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Rev. Beverly Waring Sermon
October 2,2011
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We are in the midst of the Jewish high holy days. Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, is behind us, and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur,
lies just ahead. The holiest days of the Jewish year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are unique among holidays because they don’t
celebrate a season or an important historical event - instead - the focus is on something more personal and extraordinary: our human
ability to grow and to change.
These are not holidays I was brought up knowing about but as our Unitarian Universalist roots are grounded in both Jewish and Christian
traditions, I believe it is important for us to make ourselves aware of their basic concepts. I have preached about both with the intention of
sharing some of the wisdom I have gained from reading and speaking to Jewish friends but I am also acutely aware I can really only offer
an outsider’s perspective.
According to Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashanah, God opens the Book of Life and the Book of Death. Then as all humankind passes
before God, their names are inscribed in one of the two books. It is said that to have one’s name written in the Book of Life is to have a
good year ahead. On Yom Kippur the book is closed and one’s fate for the year is sealed.
Wow, pretty heavy stuff, hard for me to wrap my mind around it. How does one ensure that his or her name gets written into the Book of
Life? It is called tesuvah. (teh shoo va) It means “to turn,” or “return.” When practicing tesuvah, Jews look back over the past year and
remember the places where they have gone wrong, where they have hurt someone else, where they have been unjust. Then they think
about how to turn or return, how to make a change to atone for what they had done.
Imagine, if you will, if we as Unitarian Universalists spend this time between Rosh Hashanah, which began at sundown on Thursday and
Yom Kippur which begins Friday the 7th at sundown, looking back over the past year and deciding which deeds felt right and which did
not.
Imagine using this time as a time of renewal, a time to examine life and to see what our lives have become. We could use this as an
opportunity to honestly examine how our words and actions measure up to our values. Imagine asking yourself, “have I been and am I
now the person that I wish to be?”
Now, my hope is that all people engage in this type of reflection all year and try to make amends for behavior and words that hurt other
people as they become aware of the impact of their actions. But this time of year, as we start the New Year on the Jewish calendar, can
serve as a good reminder to pay attention.
Rebecca Parker, Dean of Starr King School for Ministry once said that “In a time of great lamentations, if we listen deeply we can hear
three voices: the voice of sorrow - the great pain and feeling of connection with that which is hurt or broken; the voice of anger or protest
- that this outrage should be happening, that we cannot shape or control things to our liking; and the voice of trust - the place where we
find sustenance, comfort and perhaps even hope.”
During this time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I would offer that we should take the time to hear those three voices.
The voice of sorrow. The sorrow that comes with memories of pain we have suffered and we have caused. The sorrow that we feel as we
remember people once in our lives and no longer present due to reasons beyond our control – death, new jobs, ministers leaving to
serve other congregations - or for reasons we can influence – the exchange of harsh words, a hurtful action or an inadvertent slight.
The voice of anger, our own and others. We all respond to feelings of pain and hurt in our unique ways. For many, when feeling hurt or
offended we lash out in anger. It was, in my opinion, this tendency that led us into the war we are still fighting following the attacks on
September 11, 2001. But what does this tendency mean in our personal lives?
The voice of trust. It is a voice that comes from the compassion and support of each other. It comes when we listen to one another with a
loving heart, a forgiving heart. It is a voice that is sustained by the breathtaking good of what it means to be human. It is a voice
sustained by listening to our souls when they urge us to remember we are all inherently worthy of just and compassionate treatment. The
voice of trust, the hope for a kinder and gentler tomorrow is based in love – love for ourselves and love for one another.
Yom Kippur recognizes in a powerful and meaningful way, the struggle many of us feel today – the struggle to rise above our bad
impulses and follow our conscience. For me, Yom Kippur is also about reconciliation. Reconciliation with those we have hurt, yes but
more than that. It is about reconciling our guilt, our regret, our bad choices with our potential for goodness, our life-affirming, value-laden
decisions. It is about acknowledging our shadow-side, a darker side that exists in all of humanity, acknowledging but not letting that
shadow-side dominate our lives and actions.
This reminds me of the folk lore about two wolves. A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight
is going on inside me… it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance,
hatefulness, and lies. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, humbleness, kindness, friendship, generosity, faith, and truth.
This same fight is going on inside of you, and inside every other person, too.” The children thought about it for a minute. Then one child
asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The Cherokee elder replied, “The one you feed.”
Yom Kippur is about transforming what is shameful into something that is redeemable. Turning towards or returning to a life that is more
honorable.
In his book, Living A Life That Matters: Resolving Conflict Between Conscience And Success, Rabbi Harold Kushner tells a story that
speaks to me about this struggle we all face on our journey.
It began with a dream. A dream of a ladder to heaven. In the dream, the man knew he was called to climb the ladder, to rise above his
manipulative and petty ways and allow his compassionate servant side to lead him.
And so, when the man woke, he tried to return home to make peace with his brother, a brother he had treated so poorly many years
before. On the journey home, the man found himself on the bank of a river, at night, alone and fearful. He tried to reassure himself that
as long as he was alone, he was safe. Suddenly he was seized from behind and thrown to the ground. Attempts to fight back were
fruitless. His adversary was as strong as he was. Although they fought all through the night, neither could gain an advantage over the
other.
Who is this person, wondered the man. Who can be exactly as strong as I and where did he come from and what does he want? As the
first light of dawn emerged, the mysterious stranger escaped from the man’s grip and exhausted the two men regarded each other with a
respect for a worthy opponent whom they could not defeat. The man knew he would never again be the same person he had been when
the night started.
According to Kushner, this story could have taken place last week or thousands of years ago. It could have been out of a police file or
told by a soldier on sentry duty.
It is in fact from Chapter 32 of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. It is the story of Jacob and how after wrestling with an angel, his
name was changed from Jacob “the trickster” to Israel, “one who struggles with God.” It is a story, say Kushner, of Jacob wrestling with
his own conscience. A story, I submit about the struggle between our shadow-side and the side we aspire to always operate from – the
side of us that embraces our Unitarian Universalist principles fully.
Many of us can, I think, identify with Jacob’s struggle. There are times when we feel that division in ourselves. Part of us wanting to lash
out in anger, in pettiness, letting our egos control our actions, fighting another part of us willing to take the time to hear and understand
and perhaps simply agree to disagree. Part of us genuinely concerned by another’s words or actions while that other part chooses to
judge, to diminish.
Like Jacob, we know how it feels to climb that ladder, to rise above those characteristics of ourselves of which we are not proud, only to
slip on a rung and revert to old troubling habits.
But Jacob’s story does not end in defeat. In the past he could always rationalize his bad behavior, he could silence that voice telling him
he was acting badly. But after climbing towards his better self in his dream and wrestling with the angel of his conscience, he gained a
perspective he had never seen before. He came to realize that the goodness within him was strong enough to heal him, strong enough to
seek forgiveness, and strong enough to offer forgiveness.
So, my message this morning is that the story of Jacob is yours and mine. And the experience of Yom Kippur is yours and mine. If we
choose to embrace them. It is easy for all of us to look in the mirror and see the imperfections, the shortcomings that we sometimes let
define us. But it is just as easy to acknowledge the angel on our back.
We are not only our shadow-side, we are also people of great strength and light and goodness. Yom Kippur is about relationships: our
relationship with each other but perhaps more importantly, our relationship with ourselves.
So let this be a time of forgiveness – a time to ask for it and to offer it. Let this be a time when we rise above our feelings of insecurity, of
righteous anger and instead with the generosity of spirit that is in us all practice saying the hardest word…SORRY. Let this be a time
when we carefully and mindfully choose what wolf we feed. And let this be a time of healing and with that healing allow joy and hope back
into our world.
Amen and Blessed Be
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Atonement, Forgiveness and Healing; Lessons from Yom Kippur
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