Yom Kippur: What's At Stake
The Reverend Dr. Jim Nelson
September 19, 2004

 

This week will conclude the High Holy Days for Judaism, culminating in Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. This is the holiest day in the religious year for Jews and its history reaches back into biblical times and their very beginning as a people of faith.

We all know the story - of God telling Abraham to leave his country and travel to another place where God will make of Abraham's descendants a great nation. Of Abraham becoming a father at 90, of his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. We may know the stories of Jacob and his sons, of the descent into Egypt.

We know the stories of Moses - thanks to Charlton Heston [if I followed my spell-checker, his name would be Charlatan Festoon] - and the liberation from bondage, the wanderings in the wilderness and the entry into Palestine - these are all stories of our culture and our heritage. The great and tortured King David, the wisdom of Solomon, the great Hebrew Prophets demanding faithfulness and justice.

The stories of Judaism contain the great themes of human living and the Hebrew Bible contains some of the finest and most profound religious writings in human history. From what is probably the earliest true history writing - earlier than the Greeks - chronicling the kingdoms of Saul and David and Solomon to the great lyric poetry of the Psalms and Isaiah and the remarkable depth of the book of Job - the testimony of Judaism aspires to the highest in our religious consciousness. From Judaism grew both Christianity and Islam - these stories and this history are the cradle of our civilization.

The central story of Judaism - that out of wandering through a wilderness a people was born should ring true with each of us, for it is in coming through those wildernesses that we are formed, both as individuals and as a people. It is in struggling with the triumphs and the tragedies of living, with the joys and the sorrows, the delight and the pain that we are formed.

In ancient Israel, the people of Israel would gather on Yom Kippur before the temple in Jerusalem and confess their sins to the High Priest who would then ritually place them upon a goat and then drive the goat out of the city, away from the people. There it would surely die, and the sins were thus forgiven and atonement was made - this is where the idea of the scapegoat probably originated.

I always imagine the High priest giving a sermon - what else? - and talking about who they were, reminding them that the stories of Genesis say both that we are dust and created in the image of God, that we are both matter and spirit, that we die but we can also rise above being mere creatures. I imagine the priest telling them that they have made a covenant with God to be a holy people, to love mercy and do justice. I imagine the priest reminding them that when God created the world, he pronounced it good - not beautiful, not magnificent, but good, and that 'goodness' was what we should strive for, that God expected goodness rather than splendor.

The Jews are a people of a covenant - a covenant is simply a promise, of a promise made with their God. This is true for all religious people - people like us here. We are people of a covenant as well - to pursue justice and do mercy, to love and respect one another, to come together with an open mind and heart to seek the truth - this is our covenant. We are a people who make promises and it is by them and by our covenants that we are judged.

The ancient Israelites understood that they did not always live up to the covenant and so some kind of recompense had to be made - hence the day of atonement, the idea of redemption, the wish to become right with their God.

I would guess that the ideas of atonement and redemption are not automatic ones for us. When was the last time you talked about atonement or redemption with a friend or co-worker? The idea of forgiveness is not an easy issue in the modern world. And I mean more than saying you are sorry or offering an apology; I mean something more. I am talking about absolution.

Once, a woman in a congregation I served asked to come in and talk with me. We chatted for a while, and she seemed nervous, so I finally asked what was going on. She began to cry and told me of a one night affair she had had a year or so earlier. She was married, had small children, and was a really nice person, a good wife and wonderful mother. But, away at a conference, she had - in her words - done this terrible thing and she could not let it go. It was eating away at her. She felt she could not tell her husband - she was sure it would end her marriage - and she did not know what to do.

We talked for some time, until finally I asked a question which partly surprised even me: I asked her 'Do you want me to forgive you?' With tear-reddened eyes she looked so intently at me and said 'yes, please.'

I was not sure what to do. Was it in my power to forgive her? To wipe clean a sin, a transgression of her wedding vow? We were both UUs, and I knew of no sacrament of forgiveness, had no training in forgiving. She had done nothing at all to me, yet she wanted me - because I was her minister - to offer forgiveness. She was suggesting a kind of power I was not trained for nor was even sure I wanted. What would it mean to forgive someone?

But there she sat, waiting for something from me. What was I to do? Say 'no?' Tell her 'Sorry, not me, I don't do forgiveness, don't know how to do it!' Not quite. There I was, her minister and she needed something from me; I could not refuse.

And so I did as she asked; I said to her 'By all that we hold sacred, by all that is Holy, you are forgiven.' And relief coursed through her. She thanked me; we talked very briefly and she left. She did not return to church for some time, but finally did, and told me she had told her husband, that things were good in her family and she thanked me for forgiving her.

I will never forget her. What she taught me was that we are all, in some way, bound to something higher than our own self, that in some way we are answerable to something greater than our own self. She taught me that forgiveness points to something very profound and powerful.

And I would guess that we could all use a little forgiveness - maybe even a lot. I know I could - my failing face me every day, and while I know that lotts of you are pretty terrific, I doubt anyone here would claim perfection.

So let me assume - just for these few minutes - that we all do need forgiveness. That is, in religious terms, we all sin. I would guess that sin is another word that doesn't drop automatically from UU lips.

What do I mean by sin? Traditionally sin means separation from God; when we do something, or neglect to do something, that which separates us from the Holy is sin. Some years ago I was asked to testify before the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County VA as they were deciding whether to allow a gay/lesbian newspaper be available in county libraries. I talked about liberty and Jefferson and respect and dignity - it was a nice three minute speech.

Afterwards, I was in the hallway with some UUs talking with a reporter. A man - a pediatrician by the way and devout Catholic - came up to me, pretty agitated, and, with his nose six inches from mine [I am a Minnesotan and six inches is a real violation of space - six feet is more like it for me] and he said 'The problem with you people [I loved that - being a part of 'you people'] is that you don't believe in sin.' For him, homosexuality was a sin.

I am not sure who I surprised more - him or the several UUs standing close by - when I said 'Oh, but we do believe in sin.' I continued that sin was anything that separated us from God or harmed the creation, such as prejudice or bigotry.

It was a good moment.

That is what I mean by sin - those acts we do or fail to do which separate us from the Holy and from each other, which harm the creation, which cause a tear in this interdependent web of all things. But we fail to do those things often; we fall short and we will keep doing so. We all break the creation at times and are separated from what is sacred. We aren't perfect, remember. In Judaism, the Day of Atonement is a time to recognize our failings, our sins, and to ask for forgiveness.

I want to jump to something which might seem very different but is related - so bear with me because this does tie together. This gets to the title of the sermon [I know there was a different one on the web - I'll get this straight soon - remember that moving is indeed disorienting].

You know the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark?' Remember that the story is about finding the ark of the covenant of the ancient temple of Israel. The ark of the covenant was where the tablets containing all the written law of Judaism was kept in the holy of holies, in the very center of the temple. Only the high priest could enter the holy of holies, and only once a year on Yom Kippur - it was where God resided. Not something to be treated lightly.

Well, Indiana Jones locates the ark, the Nazis take it from him, and they are about to open it - wanting the power residing in it, no doubt. Our hero and the pretty girl are tied to a stake and he tells her not to open her eyes, no matter what because, as is cautioned in the Bible, no one may look on God and live. Well, the Nazis are all killed by the presence of God, the ark is recovered; Indiana Jones crates it up and it ends up in a warehouse in Maryland with thousands and thousands of similar crates. [I thought that a very clever ending].

The arrogance of the Nazis was obvious; their belief that somehow they could look on the face of God and live, that somehow they were exceptional and stood outside judgment and were not in need of forgiveness was all too clear; they wanted to believe that God was on their side and never wondered whether they were on God's side.

In religious terms, this is what is at stake. You may have heard that there is an election coming up and that we will be voting for a president in a little more than a month. And you may know that the choice is real. You may also know that I can't - and so I won't say anything about how people should vote. But it matters, obviously.

We are facing a crisis - in part it is a crisis of pride and arrogance, of whether we - this country now - can assume perfection, can continue to swagger as if we knew that God were indeed on our side. Lincoln said in his second Inaugural that we ought not to think that God is on our side but pray that we are on God's side. The Greeks said that hubris was a deep vice; the Hebrew prophets said pride went before the Fall.

But this is all to often true of all of us - this idea that somehow we are right - always. I have this sermon I want to give sometime - not written yet - with the title 'Copernicus was Right' about the narcissism of the modern world. Wendell Berry has said that the great sin of modern times is our insistence on living above our condition, of not living within our means, of too much pride.

Remember the lines from the Szymborska poem:
Stupidity isn't funny.
Wisdom isn't gay.
Hope
isn't that young girl anymore,

I expect we will be engaged this Fall in lots of conversations about the world and about our place in it, about what is right and what is wrong, about how we can be better people living in a world needing better people. After all, that is why we are here, isn't it? To seek ways of becoming better?

And I have no doubt but that the world could use us and use our voice. I love the banner we have out front - We stand on the side of love - and while it's message was inspired regarding a specific issue, its message is a much broader one - We stand on the side of love. And so we must.

But to stand there requires some deep humility on our part - it requires our realization that we are in need of forgiveness, that we all should seek redemption, and that atonement - being at one with our highest ideals and with our God - will help us stand more profoundly on the side of love.

What is at stake? Last week we dedicated children. As in all times, they face an uncertain future. Will we help build a better world for them or not? The choice is ours, after all.

So in these times, in the high holy days, may we seek redemption for what we do and what we do not do; may we ask forgiveness and seek atonement. Let our lives become better.

After all, our lives are at stake.

Amen

September 19, 2004