give an account for how he has lived his life and what his life was about.

And so must we all.

So the challenge for all of us is this: to live for the right things.  And I would suggest that we should all live for those things that will outlive us and for the highest values and heritage we have as the people of God.

May God help us as we help each other.

Be careful out there.