Sermon given July 18, 2026.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone. 

Normally, at least once a day but especially on Shabbat, I find myself thinking:

Zeh hayom asah adonai! Nagila v’ni’smicha bo. 

This is the day that the lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

This is especially true since I moved to Portland. I am moved every day by the beauty of the world around us, especially in Maine; I am moved by the glory of God’s creation, and by the incredible community and staff here at TBE; and I am moved by how lucky I am to get to serve this synagogue.

But this week, I really haven’t felt like rejoicing. 

This has been a painful and discouraging week for our state. The events of the world, and the choices made by those with access to deadly force, have meant that more precious life has been snuffed out this week. Anger and fear are bubbling over into the streets, and not for the first time this calendar year.

And it just so happens that this Shabbat is also Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Visioning. Shabbat Chazon is the special title given to the third Shabbat of Rebuke, which immediately precedes Tisha B’av, our day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the many other injuries our people has suffered. 

This means that today is a Shabbat where our desire to rest and express joy, as we do each Shabbos, clashes a bit with the words of our prophet Isaiah, from today’s special Haftarah, proclaiming God’s anger towards our ancestors as they took their spiritual and geographic inheritance for granted and failed to prioritize justice, forgetting the widow and the orphan in favor of living selfishly. I’m going to read an excerpt from the Haftarah. 

The book of Isaiah says:

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,

For GOD has spoken:

“I reared children and brought them up—

And they have rebelled against Me!

Ah, sinful nation!

People laden with iniquity!

Brood of evildoers!

Depraved children!

They have forsaken GOD.

“What need have I of all your sacrifices?”

Says GOD.

“I am sated with burnt offerings of rams.

Your hands are stained with crime—

Your rulers are rogues

And cronies of thieves,

Every one avid for presents

And greedy for gifts;

They do not judge the case of the orphan,

And the widow’s cause never reaches them.”

On Shabbat Chazon, these words are meant to hit us in a deeply uncomfortable way. We are not supposed to like this. These words are a stark reminder that no people, Jewish or otherwise, is immune from sin and corruption.  In fact, it is specifically a reminder that Jews are capable of doing harm and that we have done harm. Our individual and collective sins have immense consequences, both for ourselves and for God.

But these words are also a reminder that we know injustice when we see it, whether we want to admit it or not, and we are mutually responsible for the societies that we build together. This was true in ancient times, and it is even more true now, in America in 2026, living in a democracy where as citizens we have the right and the responsibility to vote and take an active role in forming our own government. As we just reaffirmed on July 4th-- this is a society built and maintained by We, the People.   

And unfortunately, We the People are struggling right now. It is impossible to hear Isaiah’s words this Shabbat Chazon and not hear echoes of the plights facing our own country today, and admit to the hard work that lies ahead of us to bring our nation back on track.

In the news, we see children whose parents are torn from them and deported--- we see partners and friends whose loved ones have been killed without due process-- we see politicians from all parties who are openly greedy and self-serving and lining their own pockets with kickbacks.

Orphans-- widows-- greed--corruption. These are precisely the markers of the broken community that Isaiah describes for us on Shabbat Chazon. And they have also been the markers of broken communities throughout history and around the world. This is a painfully universal message from our prophet this week.   

And it’s more than words on a page. 

Just this week, a three-year-old girl was made an orphan in Biddeford, and her mother, a widow. 

This is our country, and this is our state, and just like the Jerusalem being described in today’s haftarah, there are consequences for this level of brokenness, and we are all mutually responsible for what we will do about it. 

This is not a happy sermon. This is the day that the Lord has made, but I am not rejoicing today, and I am not happy in it. I am, frankly, quite brokenhearted.

But I am not alone in my brokenheartedness, and neither are you. 

On Tuesday, Rabbi Braun and I stood outside of the ICE detention center in Scarborough with a dozen other clergy. Before we went, she and I lay tefillin together. When you wrap the straps of leather around your hand, you say, v’erastich li b’tzedek, u’b’mishpat, u’b’chesed’, u’b’rachamim, I bind you to me in justice, in law, in lovingkindness, and in mercy.

And those were the qualities we were trying to embody outside of that detention center. We went to fulfill the mitzvah of actively pursuing justice-- tzedek, tzedek, tirdof; to fill the world with lovingkindess, as my sign said, Love Your Neighbor; we went to advocate for fair enforcement of the law and due process; and we went to plea for mercy for the downtrodden and the marginalized, in a society that is too quick to shoot, and too afraid to see ourselves reflected in the eyes of the stranger. 

We went to protest, yes.

But we also went because we still have hope.

And we went because we have responsibility. 

And it is that same hope, and that same responsibility, which form the second, crucial, part of Isaiah’s message. 

Shabbat Chazon is called the Shabbat of Visioning because Isaiah, after lambasting us for our many sins, then describes a future world where a Third Temple has risen from the ruins, and where justice and mercy reign supreme. In this vision of the future, Isaiah describes how our people will have redeemed ourselves, and recommitted ourselves to living their values.   

As Rabbi Chaim Jachter wrote, “It is vitally important for us to hear the message of Isaiah before Tishah Be’Av …because our experience of Tishah Be’Av should not be one exclusively of mourning.” 

Indeed, in addition to outlining exactly how grave our sins have been, Isaiah offers us a blueprint for improvement-- not for how someone else will swoop in and save us, but for how we will redeem ourselves.  The book of Isaiah says:

“Wash yourselves clean;

Put your evil doings

Away from My sight.

Cease to do evil;”

“Learn to do good.

Devote yourselves to justice;

Aid the wronged.

Uphold the rights of the orphan;

Defend the cause of the widow.”

I will restore your magistrates as of old,

And your counselors as of yore.

After that you shall be called

City of Righteousness.”

These are not just words for our ancestors. These are words for us, today. 

The book of Isaiah contains words of rebuke, yes. But they are also a sacred reminder of our own agency and our own sacred connection to each other, and of the fact that no matter how bad things may seem to get, we always have a choice and a say in bringing about a better future.

A fairer future.

A kinder future.

A future more like what God would want us to have. 

I’ll leave us today with a quote from the Ramban. In his commentary on today’s Torah portion, as Moses began to reflect on B’nai Yisrael’s epic and complex journey through the wilderness, the Ramban muses that

אֵין דֶּרֶךְ שֶׁאֵין בָּהּ עַקְמִימוּת.

There is no path without crooked portions. 

In other words, all human life is complicated. All of our choices, all of our societies, and all of our relationships, and all of our stories, will have surprises, and challenges. There will be times we are proud of our actions, and times we are not.

But now is not the time to stop trying, just because we are in the midst of a particularly crooked portion. 

Rather, now is the time to recommit ourselves to our sacred responsibilities, to hold each other accountable, and to be the ancestors our descendants need us to be, today.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us go out and do good in it.

Shabbat shalom.