Sukkot-It's Like Riding A Bike

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is where I hear clearly. Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Messiah who strengthens me. Many translations say through him who strengthens me. He's talking about the Messiah. [00:00:15] Speaker B: But listen to the beginning of that. I can. I can. It does not say he can do all things through me. It says I can do all things through Him. Paul is involved in the sentence. He has something to do with the strength he receives. Just before this he says, I have learned. I have learned. He's learned contentment through hunger and plenty, through need and abundance. He's experienced the help of Messiah in circumstances that required endurance. But this experience gives him the grounds to say I can. Now some of us can say God can with complete conviction. We come very uncomfortable, though, when it switches to I can. [00:01:16] Speaker A: We know God can give strength, that sometimes we struggle to acknowledge that he's given it to you to do something with. We believe he can give wisdom. [00:01:29] Speaker B: Then we hem and haw for months over a decision in which he has [00:01:35] Speaker A: already provided the wisdom to make. At some point, trusting the giver involves receiving the gift and and using it. I am happy to report to you that I finally found it after years of looking at the symbolism of the Sukkah and the four species and everything that the festival of Sukkot holds. I think I have found one of my favorite interpretive pieces for this season, and I'm glad that we get to explore it all today with all of you beautiful people. Most of you know that I am very, very much unashamedly a self improvement guy. Not myself. All of ourselves. That I believe that we have an active part to play in our own lives. I believe we we can grow. I believe we must invest in that we can develop what it is that God has given us. Even at times when we don't know what it is. We can learn to take responsibility for our purpose, for our well being, our reason for being here. And when we do that, things change for us and they change for the people that are around us because we become better. And so do they. By the best version of you. That is one reason that I love counting the Omer every spring for these 49 days. We arrive at Shavuot on the 50th, and each day gives us an opportunity to pay attention to those details, to some part of ourselves, and to do something with it. Some confused looks in the room. The Omer. [00:03:42] Speaker B: Shavuot. It's Sukkot, Rabbi. [00:03:47] Speaker A: I got that. We're not counting things here. Well, not so fast though. Have you ever counted the days from the 1st of Elul to Hoshana Rabah, the last day of Sukkot. You know how many days this is? 50 days. 50 days another. Another 50 day journey. And here we are in the last week of our 50 day journey. We understand something, I hope, about the work that has brought us here. Because Elul asks us to do a lot of examination of ourselves. Rosh Hashanah calls us to wake up Yom Kippur. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Ask us to look deep inside the [00:04:35] Speaker A: truth of our lives as we stand before God. And that for many people, myself included, [00:04:41] Speaker B: it happened after, as I hope it has for you. But I had some deep, deep revelations [00:04:49] Speaker A: about things that need to change in my life. [00:04:53] Speaker B: And that's not easy. [00:04:54] Speaker A: That can make for a very tough 40 days. [00:04:56] Speaker B: But then five days later, we're sitting under the branches with our friends, looking [00:05:03] Speaker A: at the moon, celebrating, praising that we're in the Sukkah. And there is such a significant change in the atmosphere. We're in party mode now, right? God actually commands us to rejoice. We've come through all of that searching [00:05:25] Speaker B: and now we have a festival devoted to. [00:05:29] Speaker A: To joy. What an incredible God. [00:05:34] Speaker B: But we're still in the 50 day [00:05:35] Speaker A: period, and that means something. [00:05:37] Speaker B: 50 day periods mean something with God. [00:05:42] Speaker A: We know that from Shavuot. This is a party with a purpose. And what is happening in these last days? What does Sukkot help us to realize and to recognize after everything we have invested in the season? I think we can find an understanding, at least a beginning of that, through [00:06:05] Speaker B: something that we're all doing right now. I can guarantee you, no matter what is going through your mind right now, you are doing this thing. [00:06:23] Speaker A: We're breathing. We're breathing. In Hebrew, neshama, the word we use for soul. It also has a connection to the meaning for breath. Genesis tells us that God breathed the breath of life into the human being. Our life begins with that breath, that gift from him. And breath has a rhythm. We take it in, we let it out. And the breath that we use, the [00:06:57] Speaker B: breath we receive, becomes the breath that we use to speak and to sing [00:07:03] Speaker A: and to put our strength into something difficult. Matt Redmond has a wonderful song called Breathing the Breath. You should listen to it. [00:07:12] Speaker B: But I want to get you to [00:07:13] Speaker A: think about these two 50 day seasons through that rhythm. This way you. [00:07:17] Speaker B: In the spring [00:07:21] Speaker A: an inhale and in the fall an exhale. Jewish teaching speaks of two movements in our relationship with God. There is an awakening from above and there is an awakening from below. Awakening from above begins With God reaching toward us, he intervenes. [00:07:48] Speaker B: He opens a possibility we could never have opened for ourselves. And this is how, if you think about this, this is how the spring journey, the spring story begins. Because Israel is enslaved in Egypt, generations have lived beneath Pharaoh. God tells Moses, I have come down to deliver. He brings them out. He makes a way through the sea. He provides food and water in the wilderness. [00:08:17] Speaker A: And he goes with them with a [00:08:19] Speaker B: pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire by night. And you imagine looking out into the darkness after all that's come to pass and seeing that fire. You've left everything familiar. You have no experience of the life ahead, but you can at least look forward and see where you're being led. [00:08:42] Speaker A: God is with you now. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Following that still requires courage. But the pillar is leading you into a wilderness. But God has given you something visible. [00:08:55] Speaker A: The prophet Hosea looks beautifully back on these days. The early days of Israel. [00:09:01] Speaker B: He describes it as a parent caring for a child. When Israel was a child, I loved [00:09:08] Speaker A: him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Then God speaks of teaching Ephraim to [00:09:13] Speaker B: walk, taking them by the arm, bending [00:09:16] Speaker A: down to feed them. [00:09:18] Speaker B: This is an awakening from above. The spring begins with God's initiative, really. The relationship with Israel begins with God's initiative. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Through the weeks towards Sinai, the people have to grow into what they've received. [00:09:37] Speaker B: And that's the growth that we're remembering [00:09:41] Speaker A: as we go and count the Omer. [00:09:45] Speaker B: But the freedom, the opening, the possibility of anything depended wholly and solely on God. That's the inhale that is receiving, taking [00:10:01] Speaker A: it in a gift. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Then we come to these 50 days [00:10:06] Speaker A: in the full and the emphasis turns toward our response. [00:10:15] Speaker B: We begin examining our lives. [00:10:17] Speaker A: We offer the prayers, we make the choice. We bring our efforts into this relationship. [00:10:22] Speaker B: This is an awakening. It's supposed to be an awakening from below, an awakening of that pure soul. The life God has given us begins to answer him. This is the. The exhale, a return. And the teaching in Judaism continues, gives us this powerful principle about how these [00:10:52] Speaker A: movements inhale and exhale belong together. [00:10:56] Speaker B: And it says this. An awakening from above is only permanent [00:11:03] Speaker A: if it is met by an awakening from below. [00:11:08] Speaker B: The spring is an unearned gift. [00:11:15] Speaker A: The fall Elul through Sukkot is where we make it ours. [00:11:20] Speaker B: God steps behind us a bit to give us space. It's a quiet period where we have to wake ourselves up. And the shofar does that. And then you look inward in Elul [00:11:30] Speaker A: and you sit in the discomfort of Yom Kippur. [00:11:33] Speaker B: You're Doing part that's supposed to make this gift yours, to make you grateful. Something can be. Something can be given to you, and you still have to learn to use it. You can receive extraordinarily extraordinary encouragement. You can have a moment where you see possibility for your life with clarity that you never experienced before. And yet, guess what? You still have to participate. You still have to answer. You can receive. But you must return. You have to exercise the courage, make the decision, put effort into developing what you've been given. And that brings us here to Sukkot, [00:12:26] Speaker A: how we've been participating in this for weeks. [00:12:31] Speaker B: We brought ourselves some courage, some exhaustion, whatever we receive, that forgiveness that comes during those days and that filling, like that deep inhale, renewal. That's the way it feels on Nilah when you close, refreshed, pure soul. Baruch shem kevod malchuto le olam va'. Ed. We say it. [00:12:59] Speaker A: And now he gives us time to rejoice in his presence. [00:13:06] Speaker B: He's a wonderfully good God. And I think we need to let that joy include some recognition of what [00:13:13] Speaker A: has happened within us. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Because we get very practiced in these stages of identifying what's missing, what's wrong, what needs work, where do we fall short? And we can usually produce a list like that without much effort, right? [00:13:32] Speaker A: Can we recognize the same growth in ourselves? Can we recognize places where we have exercised courage, where we have learned something, [00:13:42] Speaker B: where God has been helping us develop strength that we're going to use from this point forward, that we received it, but now we're gonna return it, we're gonna exhale it. Our tradition, you know, the season emphasizes our effort. That's what I'm talking about here. And someone might recognize and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What about, you know, this beautiful and familiar picture of the month of Elul and the high holidays, where the king is in the field. [00:14:20] Speaker A: There is that the king has come [00:14:22] Speaker B: out of the palace. [00:14:23] Speaker A: People can approach him where they live, [00:14:26] Speaker B: where they work, and he receives them with this welcoming face. And it's that nearness of God that is supposed to welcome us into participation. And now for a moment, though, as we move into Sukkot, I want you to modify that picture, that king in [00:14:46] Speaker A: the field to Father. You remember during the liturgy, we sing Avinu Malkeinu, right? He's both our Father and our King. I want you to modify that. He is certainly our king, but our Father. [00:15:06] Speaker B: And I want you to have that picture. And then I want you to also [00:15:11] Speaker A: remember back to the days of learning to ride a bike. Who can remember those days? The older you get, the less you can. [00:15:20] Speaker B: How many of you remember learning to ride a bike? [00:15:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:24] Speaker B: How many remember helping a child learn [00:15:27] Speaker A: to ride a bike? Right. A lot of us. [00:15:32] Speaker B: There is a very true realization that there's a big difference between watching someone ride a bike and then sitting on one for the first time. From the sidewalk, everything looks simple. Then you get on the seat, you put your hands on the handlebars, and you discover very, very quickly, this bike has its own way that it wants to go. Your feet are supposed to pedal, your hands are supposed to steer. Somehow you have to have all of this in balance and behind you, though, thank God, your Father is holding the seat. You've got me. I have you. [00:16:15] Speaker A: Put your feet on the pedals. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Don't let go. Look ahead. I'm right here. [00:16:22] Speaker A: You think about where he's standing. Earlier, when we talk in the spring, we talked of the pillar of fire going ahead of Israel. [00:16:31] Speaker B: You could lift your eyes. You can see the direction. [00:16:35] Speaker A: And here the Father is behind us. You hear his voice. You can feel the hand steadying you. But your eyes have to be on the road. You have to keep steering. You have to look ahead. His nearness. [00:16:59] Speaker B: His nearness makes this feeling possible, that you can attempt something, but it requires your own effort. [00:17:07] Speaker A: Right? The prophet Isaiah gives us more beautiful language for that kind of guidance. We get it says, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, this is the way. Walk in it. When you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. We can say, this is the way. Pedal in it. For this analogy, you hear the voice while you move, and you have to move. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Father can hold the bicycle all afternoon, and you can stand there with your feet on the pedals all afternoon and never go anywhere. [00:17:45] Speaker A: You must pedal. This is where I hear clearly. Philippians 4:13. I can do all things through Messiah who strengthens me. Many translations say, through him who strengthens me. He's talking about the Messiah. [00:18:04] Speaker B: But listen to the beginning of that. I can. I can. It does not say, he can do all things through me. It says, I can do all things through him. Paul is involved in the sentence. He has something to do with the strength he receives. Just before this, he says, I have learned. I have learned. He's learned contentment through hunger and plenty, through need and abundance. He's experienced the help of Messiah in circumstances that required endurance. But this experience gives him the grounds to say, I can. Now some of us can say God can with complete conviction. We come very uncomfortable, though, when it switches to I can. [00:19:05] Speaker A: We know God can give strength, that sometimes we struggle to acknowledge that he's given it to you to do something with. We believe he can give wisdom. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Then we hem and haw for months over a decision in which he has [00:19:25] Speaker A: already provided the wisdom to make. At some point, trusting the giver involves receiving the gift and using it. You have been given capacity to learn, to exercise judgment. You can attempt something, you recognize mistakes, you make a correction. [00:19:49] Speaker B: You can begin, as unreligious as this sounds, to trust yourself with a responsibility, [00:20:00] Speaker A: or many of them, because of the strength with which God has blessed you. That is what the child on the bike is learning. [00:20:11] Speaker B: And that's the first 40 days of [00:20:13] Speaker A: this period of exile. [00:20:15] Speaker B: We're awakening from below, we're doing the work. But God is close, and he's with us in our struggle and our effort to return. And like learning to ride a bike, these attempts sometimes go badly. Sometimes the bike goes over, sometimes the knees are scraped. It can be a painful process, but the father helps the child get back on again and gives him courage, or her courage. We come out of Yom Kippur like this. We're making some progress, and we try another few feet. The child begins to find a rhythm. There's some wobbling, there's some movement, but now there's some flow. And the father is now running alongside the bike. [00:21:13] Speaker A: You think about where God has been in the spring. [00:21:16] Speaker B: He went ahead all through Elul. He was behind a voice at our back, a hand on the seat. Now it's Sukkot. He is beside us. He is with us, barely touching the seat. He's keeping pace. He's looking down the street and he's watching us. And he's with us. [00:21:36] Speaker A: That's our picture of Sukkot. [00:21:40] Speaker B: The handlebars still a little shaky, like the walls of the sukkah and the roof. [00:21:48] Speaker A: The Torah tells us, you know, God [00:21:51] Speaker B: asked us to celebrate this incredible time, but to leave our house, where we could throw a heck of a party and come out to the shack with the bamboo roof and sleep on the grass in the water. I mean, the rain, whatever. Not in the rain. [00:22:09] Speaker A: That's not really part of it. [00:22:10] Speaker B: But if you ever slept in a sukkah, when you wake up in the morning, the ground is wet and we look up and all this. So he puts the season of joy in the flimsiest place. We could have it. [00:22:30] Speaker A: But we feel the wind and we feel the rejoicing anyway, because there he is. It's like the child on the bike. [00:22:41] Speaker B: They could still fall, but they're happy because they're moving and their father is right beside them. Despite it all, we're beginning to experience [00:22:54] Speaker A: what we can do, the kid and us. With God, we come through the searching of the holidays. [00:23:00] Speaker B: Now there's room. [00:23:01] Speaker A: We have Zaman Simchatenu, the season of our rejoicing. The Torah, as I said, commands us to rejoice. It was a harvest festival. [00:23:15] Speaker B: The harvest for Israel was coming in. It was in for us in these 50 days. We put real work into these days, and God was in that work. And this week we get to be [00:23:27] Speaker A: really glad about it together, to rejoice. [00:23:30] Speaker B: And the bicycle helps us see something about that joy. You look at the father now, he's like bent over trying to keep up. He's probably run much further than he intended to when he started this process. But look at the face of the father. The child is riding. He remembers that the child had a lack of courage, had fright. He remembers the child's feet dragging on the ground, the insistence, I can't do it. That it would never work. [00:24:04] Speaker A: But now he's watching this kid, [00:24:10] Speaker B: less [00:24:10] Speaker A: of his holding him. He can see the corrections that the kid is making beginning to work. [00:24:16] Speaker B: And he's been waiting to see this happen. And he's watched that work from. From day one. The child so busy concentrating that they hardly even recognize how happy they've made their father. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Could that be true of us? [00:24:40] Speaker B: Can we be so occupied in our [00:24:42] Speaker A: uncertainty that we give not enough attention to God's delight? You listen to Zephaniah. Listen to what Zephaniah says about God and you. It's Israel. But we're going to use it for us because it works for us. I believe it. [00:25:01] Speaker B: The Lord your God is in your midst. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will exalt over you with loud singing. We come to the festival before God. We rejoice. And Scripture gives us this picture of God rejoicing over his people. Where does Zephaniah put him? And in our midst, among us. Three verses earlier, he says, sing aloud. Rejoice. Exult with all your heart. And he uses those same words for what God does for us. The Hebrew Simcha, joy over them. It's the same word in the season, Zaman Simchateinu, the season of rejoicing. And then comes the moment in the bicycle that every child, every parent remembers who taught a child to ride. The child is moving down the street and he's saying, don't let go. [00:26:01] Speaker A: And the dad's like, I let go 500ft ago. You're doing it. You're doing it. You've been doing it. And you see the change in the child's face. [00:26:22] Speaker B: Concentration is still there. But now the surprise, the joy, the smile. I'm doing it. Did you see, dad? Did you see? [00:26:36] Speaker A: He's been watching the whole time. He's been with you the whole time. And now they're both laughing right there in the street. He's with us. It's the discovery I want us to have for this Sukkot. We're allowed to enjoy it, to recognize it. We can say, I'm learning, I've grown. [00:27:05] Speaker B: I can do something today that I didn't think I could yesterday. His presence continue. [00:27:11] Speaker A: His spirit goes with me. [00:27:12] Speaker B: We're sustained by him as we exercise the strength he's given us to use, to exhale. [00:27:22] Speaker A: And during these days we get to rejoice about all that with each other and with Him. So when you sit in the Sukkah this week, give some attention to that. Give some attention to the work that you've done, the work that you will do. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Think about what required and requires courage. Think about something that you began to understand or some capacity for change, or something that you're willing to own and acknowledge and allow yourself the beautiful prize of the fruit of recognizing that work in yourself. Having shown up with God. And yes, there are still things to learn. Just because you ride once doesn't mean the handlebars don't shake and the bike doesn't go down. [00:28:12] Speaker A: Sometimes it does, but you can experience joy in all of it. [00:28:18] Speaker B: You can sit beneath these branches of this temporary shaky hut. You can enjoy meals and join the singing. And we're so glad that you brought [00:28:30] Speaker A: us this far, God. [00:28:31] Speaker B: Why? Because I can do all things through [00:28:37] Speaker A: him who strengthens me. Let yourself hear the possibility in those words and let yourself imagine his face beside you as you begin to believe them and do them. I let go half a block ago. He sees it, and he's with you. And that joy runs both ways. At the end of these days is Hoshana Rabba for us next Friday. Then we come into Shmini Atzeret. Strange invitation to remain with him just this one more day. And we'll come back to the bike on that day. Because when the ride is over, the Father has one more very important thing to say. It's beautiful. And I'll tell you what that is. Next Shabbat on Shmini Atzeret. But for now, I want you to enjoy this week riding with your Father in Heaven, who loves you and who always goes with you. Chag Sukot Sameach Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Makin. [00:30:03] Speaker C: If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next. Make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. 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