Sermon Tone Analysis

Tests disturb me.

Faith passes Test

Tests disturb me.

Welcome to Congregation Beth Messiah and l’shana tova.

If you are new to CBM or new to Judaism I want to give you one of our insider phrases.

It’s the kind of phrase you know because you are raised in a Jewish home.

It is kind of like when Christians say, “He is risen” and then they respond with “Risen Indeed.”

We have a Jewish version of this on Rosh Hashanah.

I say to you Ketivah Tovah which is the abbreviated way of saying, “May you be inscribed for a great year.”

And the response is Gam Le’mar “To you too.”

So I say to you Ketivah Tovah and you say to me Gam Le’mar, “To you too.”

Now you say to me Ketivah Tovah and I say to me Gam Le’mar.

Now I know this will be a great New Year.

Rosh Hashanah is as joyful as it is disturbing.

It is an odd paradox of a Holiday.

It is a bit like getting a flu-shot.

You know it will help you to not get sick for a season but disturbing to get pricked by that needle.

At Rosh Hashanah we encounter this great polarity between joy and disturbance.

This is a joyful day as are Jewish sages said a long time ago it is B'Tishrei nivrah ha'olam - that the world was created in Tishrei, so that Rosh Hashanah commemorates the Creator God and the creation itself.

It's our planetary birthday as it were, and this gets reflected in the Machzor itself when we say; Hayom harat olam - today the world, the universe, was conceived.

This is also a joyful time because we know the great prayers of hope, the slichot prayers that offer warmth, encouragement and a constant reminder of forgiveness and the Tashlich service where we cast our bread upon the waters representing the complete removal of our sins.

On the other hand, this spiritual journey to joy is disturbing.

I don’t mean the use of the word disturbing the way kids use it today when speaking of a disturbing Movie or Instagram.

I mean the actual dictionary definition of disturbing, “causing anxiety.”

When something or someone disturbs you then it messes with how your respond to the world around you.

It is disturbing to go to someone during this time and ask them to forgive you for some it may be equally disturbing to give forgiveness.

You have to push that false awkward smile on your face, you start taking those deep-sighs, some of you start sweating profusely, if you are under 50 you start checking your social media every 15 seconds, some of you develop “Spidey” sense and can hear and sense everything and start acting skittish.

This is the time of the great disturbance.

During the High Holy Days our disturbance comes because of one of the great themes of these days: God’s testing our works.

The sages called it Yom Ha’Din “The Day of Judgment.”

The ancient Jewish sages uses to say that Rosh Hashanah was just like a military call to inspection.

Military men for millennia have responded to the call for an inspection first by squad leaders and high ranking commanding officers.

Ask most any of our military men in this room and they will tell you that the call to an “inspection” was a great test and definitely created a disturbance/anxiety.

When I asked one of our former marine, 0317, about the call to inspection his posture changed he stood up tall, his face got stiff, I could tell just the thought of it set him on edge.

And, if you have are having an exceptionally sweet Rosh Hashanah you have asked for and received forgiveness from someone you wronged or they wronged you.

This wiping down of the slate is comforting.

Vertically the slate is clean with God and horizontally with our friends and family.

It is comforting to make this sweet spiritual pilgrimage of the heart re-pledging our allegiance to His kingship and to making our most important relationship, most important.

During the High Holy Days our disturbance comes because of one of the great themes of these days: God’s testing our works.

The sages called it Yom Ha’Din “The Day of Judgment.”

The ancient Jewish sages uses to say that Rosh Hashanah was just like a military muster call.

Military men for millennia have responded to the call of the sound of horns and bugle and were expected to muster for roll call, to be tested, to be inspected by commanding officers.

The sages said that Just as a military commander reviews the troops who pass before him, so “on Rosh Hashanah the Trumpet is sounded and we all pass before God to be tested to be inspected.

They said the rest of the world will have to face God on being absent to the inspection but we are here and we all come before our God.

This is the discomfort, the call to come before the King, the Creator and the Judge.

This is the anxiety that causes me to sit forward, to come to attention, to confront the evil parts of my soul and renounce the wicked ways within me.

This discomforts me because I don’t like inspections.

I am not sure about how you feel about taking tests either but the idea of taking a test is about as appealing as eating bag of rusty nails.

After earning a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree I have had my fill of tests, papers and quizzes.

I don’t care how you spruce the thing up, a test is simply that a test.

I never served in our amazing military but I know what it is like to be inspected, to be tried.

There was one inspection I took that I will never forget.

This inspection/test had nothing to do with school.

It was not given in a school house unless you count as a school house, the school house of life.

Honestly, I did not know that I was being inspected until after the whole test was over.

It is one thing to have forewarning that “this is a test” but it is another thing to not know that you are being tested.

What was this disturbing inspection?

This was the inspection my now wife put me through before we were even courting.

Lauren and I had known each other for a couple of months.

I was 22 at the time and she was 19 and i felt like after a couple of months of knowing one another it was time to make this thing official.

So I did what any 22 year old would do in the 1990s.

I wrote her a very ambiguous letter stating that we could be friends or maybe more than friends but “whatever” to quote Nacho Libre.

Lauren and I had known each other for a couple of months and I felt like it was time to move the relationship from the friend zone to the boyfriend-girlfriend zone.

Now I was 22 at the time and she was 19 so I did what any 22 year old would do in the 1990s.

I wrote her a very ambiguous letter stating that we could be friends or maybe more than friends but “whatever” to quote Nacho Libre.

Lauren received my letter, called me to her home and took me to Sylvan beach, sat me down and said to me, “You are a great man of God but I will never be physically attracted to you.”

Ouch!!!

An ugly boulder crushed my sweet, fragile heart.

It was horrible.

Worst part, I had to drive her home and keep my composure.

I was crushed and I had to drive her home.

It was horrible.

After I dropped her off and picked back up the pieces of what remained of my broken heart or ego, I really was not upset with her.

I never thought that I would marry someone like Lauren: godly, set-apart, grounded and a life filled with a good report.

After I dropped her off and picked back up the pieces of what remained of my broken heart or ego, I really was not upset with her.

I never thought that I would marry someone like Lauren: godly, set-apart, grounded and a life filled with a good report.

The one thought that came coming back over-and-over again in mind was this, “I want the best for her and if I am not God’s best for her, then I want her to be with God’s best.

I am okay with that.”

We remained friends with one another.

We went to prayer meetings together, sometimes went to the same worship services and we spent time together in various venues sharing the gospel.

But, Lauren kept her distance, she kept it cold, ice-cold.

Then one late evening after a night of sharing the Gospel at Mardi Gras in Galveston Lauren called me.

It was late, maybe 2am, when she called.

She told me she needed to clear up something, to tell me something important.

She told me, “Michael the reason I pushed you away when you wrote me that letter was because I needed to see the kind of person you really were.

I needed to know you really were a man of God, a man of real character.

Michael, Iove you and I could not see spending the rest of my life with anyone else but you.”

For Lauren my faithfulness to God and living out His Word passed her test.

So, two weeks later we got engaged and three months later married and 18 years later here we are: I passed the entry exam.

There have been many other tests over the years but none that mattered to me as much as that one, that one test shaped my life and still shaping my life.

Tests disturb Us.

I am sure if you are alive and breathing at some point you to have been tested.

And as the years wash over you, you begin to realize that there are tests that have much greater consequence than any test you could have taken in school.

What makes the tests of life so disturbing is that we rarely know we are being inspected.

If you are in the room tonight and you are in college please understand that your mid-terms and finals are nothing in comparison to the tests of life.

Trust me, you will realize about 5 seconds after you get married that the tests of life are much more disturbing then any test at school you have ever taken.

These are the test that arise out of the school house of life:

· Provider financially for your family.

· Loyal to your spouse physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally.

· Nurturer to your spouse and children.