Getting Off Sesame Street
Reflection by Rabbi Deborah Silver for the Interfaith Prayer Service for New Orleans Homeless 2018
Sunny days
Sweeping the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to—
I learned the other day that there’s a new face on Sesame Street. She has a pink face and braids and her name is Lily. Lily is a Muppet who was introduced a little while ago. Her family was hungry and needed feeding. And now she is back again because they are homeless.
Lily is a seven-year-old girl whose family comes to stay with friends when they lose their apartment. She and her family have been staying “in all different kinds of places.” There’s a scene in which she is painting a mural with her friend Elmo. When they start to use the color purple, she tells him, “I’m not sure I want to paint anymore.” That’s because purple was the color of her old bedroom.
Lily’s presence on Sesame Street is a poignant testament to the apparently insoluble issue of homelessness in our society. She represents a population of vulnerable individuals, joining other vulnerable populations struggling to find shelter on our inhospitable streets. There are an estimated 2.5 million homeless children across this country. Half of them are under six.
And – as we commemorate tonight – some of them are no longer alive. The darkness has taken them. As we gather to contemplate the precious souls this contemporary plague has claimed, we might feel that there is nothing we can do. But that’s not the case. And we can begin by changing our thinking and helping to change the thinking of others.
In the Jewish tradition, there is a teaching that a band of angels walks in front of every human being, led by a herald crying, Make way for the image of God! It’s an interpretation – a Midrash – of the verse from the beginning of all of our stories, the one that describes how the first human being was made:
God said: Let us make humans in our image, after our likeness…and so did God create them.
And I am certain that a similar teaching is part of every tradition represented here tonight.
It is a teaching of transformative power. It means that every time we encounter a Lily we should see God looking out of her eyes. It means that every time we support those who work to improve the lives of the homeless, we are not angels, just equals. It means that every time we contribute to a charity to try to end homelessness we should intend for even that impersonal encounter to contain a spark of holiness.
Every homeless person – every Lily – is created in the image of God. Every homeless person – every Lily – of them has as a band of angels and a herald parading before them, demanding our attention and our respect and our love.
Let us mourn the images of God that have left the world. Let us remember, in our next encounter, before whom we are standing.
And maybe together we can get Lily off Sesame Street.