Any time we open up our news feeds to look at what is going on in the world, we are met with evidence of a world on fire. Some people are concerned with the direction of our own country, whether the choices of our government or just the extreme toxic polarization of our citizens against one another. Some of us look at the rise of religious extremism, of anti-semitism, and it doesn’t seem to alarm the majority. While many of us in western countries live in comfort and safety, many fear that it can all be taken away instantly.
One of our greatest sages and teachers of the 13th century, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, or the Rambam articulates 13 principles of faith. These principles are his distillation of biblical, rabbinic, and mystical perspectives on reality. His final principle states: “I believe in perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may delay, I will wait every day that he will come.” Messiah in Hebrew is Mashiach, or “anointed one.” In biblical and rabbinic teaching, when the Temple in Jerusalem stood, the mashiach was the person anointed by God to free the Jewish people from subjugation and oppression and govern them in freedom. The disciples of Jesus of Nazareth believed that he was that anointed one. When the apostle Paul developed Christianity hundreds of years later, he expanded the idea of messiah to be a supernatural “son of God” who will redeem the world.
Jewish teachings don’t conceive of Messiah as a supernatural “son of God,” but many believe that there will be a flesh and blood human who will help usher a new age of Divine Consciousness – where people will see the Divine reality in everything and treat each other accordingly. Others don’t believe that Mashiach refers to a person, but instead to a state of human consciousness, or a “messianic age,” where people will have evolved to such a state psychologically and spiritually that we don’t create the same degree of suffering that we have now.
In the Torah, when God promises Abraham that his children with grow to be as numerous as the stars in the sky and they will be at home in their land, Abraham asks when he will possess the land (Gen 15:8). There is a mystical teaching that what Abraham is really asking is “when will the messiah come?” He looks all around him at the magnitude of idolatry, violence, and immorality and wonders how human beings will even grow out of all of it. In fact, there is another teaching that even before the creation of the world, God gathered together the souls of the tzaddikim – those who would eventually become righteous people on the earth to consult about the creation. When shown the reality of suffering and human darkness, even the tzaddikim asked the question – “But when will the messiah come?”
These teachings allude to a knowledge, a paradox, a reality that is hardwired into every human being. By asking the question – we affirm the reality of the messiah – we know that it is not only possible, but inevitable. But at the same time, we cannot live the human drama without being in the drama – without our heart breaking by the countless sufferings we experience on our journey of growth. We are like children on a long car ride constantly asking. – “when will we get there.” We know that we will get there, but we try to manage our discomfort by reaching for an exact answer, an exact time of arrival that will give us a measure of certainty and even control.
I believe that when the Rambam articulates a core principle of faith as the belief in the coming of Mashiach, he is affirming that human consciousness is constantly evolving and what we think and do is an essential part of that journey. When Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. famously said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” he is affirming the evolution of human consciousness towards the Divine. It is essential that we hold on to that reality no matter what pops up in our newsfeeds. It is essential, not only for our own psychological and spiritual well-being, to keep the reality of hope alive in our hearts so we will not succumb to despair and nihilism. If we believe that the world and humanity is going to its own destruction, then why care about future generations – why not only be concerned for our pleasure in the moment? But if we believe that we are all evolving towards a messianic time and our own spiritual growth – thoughts and actions are necessary for that evolution, then we make every effort to grow towards that good.
At the same time, the midrashim about Abraham and the tzaddikim normalize and affirm our impatience. We are impatient because people are suffering now and our humanity demands that we stay connected to that suffering, that we don’t close of our hearts. In fact, our evolution of consciousness is dependent on not only the awareness of the reality of mashiach, but also our impatience – with the live question on our hearts – “when will he come?”
How do we hold on to Rambam’s teaching when everywhere we look there is hate, injustice, and suffering? We realize that it’s not everywhere we look. Our newsfeeds keep our attention by keeping us afraid, concerned, and outraged. Since our newsfeeds don’t reflect the countless deeds of kindness and justice that people do all over the world every day, it’s easy to get a picture of humanity that is not fully accurate. All we need to do is look around us – to pay attention to the small interactions in our lives. When we make small and larger efforts of kindness to those around us and see it coming back, we realize that there is a goodness woven into the fabric of humanity and our world. The Psalms say Olam Hesed Yibaneh – that God built the world from love. When we open to that reality within us and notice it around us, we have much to be hopeful for.