sermon

Earlier this week during The View, Whoopi Goldberg and her co-hosts talked about this, and Goldberg caused such a stir that she then became the news story. She claimed that the Holocaust was not about race, since both the Nazis and the Jews were white. When pressed, she said that the Holocaust was not about racism, but rather about man’s inhumanity to man. Later that evening, she was a guest on*The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

She said to him: As a black person, I think of race as something I can see.

During the process of creation, a midrash suggests that God consulted with the angels in order to determine whether or not to create human beings.

This week’s Torah portion is a continuation of the first census. At the beginning of the book of Numbers, God says, Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.

Several months ago, I was at a meeting of the Athens-Clarke County Census Complete Count Committee, and was asked to share a religious teaching that might connect to the then upcoming American Decennial Census. My mind immediately went to this verse.

Earlier this morning, I was a guest on a radio show earlier this morning with a colleague and we talked about exactly this, faith during these times. I’ll hopefully have a link to share with the congregation in the next few days, but one thing I want to share from our conversation is that that both of us noted that attendance, albeit over the internet, is up. We are all craving spiritual and social connection with one another.

This passage from the early part of Exodus suggests that God does indeed hear prayer. And God does not only listen. God reacts. God mentors a young shepherd named Moses. God performs 10 acts of miracle and might in the land of Egypt, culminating in the splitting of the mighty waters of the Red Sea. God frees the Israelites.

But, God frees the Israelites only after God has heard their prayer.