by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given October 1, 2006

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I love this time of year we are in. I love the cool mornings and evenings. I love the warm afternoons we have been having. And I love looking about and seeing so much around me turn into a new season. I look out my back door and see the leaves on the fig tree in the back yard slowly turning yellow. I know from experience that this will continue and then the day will come when they will fall off—almost in unison—and the tree will have its shape for winter. I love seeing the colors turn from green to golds and reds and every shade in between. Once again the earth goes through its rhythm with the promise of spring present even as the fall turns into winter.

When it comes to our lives, were they as predictable and ordered as the earth. Were it so easy for us to be in touch with the cycles of our lives, where we are going, where we have been, and the things that we are called to do.

For us humans, I think, it takes more work. Our lives go by, year by year. One event leads to another. We mark the milestones that come our way. But a lot happens, the days go by and we wake up one morning and wonder how it is we got to this place. Life doesn’t seem to have moved in the same kind of order as the trees losing their leaves at a certain time of year. 

You may have heard the story of the person who finds himself before St. Peter and the Pearly Gates. St. Peter explains that it’s not so easy to get into heaven. He asks, “Were you generous and kind? Did you do good deeds, give money to the poor, help your neighbor?” The fellow replied that he couldn’t remember doing any of these things. St. Peter, exasperated, said, “You must have done something good!”

“Well,” said the fellow, “there was this old lady. I came out of a store and found her surrounded by a dozen Hell’s Angels. They had taken her purse and were pushing her around. I got so mad, I threw my bags down, pushed my way through the crowd, and got her purse back. I helped her to her feet. Then I went up to the biggest, baddest biker and told him how despicable, cowardly and mean he was and then I spat in his face.”

“This is impressive,” said St. Peter. “When did all of this take place?”

“Oh, about 10 minutes ago!” replied the man.

Most of the time we strive to live our lives well. We strive to do the right things. But we are human and don’t always do what we set out to do. All too often it is only in hindsight that we see what we should have done or what we would have liked ourselves to do. We have not been kind to others or to ourselves. We have not lived in the way that we set out to live our lives. We don’t say no when we should. There is so much that can get in the way.

Our intentions are good, but we don’t always get to where we want to be.

And so it is with our world. We read the newspaper and we wonder how the world got into the mess that it is in. We see the brokenness around us—in our world, in our community it is easy to not want to look at the pain so present in the world. Sometimes it is just too much. And we don’t always know what it is our role should be in all of this. Sometimes it is just easier to not do anything.

We are in the midst of the high holy days in the Jewish tradition. First came Rosh Hashanah, when the new year is welcomed. But before the year can really begin comes Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, which begins this evening. It is the Day of Atonement, when we are invited to be at one with God. Before the new year can really begin we must first turn and look back and take stock of our lives. We must atone for the things we have done to harm others. We must look to see where we have missed the mark and reorient ourselves to where we want to be.

Hearing the words that describe the high holy days might, at first, not seem to be very much in keeping with Unitarian Universalism. Repentance. Atonement. They just seem to point to more of that guilt so many of us have tried for a long time to get away from in the religions of our childhoods. But the holy days are rich with meaning and possibility for us. When you look up the word “repent” you come to see that it means to turn around, to change direction. And we know that that is not easy stuff sometimes. It can mean having to stop and do an inventory, to look at the ways we have fallen short, to look at the ways that we have not meaured up. The idea is not to wallow in our guilt, but to accept an invitation to begin again, to have a fresh start. To shift from the old ways to the new. To put ourselves in the right direction.

Rabbi Harold Kushner writes about Yom Kippur in his book To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Becoming. He helps those of use who are not Jewish to better understand this holiday and also demonstrates that repentance and atonement have much more to do with being human than with just being Jewish. Kushner writes:

“I know of no holiday in any other religion quite like Yom Kippur…a twenty-four hour period of total abstention from all food and water. The evening and the entire following day till sundown are spent in the synagogue in prayer.  Why do we fast on Yom Kippur? Not to punish ourselves as a way of making up for the weakness and self indulgence of the past year (we would have to fast for much longer than one day to do that), and not to cause God to pity us when he sees how much we are suffering for his sake. We fast to prove, to ourselves as much as to anyone else, that we are human.  All living creatures are programmed by instinct. Only human beings can say no to instinct. You can train a dog not to eat through fear of punishment, but you can never teach a dog voluntarily to go on a diet or to pass up food for ideological reasons. Only humans can do that.  The King James version of the Bible renders the commandment to fast on Yom Kippur as ‘ye shall afflict your souls,’ a kind of self punishment; a flagellation. But more recent translations capture the original intent of the somewhat ambiguous Hebrew by taking the words to mean ‘you shall restrain your instincts, you shall practice self control.’ Since religion is the effort to make people into human beings, and since Yom Kippur is the most ‘religious’ day of the year in the sense that it is totally free of worldly distractions, we fast to show we are capable of that supremely and uniquely human gesture, saying no to a basic instinct.

“One of the scriptural readings for Yom Kippur is taken from the second half of the Book of Isaiah. The people complain to the prophet Isaiah that they have fasted and afflicted themselves, but despite their suffering, God has not answered their prayers. The prophet Isaiah answers the people that the purpose of fasting is not to win God’s sympathy but to help us develop a sense of empathy with the poor and the oppressed, with people who go hungry not out of choice or religious observance but out of necessity.”

Religion in an effort to make people into human beings.

It is too easy, certainly in this fragmented world in which we live, to see ourselves as isolated beings. It is easy for us to see ourselves as separated from others, and even from god. We get the message over and over again that it is up to us to go it alone. We must constantly measure ourselves against others. With this comes further and further isolation.

Rabbi Kushner writes that during the year we spend a great deal of energy trying to be perfect, trying to convince others that we are perfect, that the mistake was their fault and not ours, that the business failure should be blamed on somebody else. Taking responsibility is just seen as being weak.

But on Yom Kippur there is another message from God “You don’t have to fool me by pretending to be perfect. I made you and I know better than anyone how weak and distractible you are, so don’t try to impress me by pretending to be someone that you are not. Impress me by trying to learn from your mistakes. After all, I know who you are and I love you anyway. That word ‘anyway’ frees us from the necessity to justify ourselves, to insist that we are always right. It permits us to face up to our flaws, as the first step in doing something about them, without having to fear that we will be condemned or rejected for not being perfect.”

It is important to be reminded that with all of our imperfections, with all the ways we come up short, we are not alone. God, spirit, is with us and there to call us back, over and over again, to the awareness that we are part of something greater.

It asks us to be aware of our interconnection and also of the power we have to do the right thing, to do good in the world, to be good stewards of the earth, to love with open hearts and to love the world in all of its brokenness.

Religion calls on people to become human beings.

It calls us to take responsibility for times when we have missed the mark. And there is also a collective dimension. It calls us to have courage to look at our responsibility as a people to recognize violence and arrogance, greed and brokenness that we perpetuate.

Part of our job is to open our hearts and to be present with the world, in all of its hurt and also in all of its joy. Too often we move through life not wanting to be present because it just seems to be too much. We don’t know where to begin. Recognizing our own brokenness and our own capacity for healing is how we begin to heal the world.

We are asked over and over again to take the stuff of our lives and make meaning, to make life, to be aware that we are not isolated beings, but connected in something much larger.

Wayne Dosick, a rabbi, tells the story of how he and his wife lost their home in a fire. They were away and when they got to the airport closest to where they lived, their house sitter met them at the gate and told them how the windstorm had come up and fueled a fire. She was forced to evacuate along with neighbors. She told them about the few things that she was able to pull out of the house.

It was too dark to see anything that night. When they got to the site of the house the next morning they saw that everything was gone and nothing was left. Dosick writes about the stages that he and his wife went through, including the shock and anger and grief. He writes about the loss of losing almost all of their possessions and how some of them took on new meaning in the process.

He tells of sorting through the ashes of his home and seeing that everything had been destroyed. But looking closer, they found amazing little messages. He writes that here and there were lumps of metal, burned and fused together. To most anyone looking at them they would be pieces of junk. But he found the lump that used to be his grandfather’s pocket watch and another that was the cap of his favorite pen. The lumps did not have any real value, but for him they were also little touchstones of what he once had, and very important and valuable.

In our lives we are asked to make meaning and to see the events of our lives in new ways. We are asked to take what has been and begin again with the gifts that we have. We enter into continual covenant, an ongoing commitment to life.

He writes that everything we know best, everything we love most is made up of what he calls God-energy—that there is something more than the object itself when we give it power and meaning.

And just as it is with object, it is up to us to make meaning from the events of our lives. Dosick tells the story of the man who was wearing only one shoe. Someone says to him, “I see you have lost a shoe.” “No,” he replies, “I found one.”

The changing season is a time for us to be reminded of the things we have lost and also the things we have found. It is a time to be reminded that all of life flows together, that the trees turning, the days getting shorter, the cool mornings, are all part of the order of things and that they are all connected together and that we are connected with all of that life. That out of the brokenness of our lives comes new meaning and new life. We are reminded of the ways that we fall short, but also that before us always is the invitation to have a fresh start.

We are reminded too that our actions matter and that nothing is done is isolation. We are all part of a much larger whole. We are invited again and again to begin again in love.

Words of poet David Wagoner:[1]

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

We live in times that ask much of us. They are not easy. They ask of us courage. They ask for wisdom and humility. But we must also remember that we are not lost. We are right here.  In our living we have a constant invitation to begin again. As the leaves turn once again we know that one season follows another. And in that knowing we are held, finally, in hope. Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life, call us to be always mindful of the blessings in our lives. Remind us that we do not live as isolated beings, but are part of something much larger, a mystery none of us will ever fully know. As the seasons move from one to another, help us to pay attention to the cycles of our lives, to where we are going and to where the spirit might be calling us. We sing hallelujah on this day and in all of our days. So be it. Amen.

Benediction

As you leave this place today, remember that you are a blessing to the world. Use your gifts well—the world needs them. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.