The Greatest Love (Shabbat Lech Lecha)
We read this week, in parashat Lech Lecha about God’s partnership with Avram and his descendents. After flooding the world, God partners with humanity to bring it to the fullness of its potential. God calls to Avram to be part of the next step of creating a godly community. God says: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those that curse you (12:2-3).
What does it mean that God will bless those who bless Avram and his progeny?
Chizkuni, a French rabbi and Bible commentator of the 13th century, understands this to mean: Don’t think for a moment, ‘No one on earth is close to me, or will come to my aid.’ I know there are people who love you, even if you don’t! I find Chizkuni’s insight so powerful and relevant during these days when love of friends and family, maybe even love of God, can be hard to really feel. Chizkuni is saying there is a great love we may not be able to see, that only God knows.
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The other day I stepped into the woods here and was stunned at the variety of mushrooms – purple, white, orange, speckled or smooth, all around me. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of an invisible below-ground network of filaments called mycorrhizae. This network connects trees and helps them communicate and share nutrients with each other deep below forest floor.
On my walk, I found a speckled yellow mushroom. An app on my phone told me this mushroom only grows in association with the Eastern White pine. The mushroom is just a hint, a temporary manifestation, of the massive web of tiny filaments that invisibly bound themselves to the roots of that Eastern White pine to help it grow. This is how I imagine the great love all around us: it steadfastly sustains our world, operates invisibly, except at rare moments when it shows itself to us.
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Though you may only see Beth or me up here on Friday night, you may not see all the loving acts that allow us to lead services for you: since before pandemic – steadfast, quiet, invisible, like the underground mycorrhizal network mushroom sprout from. Lydia sets up the flowers, Herb gets the microphone, Jean pours the grape-juice, sets up the candles and finds a volunteer to light them. You tune in on 918, or come down and bring your neighbors. Without any of these small loving acts, Shabbat would not happen here as it does each week.
It is through these invisible but essential connections that we become a blessing to one another. Through these small loving actions, we become momentary messengers of an ahavat olam, an everlasting love, and remind ourselves, what we too often forget: we are held and sustained by a world built of love, a love that runs for miles just below our feet, and peeks out to see us every once in a while. So thank you all for being a part of this blessing, for being here, for tuning in, for making visible a love that only God knows, but that we, at moments like this, can feel.