When I first sat down with the Church Deacons, on the night that the focus of our meeting was to be how would we share the space, how would we overcome logistical and emotional problems, what would be a fair cost sharing arrangement, the first question that I raised was “how do we best serve God?”

Yes, this Temple on Temple is a wonderful spiritual home.  At its center is this inspiring sanctuary.  As one of our younger Torah School students put it, it looks like Noah’s Ark upside-down,  spread out over our heads.  Indeed it does fell like God’s sheltering ark suspended above us.  Is it a coincidence that the words over our own Ark, our Ark that holds our beloved and sacred Torah scrolls, read “ufros aleinu sukat shlomecha – spread over us Your shelter of peace?”

So I asked a question of my congregants at our first service in the beautiful space on Friday night.  I asked “What do you think God thinks of all this?”  I cautioned them and reminded myself that it’s dangerous to think we can completely understand God.  What kind of God would it be if we, God’s creation, could completely understand God’s thoughts and ways?  But God did give us a mind with which to reason.  And we Jews count ourselves as members of the people Israel.  The name Israel was given to our patriarch Jacob when he spent the night wrestling with God and God’s angel.  His name was changed from Yaacov to Yisrael, “one who wrestles with God.”  So it’s our job to wrestle and struggle with God – to try to interpret the Divine Mind.

I thought about it – I thought about how theologically different we Jews are – how our understanding and practice so differs from Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and others.  I thought about how different even various Christian denominations are from one another.  And then a strange idea occurred to me.  Either God is extremely wise or not so terribly wise at all.

Perhaps God didn’t quite get it right.  Perhaps something went wrong.  Perhaps God’s message is so muddled, so obscure, so intractable that only one out of the thousands of religions and denominations of the world has got it right and the rest of us have it wrong.  Is it possible that we Jews, counting for less than 2 tenths of a percent of the world’s population are the only bearers of the truth and everyone else has gone astray?  Could this be God’s will?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, God is very wise, even brilliant.  Perhaps, just perhaps God understands what happens when just one person or one group is certain that it alone has the only truth and is therefore to be in charge of the rest of us.  I’m sure that some people might like this idea, like people named Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Osama Bin-Ladin: they had no doubt that their truth was the only truth.  But God understands the humanity that God created; our strengths and our weaknesses.  God understands that we come in many sizes, shapes, colors and cultures.  God understands that God’s plan must be taught to each of us separately and that each of us will play an unique role in its execution.

I believe that we are on a mission to make God’s plan of a beautiful, peaceful world a reality.  There’s lots of work to be done and no small distance to get from our current, troubled world to that place where God’s unity will be proclaimed by all.  There are many peoples who have been chosen to work on this mission and each has been given instructions in a language and cultural context that it can work with.  Each of us walk our own religious path towards this goal.  Problems arise when we succumb to the temptation to argue about who’s path is the best one, the true one, God’s favorite one.

I, for one, don’t care what path you are on, so long as your marching orders include the Golden Rule – to treat others as you wish to be treated. 

So imagine if you will, God looking down on us at this moment, as we adult children of the Holy One move in together into the same home, to better understand one another and jointly work on the family business.  God knows, God knows that we will retain our individuality and loyalty to our unique assignments, to our unique paths.  But I can only imagine God’s joy, God’s pride, and God’s love for us as we strengthen each other on our sacred work assignments.

We Jews have a blessing that we recite at times of joyous beginnings.  Translated it means, “Blessed are You our Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us and for enabling us to reach this happy moment.”  It seems especially appropriate for me to chant this in Hebrew, since if Jesus were here, these would be the first words he would recognize from his childhood.  And after I chant, I invite you to join me by chanting the Hebrew word “Amen.”  Amen is related to the Hebrew concept, emunah, which means faith. When you respond to a prayer or blessing with the word amen, you add your faith to the blessing and get full credit for having said it yourself.  This is particularly handy for those of us whose Hebrew is a little rusty.

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, shehehchehyanu, vkiy’manu, v’higianu lazman hazeh.  AMEN

I hope that you will all make a special effort to come and join your Temple at prayer, at study and at play as we continue to hand down our precious tradition of Torah to your children and grandchildren.

With love and blessings from one who is truly blessed,