Have you heard about the rabbi and the minister preaching to their congregations together from Israel? This is not the beginning of a joke but rather a serious idea Rabbi Arthur Nemitoff and Rev. Adam Hamilton plan to put in action next week when they travel together in Israel and preach three sermons to be presented to their respective congregations. Together Rev. Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection (COR), and Rabbi Nemitoff, senior rabbi of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah, will walk in the footsteps of one of Israel’s greatest kings, David.
The recorded sermons will be videocast at B’nai Jehudah on Friday evenings Oct. 5, Oct. 12 and 26; services begin at 6 p.m. They will be shown at COR at 11 a.m. the Sunday mornings of Oct. 7, 14 and 21. Rabbi Nemitoff will offer the introduction and conclusion at B’nai Jehudah. Rev. Hamilton will do so at COR. The videocasts will be available to the public on each congregation’s website soon after they are videocast at COR.
Rabbi Nemitoff said he and Rev. Hamilton have been friends for years and became closer through a variety of circumstances, including last year’s interfaith standing-up-against-hate event hosted at COR. As their friendship grew, the two men talked about preaching together and doing a pulpit exchange. Indeed, Rev. Hamilton has spoken at B’nai Jehduah. The idea for this sermon series came from the Methodist minister.
“He approached me and said, ‘How would you like to do a sermon series on King David?’ We’ve been planning this for about a year now. To the best of our knowledge it’s the first time a rabbi and a minister have gone to Israel together and walked in the footsteps of King David in order to have a shared preaching experience over the course of three or four sermons,” Rabbi Nemitoff said.
Rev. Hamilton said he came up with the idea because he loves doing sermons on biblical characters on location. He’s done similar sermons in Egypt in regard to Moses and in the Holy Land about Jesus.
“Sometimes when you are standing in a place where things happened, you see things with fresh eyes,” he said.
They will be in Israel for 10 days. During that time they will work on four sermons. Three will be completely filmed in Israel and shown via video here.
“The last one will include video clips each of us will use in our own way here in Kanas City. The plan is for the exact same sermons, with different beginnings and different endings, to be filmed in Israel using (the church’s) film crew,” Rabbi Nemitoff said.
The rabbi emphasized each congregation will see “the exact same sermon.”
“This is the first time we know of that this has ever happened.”
The two clergy have a basic idea what the lessons will be, but Rabbi Nemitoff said the lessons will evolve as a result of “our encountering each other in Israel in those spaces at that time and how we play off each other and how we learn from each other in those moments.”
The first sermon will be preached from the Valley of Elah and Bethlehem, which is where David’s story began. It’s the story of David and Goliath.
“We will be talking there about David and how his character developed and what that character was that allowed him to eventually become king,” Rabbi Nemitoff said. “We’ll discuss what are those characteristics we want to have in our own lives.”
The second piece will take place at Ein Gedi at the Oasis of Ein Gedi in the Dead Sea.
“In the Bible it talks about David running away from King Saul. Saul is chasing David and David hides in a cave and in fact has an opportunity to kill Saul and chooses not to. Instead he carries a piece of his cape to prove he could have but he didn’t. It was his loyalty to Saul and to God that kept him from killing Saul. One of the questions is what does that teach us about loyalty? Another is how we should behave in situations that tempt us to act in negative ways,” Rabbi Nemitoff said.
They will also preach a sermon from the City of David, which is outside the city limits of Jerusalem.
“This is where David discovered Bathsheba. While both Ein Gedi and Elah talk about who he was and the nature of his character in a positive sense, this is probably the nadir of his career because he stooped low,” said Rabbi Nemitoff as he further explained the two clergy will discuss this in reference to today’s “Me Too” movement.
In addition they will visit Jerusalem and surrounding areas including the Tomb of King David.
“We’ll really talk about David as the poet king he was in the last years of his life, not only the psalms attributed to him but also how his life at the end kind of evolved from the peak of his career and what that means for us as we consider our end of days,” Rabbi Nemitoff said.
The Reform rabbi said the pair hope to accomplish four things with this joint trip and sermons. They hope members of both congregations will learn something they didn’t already know. The rabbi said he also hopes their congregants “will be able to identify in themselves characteristics and stories that are illustrated as a way of illustrating the fact we can identify ourselves with King David.”
Another goal is a call to action.
“As a result of being able to identify those attributes in ourselves, what do we do with them?” the rabbi asked.
“For example, one possibility may be when we talk about David and Goliath, one of the lessons that can emerge from it is each of us has to face our own giants in our lives and how do we do that? How do we face those things that are ginormous to us and how do we have the courage? Those things can be depression, those things can be addiction, those things can be toxic relationships. What do we do about that?”
Rabbi Nemitoff hopes this sermon series will help his community understand the Christian community better and help the Christian community understand the Jewish community better, resulting in more support toward each other.
“The more we know about each other, the more we are willing to live with each other and the more we are able to support each other. So I think the fourth piece, which is just as important as the other three, is a long-term goal to get to know each other better as communities and we will be able to hear each other’s messages and realize there is more we share than divide us, and that’s very important.”
The Rev. Hamilton agreed this is a great chance to build bridges between the communities and “for all of us to grow deeper in our faith.”
“I think the whole thing will be an exciting series of sermons and I hope they will be an inspiration to our communities,” Rev. Hamilton said.
He added that anytime he sits and talks with Rabbi Nemitoff, he gains insights.
“I hope we will model for our community what learning together and growing together looks like.”