“There are voices this week telling us we are finished.  That the hand we leaned on has loosened its grip.  That the friend across the sea is turning, and now we stand alone in the dark.

I have heard those voices.  I am not going to pretend they are not loud.

I only want to bring one more voice into the room, because I believe something with my whole life, and I want you to hear it tonight.

Every human being who has ever lived is a messenger.

Each one in his own way, each one in her own tongue, carrying something of the One who made the heavens and the earth.

The kings.  The presidents.  The ones who bless us and the ones who turn from us.  None of them is the Author.  Every one of them is a pen.

There is a Hebrew word for what I am trying to say: כְּלִי (kəlî) Kli — a vessel, a tool, an instrument in another’s hand.

It is the oldest prayer there is, and both of my families pray it.

The Christian kneels and says, “LORD, make me an instrument.”

The Jew stands and says, “Here I am, use me.  Hineni.  Here I am.”

The word Avraham said when God called.  “Pour through me whatever You will.”

Let me take you to a place I have stood a hundred times.  Masada.  The rock in the desert, the Dead Sea shining far below like hammered silver.

Herod built that fortress.  Herod the Great.  No one gave him that name for his soul.  He was a frightened, murdering man.

But he was a builder the world had rarely seen.  He raised the Second Temple until the pilgrims wept at its gold.  He raised Caesarea out of the sea.  He carved palaces into the cliff of Masada for his own fear.

And I still cannot get over it.  Two thousand years later we can see what he could not.

God was using him.  The cruel king was a vessel.  The Temple he built so that he would be remembered became the house where heaven came down.

And the mountain he carved for his own safety became, generations after he was dust, the last refuge of the ones who fled the burning Temple.

They did not survive.  But they became a word that has not died in two thousand years.

God writes straight lines with crooked pens.  He always has.

Open the book of Isaiah and you find it said out loud.

God takes a foreign king named Cyrus, a Persian who did not know His name, and calls him His anointed, His chosen instrument, and through that pagan king He sends His people home and rebuilds what was broken.

The tradition says it plainly. The heart of the king is a stream of water in the hand of The LORD.  He turns it wherever He wills.  (Mishlei – Proverbs 21:1)

So hear me, both of my families.

Every government you are watching on the news.

Every leader who seems to hold our fate in his hand.

Every shift you are afraid of tonight.  It is water — and the hand it sits in is not theirs.

This is the hour to pray the prayer underneath all our prayers.

My Christian family, you already know the words.  Yeshua taught them on a hillside not far from where I am sitting.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done.  On earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)

My Jewish family, we pray the very same thing, every single day, every denomination, in the Aleinu, when we rise on our feet and ask for the world to be mended.  To repair the world under the kingship of the Almighty.

And the sages hand us the deepest secret of how.  Make His will your will, so that He will make your will His. (Pirkei Avot 2:4)

That is the whole thing. Not to be powerful.  To be a vessel.  To stop gripping the wheel of history with white knuckles and to ask, instead, God, use me.  Make me Yours.  Let Your will be done through me, here, on this small piece of earth, exactly as it is being done in heaven.

When the temple of our confidence is shaking, this is where we plant our feet.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses.  But we will call on the name of The LORD our God.  (Tehillim – Psalm 20)

We were never finally held up by a chariot. Not by an army, not by an alliance, not by a government across the sea.

Those were gifts when they came, and we gave thanks.  But they were never the floor under our feet.

The floor under our feet is the One who has outlived every empire that ever raised a hand against this land. Egypt is a museum. Babylon is a ruin.  Rome is a tour I give on a Tuesday.  And here we still are, you and I, praying His name.

So I am not afraid tonight.  Not because the news is good.  Because the Leader has not changed.

He is the only Leader the world has ever had.  The rest of them, all of them, the kind and the cruel, are vessels in His hand, whether they know His name or not.  And so are we.  That is the prayer.  Let it be the truest thing we say all week.

God, make me a vessel.  Use me.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

To my Christian family and my Jewish family, who are one family tonight under one sky:

May the God of Avraham hold you and keep you.  May He turn the hearts of kings like water, and turn your fear into a stronger faith than you had yesterday.

May He make you a vessel He delights to pour through, and may He lead us through this hour the way He has led us through every hour since the beginning.

He is the Leader. Bless His name.

Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.

From the Golan, with all my heart,
Tai Elon. ”