Shana Tova U Metuka, a Good and Sweet Year

The “Work” of At-one-ment

A sermon led by

West Shore UU Church, Rocky River OH September 23, 2007

shana tova u’metuka, a good and sweet year.

This is the way Jews great each other during the high holy days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. This is a period in the Jewish calendar called the High Holy Days or the Days of Awe. Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year, began on September 13 this year and Jews around the world observed Yom Kippur yesterday with a day of fasting and prayer. Yom Kippur in Hebrew simply means “Day of Atonement”. Within the tradition it is said that the Book of Life is opened at Rosh Hashanah. During this time it is understood that ones fate for the next year is written in the Book and is sealed at the time of Yom Kippur.

We have just listened to the beautiful and haunting melody of the Kol Nidrei, which accompanied with Aramaic words, is a prayer chanted at Yom Kippur services.

It is important for you to know that I did not grow up within the tradition of Judaism and those of you here today who did will know a great deal more about the meaning and significance of Yom Kippur. Yet I still have come to find deep meaning in observing the high holy days. It was not until I joined a Unitarian Universalist Church that I became aware of this Jewish tradition and it became part of my spiritual practice. Not only did the recognition of these most holiest days remind me that our Unitarian Universalist Living Tradition draws from Jewish and Christian teaching which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves but it also provided me with an important opportunity to look back over the past year at some of my regrets. I thought it made a great deal of sense to celebrate the New Year as I was returning to school to teach for another year. This was a great time to take account for the year past and look ahead to the new. Yom Kippur gives me a moment to stop and consider those times where I have “missed the mark” in my life. It gives me a time to examine where I have sinned!

Yes you did hear me correctly Yom Kippur offers me a moment in my life to pause and reflect upon my sins. Sin is not something that we address very often in our faith tradition. As Universalist’s we have rejected the notion of original sin and that belief that babies are born into the world as sinful beings. We embrace each person as being an original blessing who is imbued with worth and dignity simply because they are. Many of us carry the baggage of another doctrinal understanding of sin that no longer resonates for us with any meaning. I would suggest that for some of us the idea of sin carries with it resentment and anger as we have witnessed the use of the idea to enforce a morality that was not our own. For me the theology of sin that would have one believe that it comes with punishment of some sort or the other is not helpful.

Despite our rejection of this notion of sin I wish to suggest this morning that there is still room in my spiritual life for a helpful understanding of sin. As a non-theist sin for me cannot be a transgression against God. For me sin is a “missing of the mark”. It is not living up to my ethical and moral understandings of myself. It is not living up to who I am as a higher self. Now if I had the luxury of being perfect I probably wouldn’t even bother with thinking about sin but because I cannot stand in front of you today and declare my perfection I must consider how sin maybe a useful and meaningful idea for my life.

One of the commitments that I have made over the past years and especially after studying at Starr King School for the Ministry is to become anti-racist in all that I am and do. As part of this struggle, and it is a struggle that includes hard work, I have been examining how I benefit from White Privilege. White Privilege is the advantages that I enjoy as a white person beyond what people of colour may experience. The interesting aspect of white privilege is that one does not have to hold overtly racist beliefs to benefit from this system of oppression.

In doing this work I was constantly making mistakes and displaying attitudes and understandings that served to perpetuate the system of white privilege. Thankfully the people with whom I interacted and found support from firmly and with love called me out when they felt that I was missing the mark. Sometimes I would miss the mark without even realizing that I had. I recall a time when I began to realize that despite my interest and attempts to understand more deeply the communities and places my seminarian of colour colleagues came from, they deeply resented my assumption that they could or in fact would speak for an entire race. I thought I was being curious and honest when asking them generalized questions about, for example, black people. As you can imagine I felt deeply ashamed when others pointed to my sins and to each time I had missed the mark. I slowly began to realize that it was in missing the mark that I gained greater understanding and progress in my quest to embody an anti-racist being. Without my sins there was no possibility for growth.

Yom Kippur encapsulates an affirmation of our humanity. It is a day in recognition that we each are imperfect and that that is OK. Rather than beating ourselves up because we make mistakes, say things that hurt other people, and generally feel like there is something that we have failed at each day, let us celebrate and learn from them.

Every time I sin, or I miss the mark is an opportunity for me to grow and become the person that I strive to be. As a Unitarian Universalist I have a high set of principles to work at fulfilling on a daily basis. Do I succeed every day or every hour or every minute? No I don’t, yet this does not deter me from continuing the next day, hour or minute to again live up to our principles and my higher self.

Part of the striving that I speak of is to take time to acknowledge our many failings and reflect upon how we can learn from those failings. This is a tradition that Jews have understood and acknowledged in Yom Kippur observances for centuries.

Practicing Teshuvah . . .

Now is the time in our order of service to practice Teshuvah.

The Hebrew word Teshuvah simply means, “return”. The practice of Teshuvah affords us the opportunity to return to our higher selves or the path that we have set for ourselves with the support of our community.

There are many ways in which to participate in this practice. This morning I ask you to take a moment to consider one transgression from the past year. It could be a moment where you realized that you had missed the mark in following our seven principles. If you are unfamiliar with the seven principles they can be found at the front of the gray hymnal. After a few moments to consider your transgression write on the piece of paper that was given to you by the ushers a word or two that encapsulates your transgression. Then turn to a person close to you and briefly share your experience and reflect on the following. Was it easy or hard to come up with something you wanted to confess? Do you feel a need to make this confession more fully to someone else? Is there anything you think you might do to act on this symbolic Yom Kippur practice we have engaged in today after you leave the service?

Part II

By turning to each other this morning in the practice Teshuvah we affirm our participation in this spiritual community whether we are here for our first time or have been attending for years. By being in this sanctuary together we are affirming a commitment to spiritual growth and development as individuals and in community.

I encourage you to check in as the year goes by with the person with whom you spoke, ask them about what steps they may have taken to atone for their transgression and what their plans are to avoid a similar situation.

I also encourage you to continue to do this inner work with compassion for yourself. The work can only be successful if you are honest with yourself and form plans that can lead to your own personal transformation.

If you wish to continue to commit to a spiritual practice that allows you to reflect upon your spirituality with others I encourage you to consider joining a connection circle for the following year. There will be sign ups in the front hallway after our worship.

I don’t want you to leave today with the impression that the work of at-one-ment, or in other words the work to live together with peace and justice while upholding our principles is only inner work!

I need not remind you, but I will, that we are part of a world and a nation that is deeply out of balance at the moment. One only needs to look at the continuation of the immoral wars that continue unabated in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the past week we have witnessed the struggle to try to restore balance in the halls of government which unfortunately where not successful. Congress again attempted to create legislation that would end the war and the effort was unsuccessful. As I implied early one cannot expect to be perfect as an individual and in that same vein one cannot expect the world to be perfect. This for me does not abrogate me from the responsibility that I have to stand up for a vision of peace, justice and love in my own life and through me to whatever impact I have on the world.

As we observe this holiest of days on the Jewish calendar let us also consider how each of us might work for at-one-ment in our greater world. What is it that we each can do to promote the mission that as Unitarian Universalists we strive each day to fulfill?

One of the very small possibilities for action is for you to join the campaign to collect 25,000 signatures from UUs that Rev. Bill Sinkford, president of the UUA will take to Congress on October 10. He will be carrying a message of peace and a desire to end the Iraq war now. You can symbolically join with Rev. Sinkford by signing a petition that will be at the Social Action table in the rotunda after the worship.

Yom Kippur reminds us that we will not always be successful in our quest for personal growth or systemic change! Yet I find deep hope in the message of this holiest of days in that despite falling short we can and must continue our struggles.

We were reminded again this week that systemic racism is still deeply entrenched in the United States. More than 50,000 people including Unitarian Universalists gathered in the town of Jena, Louisiana to demonstrate their outrage at the unjust criminal prosecution of six high school students who were involved in a fight with a fellow student. Racial tension escalated further in Jena when a student wished to sit under a tree in the front of the school and asked the principal for permission at a school assembly. You may ask why would anyone have to seek permission to sit under a tree. In this case the tree was called the “white tree” and tradition held that only white students could sit under the tree. This tree was a symbol for keeping certain people in their place. The next morning the town of Jena awoke to find three nooses hanging from the “white tree” an obvious response to what the students who placed the nooses considered a violation of their special privileges to exclusive benefit of the shade that the “white tree” and this symbol of their own exclusive power. The white students who placed the nooses, after originally being expelled from school, ended up being punished with an in school suspension for three days. The school characterized the incident as an innocent high school prank. The school superintendent is quoted as saying, “Adolescents play pranks. I don't think it was a threat against anybody.”

At least two more incidents of violence that we know of perpetrated by white students and adult community members occurred in Jena. In one instance an African American student was beaten and threatened at gunpoint whereupon he and his friends gained control of the gun and took it home and hid it only to be charged with theft. The owner of the illegal gun was never charged.

After taunting six students who have become known as the Jena six using racial slurs amongst other violent speech a fight occurred. Eventually all six students involved in the incident were charged with second-degree attempted murder, a far over reaching of the law. Though the district attorney reduced the charges in court to second degree battery which requires the use of a deadly weapon in LA, in this case the deadly weapon was argued to be one of the students tennis shoes, the criminal justice system was being employed to punish six students with prison for the kind of assault that had been ignored previously by authorities when the perpetrators were white. This is an egregious over reaching of the justice system and a reminder of the systemic racism that is still alive!

In the light of this disturbing episode how can Yom Kippur inform us of a way forward? I believe that the tradition asks each of us to examine where we may be complicit in upholding a system where racism and white privilege can lead to such miscarriages of justice. We are implored on this day to deeply examine our own values, attitudes, judgments and assumptions that may form part of the imbalance that can result in the continuation of racism and other oppressions. Indeed this is the work of at-one-ment where we struggle together for a better way. This is not easy work and takes courage and a willingness to be uncomfortable and at times hurt. What is hopeful is that through our pain and work comes the hope of a time where oppression will not serve to hurt us all.

May we each over the next year be beacons of hope and love as we work daily to create a life and a world that matches our deepest moral and ethical beliefs.

shana tova u’metuka.