Forgiveness and Repentance

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 5, 2014

As the Jews celebrate the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we reflect on when we’re not the people we know we are capable of being.

The music this morning was a Kol Nidre, which, in Hebrew, means: “All vows.” In the Jewish tradition, many of you know, it is a part of the ritual of the high holy days (which end this evening) to ask God to release us from all vows we were unable to keep. We acknowledge that, although we strive to be good people, smart people, nearly perfect people, we fall short. We fall down. Many of us have even sat at a healthy relations workshop and been tempted to get snappish with the other participants. The “All Vows” prayer says that we are people who fall down and get up, knowing we will fall again.

I was amazed the first time I heard about this tradition. To be released from vows I made in the past that I was unable to keep, vows that were unadvised, vows I made while still too young to have all the information. I was grateful to a people who had a different understanding of God from the one with which I’d been raised. The God of my childhood would have understood that you couldn’t keep your promise, of course. He never thought you could keep it in the first place. He would love you — in spite of your weakness and sin. But release you from your vows? No. You would have to carry them wrapped around your heart like barbed wire, just to remind you who and what you really were. A dumb sheep. A wretch. To include a prayer in worship in which you were released from your vows felt like mercy to me.

One of the traditional stories of the High Holy Days is about the half-brothers Isaac and Ishmael. Those of you who grew up in church or synagogue know the story. Abraham and Sarah had been promised that they would have many descendants, but the years were passing and they hadn’t had a child. Sara gave her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar to Abraham and she got pregnant. The book says then she began to despise Sara because she had a son and Sara didn’t. Sara complained to her husband and he told her to take care of it. She treated Hagar so badly that she ran away and nearly died, lost in the desert. Finally she found a spring of water. God spoke to her there, telling her to go back to living with Sara and Abraham, and telling her about her child, who was to be a father of nations. Hagar named that place “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” When she was desperate, afraid and alone, God saw her and met her there. Tradition holds that Ishmael was the father of the Arab nations. Sara did have a son, Isaac, whom tradition holds to be the father of the Jewish people. To make a lengthy and confusing story simple, they never got along. When Abraham died, though, the scripture says they buried him together in the place with the well. Tradition has it that this was a reconciliation between the brothers. It is this theme of reconciliation that defines these holy days which we celebrate as the year enters into its season of gathering darkness.

Yom Kippur translated as “the day of judgment” with its rituals of repentance and reconciliation, takes place in the season of darkening time. Mystics of the northern hemisphere call us to reflection, to self-examination as the days grow shorter. In the natural world, when the nights grow longer, plants turn their energy to growing their root systems so they can be hardier and more stable when the time comes for all that greening and blossoming. For us, reflection, looking at our good deeds and our destructive ones, doing what the 12 step program calls “Taking your own inventory” is a way to become hardier and more stable, to get ready for whatever greening and blossoming we’re going to do. After the reflection, we take responsibility for who we are. We see ourselves clearly. We have qualitiesÉ. I won’t say “good” qualities or “bad” qualities, because most of the elements that go into who we are can go both ways. Seeing ourselves clearly means we don’t skitter around on the surface of our decisions yelping about what made us do it and why we didn’t have any choice. We stand our ground, take a deep breath and say “yes I did that.” “Yes, I’m like that. We make amends, show our understanding of the hurt we’ve caused and present our intention to do better.

The Holy Days are a time to begin again clean. the start of a new year. In these days we celebrate the beginning of the world. We remember the faith-story of the creation, where God made light and dark and called them both good. In the story, light is sacred, and the dark is too. At the celebration of the birthday of the world, can we say we are grateful for the light, and may we speak of the sacred dark? It’s hard, in our culture, to think about “sacred dark.” This culture is in the habit of using the image of darkness to speak of ignorance, wickedness, poverty and cruelty.

In the language of psychology, we talk about bringing unconscious contents into the light of consciousness. Dream symbols are analyzed, feelings are analyzed, behavior is analyzed. We place great faith in analyzing, in explaining things. In the Christian traditions, God is Light, and somehow, even though, in the book of Genesis God creates the day and the night and calls both good, the church has almost always talked about darkness as a way of speaking of evil and destruction. In the New Age traditions there is a lot of talk of the Light and surrounding people and things with light. There are beings of light and beings of darkness. I’m not saying I want everyone to let all of those ways of speaking go. I just want to wonder today. I want to wonder about the sacred dark. Can we reclaim the sacred darkness as an image for a time of reflection, going deep, for the nurture of our hearts and the return of our souls to health?

Most religions have a description of the sacred dark. In ancient traditions the dark is the womb of the Great Mother. You enter the darkness, the womb, when you die, and you come out reborn, reformed. In ancient temples and in some Cathedrals, mazes and labyrinths, spirals and tunnels take you into the center, and back out again. Celtic traditions talk about Cerridwen’s Cauldron. There is cooking that happens in the sacred dark. There are chemical changes in a soul, in a life, in a way of thinking when times of darkness arrive.

We enter a time of sacred dark when we lose part of our identity – we are no longer a day-to-day parent when our children grow up, or we are no longer able to be athletic when our bodies change, or we are no longer able to be the devil-may-care bad to the bone kid when we realize that the substances that have been our best friend are killing our lives. We enter a time of sacred dark when we, who are used to knowing things, don’t know anything that will help us in this situation In the Zen Buddhist tradition this place of sacred dark is encouraged. It is call “don’t know mind,” and it is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is one thing and wisdom is another, and the sacred darkness comes to help us make the transition. During the Days of Awe we are asked to see our lives. Not as we wish they were, but as they are. At first we see ourselves harshly. We wander in a panic in a desert of criticism and despair. Then the Mystery shows us a spring of water. Then we remember that we are loved. We remember that we are surrounded by people who can witness our lives. We are surrounded by the Spirit of Love that flows through us and through the world. We can be truly seen by the eyes of love, and they see us clearly, but with compassion and mercy. The eyes of love say “You can get up again. I will believe in you no matter how many times you fall.” Then we can begin to forgive those who have wronged us, knowing they also are people who fall short of what they would like to be. Then we can begin to forgive ourselves, and see even ourselves with the eyes of love.

Closing words

Because we spill not only milk
knocking it over with an elbow
when we reach to wipe a small face
but also spill seed on soil we
thought was fertile but isn’t
and also spill whole lives and only
later see in fading light how
much is gone and we hadn’t
intended it
Because we tear not only cloth
thinking to find a true edge and
instead making only a hole but
also tear friendships when we grow
and whole mountainsides
because we are so many and
we want to live right where black oaks
lived, once very quietly and still
Because we forget not only what
we are doing in the kitchen
and have to go back to the room we were in
before, remember why it was we left
but also forget entire lexicons of joy and
how we lost ourselves for hours
yet all that time were clearly
found and held and also forget
the hungry not at our table
Because we weep not only at jade
plants caught in a freeze and
precious papers left in the rain but
also at legs that no longer walk
or never did, although from the outside
they look like most others
and also weep at words said once as
though they might be rearranged but
which, once loose, refused to return
and we are helpless
Because we are imperfect and love so
deeply we will never have enough days
we need to gift of starting over, beginning
again: just this constant good, this
saving hope.
–Nancy Schaffer

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.