Atonement

Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

October 5, 2008

“I wanna get right with God. Yes you know you gotta get right with God”. I know those lyrics by Lucinda Williams probably offend our sensibilities as Unitarian Universalists. I mean which of us would consider burning the soles of our feet or the palms of our hands or sleeping on a bed of nails as a way to return to some right relationship with the divine?

And yet there is something inside of me that would like to wear a hair shirt or fast for days in order to drag myself out of the despair I sometimes feel for my errors and put me back in closer connection to the divine spirit that sustains all life.

The Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur, which we are reflecting upon today, is centered upon this concept of reconciling our spirits to God through our atonement to God and to our neighbor. The basic idea is that through our human errors and transgressions- through our sin- we damage our relationship to God and it is then only through the process of Atonement – of offering some type of external sacrifice that we can purify our hearts and return to right relationship with the divine. Centered in the midst of Rosh Hashanah- the Jewish New Year- Yom Kippur prayer services and fasting offer the opportunity clear away the clutter and the errors of the previous year and return to a pure relationship with the divine and with your neighbor for the coming year.

Yom Kippur is considered by many to be the most Holy day in the Jewish liturgical year. This day when individuals can- through suffering in the body by not eating and not enjoying other bodily pleasures and focusing on the spiritual side of life – a person can atone for their sin and return to right relationship with God and Neighbor.

In the Jewish Tradition the day before Yom Kippur is somewhat like a feast day when much food is eaten and gifts are taken to the poor and neighbors visit each other and ask for forgiveness. And this preparation leads to the Eve of Yom Kippur which marks the begging of the prayer services and fasting that is the Day of Atonement.

And what follows is an entire day of fasting and litanies and prayers and petitions of forgiveness and there is a re-telling of the story of Jonah and reminders of God’s willingness to forgive those who have truly repented of their sin.

With true repentance Yom Kippur is the day when rough places may be made smooth and in the words of Isaiah “then our light shall shine in the darkness, and -our darkness shall be like noon.”

In our more Unitarian Universalist understanding of the world, and our perhaps less God Centered and more humanistic and/or secular understanding - I wonder what it would take and to whom we might appeal to make our paths smooth again.

It is wonderful to think of an all loving and all forgiving God who after we have apologized and shown evidence of contrition would relieve us of any guilt of our wrong doing. Or in the Christian understanding of Atonement it might even liberate us to think that there is a savior who has come to wash away our sins, but how do we make right our paths if there is no one to appeal to for forgiveness and no one to wash away our sin?

True atonement requires at the very least a context and at most a witness.

In the Jewish context Sin is a violation of the divine law and God’s commandments. Sin is the way that we “miss the mark” in our covenant with God and our Neighbor. The Kol Nidre is a type of prayer or oath that is sung on the first night and is a sort of communal confession of vows and promises made that were not honored and the promise is a reminder that God is Merciful and will forgive our sins.

Making sense of a need for atonement when we do not believe in a God who is watching over us, or do not admit to a common moral code or principal and cannot come to our community with a common expectation of forgiveness can be complicated.

And yet I believe that this concept of atonement and even a day of atonement may be valuable to even the biggest atheist among us because I believe that there are times for each of us when we fall short of our expectations and of our sense of what is right and we need to do something to renew a right relationship to our friends and family. And better than any apology this is what Atonement can offer.

I would also argue that while the process of atonement is an entirely man made and theological concept it does in fact also occur in nature.

Just think of the law of cause and effect. If I over eat and do not exercise, I atone for my sins through diet and exercise. If I return a book to the library late I pay a fine in atonement for keeping that book off the shelf from others. Or if I don’t balance my check book I atone for my errors in accounting by paying overdraft fees.

There are countless ways in which natural compensations for our mistakes and errors take place. Meeting the natural consequences for our actions is a sort of natural way of atoning for our mistakes and returning to right relationship with our neighbor.

But what happens when there are no natural consequences or the level of atonement could never fit the crime? How can a person atone if there is no context or witness or if the are in no way found accountable.

How do we make sense of this when in the midst of an election year and this economic crisis we see each candidate and party is spending more time pointing out the wrongdoings of the other than opening their hearts to their own miss deeds.

Part of true atonement requires turning the lens of your critical judgment not on the other but only on yourself.

And the reason that our politicians cannot do this is because they are constantly under the critical eye of the media and missteps are not forgiven but rerun over and over again. In the political arena admitting to sin is impossible because there is no room for error or mistake in the public eye.

A central requirement to live out the story of Atonement is the element of forgiveness. Forgiveness that sometimes even comes before it is asked for and offers the courage and energy to look critically at the self and truly atone for misdeeds.

I wish I could think of the bailout plan in this way, a sort of blank check of forgiveness that will enable those who caused the problem to take responsibility and atone for their misdeeds.

The best example I can think of- of how pre- forgiveness transforms a person- comes from the news report of Kai Leigh Harriott the girl who was shot at 3 years old and paralyzed for life and then when given the opportunity forgave her shooter.

How can a young girl who has lost so much forgive something that many adults cannot imagine? How can a young girl forgive a man who had never shown any remorse or guilt for what he had done.

And yet her forgiveness transformed her shooter. In a video made from prison last April -two years after her declaration of forgiveness -Anthony Warren (her shooter) stated that her forgiveness made him want to take a hard look at himself, and to not become “colder and harder” but instead look at his “duties and responsibilities as a Black man in his community.”

Her forgiveness made a light shall shine in his darkness, and his darkness shine like the noon. Her forgives has enabled him to atone for his misdeeds and live up to a higher standard. Her forgiveness brought him out of the darkness of his own shame, removed any excuse he had to be paralyzed by his misdeeds and freed him to live in the new light of possibilities.

This is the story of Atonement it is the story of how the forgiveness that is offered enables us to start anew and live up to a higher standard.

But there is part of Kai Leigh Harriot’s story that is rarely and told it is how by forgiving Anthony Warren she too was freed. By her own description she knew she needed to forgive her shooter before he even asked, because “she did not want to be angry for all of her life”. And her mother Tanya who forgave Anthony the first time he apologized stated that she knew that if she “allowed that anger to consume (her she) wouldn’t be able to be the mother (she) needed to be to (her) children.” Tanya whose daughter was randomly shot and paryalized is working to start a foundation that is called “Forgiveness is the way”. And readily asks “can you imagine what kind of place we would live in if everybody got along and forgave each other? It’s a choice- are you willing to free yourself from the anger that you either hold against someone or that you are holding within yourself?”

Last April after watching the video made by her assailant Kai Leigh Harriot’s first and only response was that she was happy he made the video because of all the other people he could inspire because of his willingness to look at his own behavior.

True atonement requires a context and a witness and it requires some type of forgiveness.

Some things we won’t be forgiven for but the task is for us to forgive ourselves and move on to do better next time. There are things we cannot ever make right and that may never be forgiven, and yet part of the message of atonement is about building up our willingness to strive toward that reconciliation anyway.

Twenty-four states have enacted laws providing for scholarships, tuition waivers, or grant programs for Native Americans. Once when I was cleaning houses one of my clients who had two children in college was lamenting that she did not have Native American blood so that her children too could benefit from this resource.

I was naturally taken aback by her comment and stopped my cleaning long enough to ask her if she would agree that what our ancestors took away from the Native peoples was immeasurable. She agreed that yes what was taken away could never be replaced. And here is where we disagreed. Because what has been taken can never be replaced my client believed we should stop trying. And I believe that because what our ancestors unthinkingly took away from a people can never be replaced we should in fact never stop trying to replace it.

Atonement can take many forms. It can take the form of fasting and prayer or it can take the form of forgiveness of someone who has wronged us or of working diligently to replace what has been lost. The common reward is that true atonment improves the situation or persons involved.

There is a custom during Rosh Hashanah where bread mixed with birdseed and is thrown into the ocean feeding the fish as a symbolic gesture of casting away sin. Finding ways to liberate ourselves from our sin either literally or when that is not possible to do so symbolically is essential.

Atonement requires a context and a witness and if not forgiveness a constant striving for forgiveness. To make our ways smooth we must always seek to reconcile ourselves not through guilt or shame but through right action and atone for our mistakes not simply by admitting wrongdoing but instead by getting on a better road.

I believe that this is not what is required only of just a few of us. The ones whose egos are not too large to accept our errors, or the ones who have outwardly done something so wrong they must confess. But I believe it is in fact required of all of us if we are to live full and liberated lives.

And so I encourage us all -this Thursday on Yom Kippur to really look at our lives and where we have erred. Paying attention to where our promises haven’t been kept and where our own denials and egos have in fact prevented us from correcting our errors. Let us strive to let go of our judgments of ourselves and of others striving to atone and to make our paths smooth again for the New Year ahead. May it be so.