Sermon : On Bringing Peace to a City That’s in Pieces

Ever since last year’s riots, I have been thinking about Los Angeles, wondering whatever happened to the community in which I grew up. Whatever happened to feeling like part of a society, connected to other people, responsible for their welfare as well as our own?

In a sense, there is no such thing as “society” or “community.” There are only human beings like you and me and the myriad decisions that we make everyday. Those are what together become woven into the fabric that looks like a society when it is done. Each choice is one of the threads. If the threads are bare or torn or left unattended, the entire fabric of society begins to unravel. The tapestry falls apart.

That is exactly what has happened in Los Angeles. And the only way we can repair it is one person at a time, one step at a time, one day at a time.

It is never easy to overcome our fears, to put aside our prejudices about other religions, other races, people who speak with certain accents or dress in different clothes or live in certain parts of town. But by now

we must all have learned the painful lesson that we will either have a community at peace or a community in pieces.

When day in and day out we hear friends, neighbors and family talking about where they want to move to get away from L.A., it surely must have an impact on the emotional lives of our children. When we continue to talk about “undocumented workers” and “illegal immigrants” as if they are responsible for the decline of the quality of life in Los Angeles, it surely will have an effect on how our children look upon all Spanish-speaking people.

When the affluent in our community feel compelled by the decline of public education and fear for the physical safety of their children to send them to private schools, are we not reinforcing a deepening sense of isolation between the children of the “haves” and “have-nots”? What we need is a greater emphasis on family education in which parents accept responsibility for the actions of their children and our schools will become safe once again.

And what kind of civic lessons do our children learn when the Rodney King and Reginald Denny beating cases are cynically depicted on TV and in the newspapers as motivated less by a search for justice and more by the need for appeasement of competing sociopolitical factions within our community? The answer demands a rededication to a sense of personal responsibility for quality of life, the quality of education and a sense of safety and well-being. You can’t leave it to someone else to take care of.

There is an ancient Jewish story about a rabbi who asks his students how they can tell when the night has ended and the day has begun.

“Could it be,” asked one, “when you see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” answered the rabbi.

Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?”

“No again,” replied the rabbi.

“Then when is it?” the pupils demanded.

The sage answered: “It is when you can look at the face of any man or woman or child and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”

It’s still night in Los Angeles. But together we can bring the dawn closer. Step by step, hand in hand, person to person, heart to heart.