“The Game of LIFE” Sermon
Friday, May 31, 2013 ~ Parashat Sh'lach Lecha
My kids love board games,
especially games that involve money—classic family games like Monopoly and
Life. Now what’s interesting, is that like in all competitive games, they
instinctively are trying to spin or roll high numbers to get around the board
quickly, but ‘unlike’ most games, Monopoly doesn’t have a ‘race to the finish’,
it ends when everyone but one player goes bankrupt. This could go on for days.
And the game of “Life”—well that ends when everyone reaches retirement, the
finish line, but no matter how fast or slow you get there doesn’t matter, because
no one is rewarded for retiring first, and no one is penalized for getting to
the end of their “Life” last. Theoretically there is no rush.
So, if you remember the
rules of the game, you spin the spinner and little by little as you progress
along the road of ‘life’ in your little plastic pink car, you are asked to make
decisions, like going to college, choosing a career, getting married, buying a
home, having children…and that is the
game. But the game is also filled with other kinds of things that you do during
your lifetime. Like you change jobs, win the lottery, get involved in a
lawsuit. But there are other spaces on the board, where if you land, the tile
may read, ‘helped construct a homeless shelter’, volunteered in a soup
kitchen-- and then when you land on these spaces, you pick a tiny card that
says “LIFE” on one side, and the side that you are not supposed to peek at has
a dollar amount. You don’t look at this until the end of the game, when you
count it up with your other assets that you accrue over your lifetime.
Now, as my children race
and rush to speedily get to ‘retirement’, I find myself insisting that they
slow down and pay attention to everyone else’s moves so we can enjoy the game
together—and I find myself saying things
that sound like: Coby slow down, its not how fast you get to the end of
your life, but how you live it, it’s what
you do along the way, it’s how you play the game of LIFE that makes it fun for
all of us. Maybe you’ll be a manicurist, maybe you’ll have 6 children—because
that’s all that will fit in the little car.
Of course, now it’s
occurring to me that this game has profound moral and Jewish implications. It’s
not how fast you live your life, but the process and the quality, what you do
along the way, the relationships that you nurture. Pirkei Avot, chapter 2 says:
“Which is the right path for man to choose for himself? Whatever is harmonious
for the one who does it, and harmonious for mankind.” As I play, I find myself
more and more interested in the little LIFE cards —the ones that my kids rush
past without reading, the tiles that credit you for doing something helpful or
selfless for society.
So you do something
meaningful that helps someone else, and you understand you won’t get paid for
it now, but at the end of your lifetime suddenly it has value, and it is counted as part of your ‘worth’.
Pirkei Avot, chapter 4 asks: “Who is wise? One who learns from
every one. Who is rich? One who is satisfied with what he has. Who is
honorable, one who honors all of his fellow man.”
Now… I’m excited and I’m
yelling to my kids—these cards, these are mitzvoth!
It turns out this is a
deeply Jewish game that draws from the best teachings of our tradition. You do
something meaningful for others, something in your free time, something you
feel compelled to do--Judaism calls it tzedakah, justice, righteousness, and it
changes the ‘game’ for people. It is an obligation, like in the game of ‘Life’,
you do it simply because you landed there. It is an obligation, part of our
life, that is the real meaning of mitzvoth, from tzav, that which we are
commanded to do. In fact, our teachings instruct us to “run to do even the
smallest mitzvah, as doing a mitzvah brings on another mitzvah”.
You 7th graders
who are here tonight, you stand teetering before Jewish adulthood—you are going
to be asked more and more frequently to spin the dial yourself. Please don’t go
home and bury yourselves in front of your computer or the TV—instead, spin the
dial: continue to study and deepen your ties to Jews here and in Israel, help
someone who is in need—choose things that don’t reap monetary value now, but
give you greater rewards as you mature.
Start to pursue what your game
of life will look like, collect as many tiles as you can, ask questions and
have wonderful experiences along the way.
So I will say again what I
say to Ben and Coby—don’t rush-- how we play the game of LIFE is what makes it
so much fun. Turn the spinner slowly.
We say about the Torah,
that everything is in it, and by continuing to turn it and turn it, we can
examine and learn from its wisdom, and continue to apply these teachings to our
life. Just like this crazy spinner on this game that is not so silly after all:
TURN IT AND TURN IT AND
TURN IT, TURN IT AND TURN IT AROUND, EVERYTHING IS IN IT, EVERYTHING IS IN IT,
TURN IT AND TURN IT AROUND….
MUCH WISDOM HAVE I LEARNED
FROM MY TEACHERS, MORE HAVE I LEARNED FROM MY FRIENDS, BUT FROM MY STUDENTS,
HAVE I LEARNED THE MOST OF ALL.
