Atonement

and Rabbi Michael LeBurkien

12 October 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Notes on this service:

This is a service borrowing from and centered in some of the Jewish tradition and thought about these topics of repentance and atonement that are the center of Judaism’s highest holy days. Rabbi LeBurkien is now a member of this church, and was gracious enough to provide many materials – and some basic education for me – on these two holidays. He also brought his shofar and played it at the beginning and end of the service. Most of the ritual words here were taken or adapted from Jewish materials, while the sermon was my attempt to incorporate some of the wisdom from these stories and traditions into our own tradition of doing honest religion in ordinary language. Since it’s an unusual service, I’ve included almost all spoken parts of the service, to give a more rounded feel for it.

– Davidson Loehr

BLOWING OF THE SHOFAR

Give heed to the sound of the shofar,

The sharp, piercing blasts of the shofar,

Splitting the air with its message,

Renouncing unworthy goals and selfish behaviors.

Instill in your hearts a new spirit.

Heed the sound of the shofar,

Sounding its message of warning,

Its cry of alarm and awakening –

Urging us to work with our brothers and sisters

To combat the ills that beset us all.

Accept the challenge to triumph

Over the forces of anger and destruction.

And all their poisonous fruit.

Heed the sound of the shofar,

Bringing bright hope to a people

Long scattered and stricken with sorrow.

Heed the sound of the shofar,

The blast that is blown within our spaces like the voice of God, O my people.

SOUNDING OF THE SHOFAR

According to some Jewish writers, the sound of the shofar is like a prayer, or even like the voice of God in our midst. We welcome both. Please join me in the responsive invocation written in your order of service.

RESPONSIVE INVOCATION

LEADER: We gather to seek, to find and to share the promise of honest religion:

PEOPLE: TO COME ALIVE, TO SEEK TRUTH, AND TO HEAL OUR WORLD.

LEADER: And so it is a sacred time, this, and a sacred place, this.

PEOPLE: A PLACE FOR QUESTIONS MORE PROFOUND THAN ANSWERS

LEADER: Vulnerability more powerful than strength

PEOPLE: AND A PEACE THAT CAN PASS UNDERSTANDING.

LEADER: It is a sacred time, this. Let us begin it together in song.

READING: THE STORY OF JOSEPH

The sons of Jacob were twelve in number, Now Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, so he made a coat of many colors for him. When his brothers saw the coat they believed that their father loved Joseph more than any of them, and began to hate their brother.

Joseph had a series of dreams which he told his brothers about. The first was of binding up of sheaves in the field., and Joseph’s sheaf rising and standing up, and the brothers’ sheaves gathered round and bowed to Joseph’s. This dream stirred the brothers’ hatred again. Joseph came to them again with another dream in which the sun, moon and 11 stars bowed down to him. His father scolded him “am I and your mother and brothers to bow down to you”? The father pondered his son’s dreams and wondered what these meant. And again his brothers increased their hatred of their brother Joseph who was unaware of their feelings against him. After his brothers left to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem, Jacob spoke with Joseph about following them and bringing back word of their work with his flocks.

And so Joseph set off but his brothers saw him at a distance and began plotting the murder of their brother because of their hatred and jealousy. They wanted to kill Joseph and throw him into a pit but the oldest brother, Rueben, wanted Joseph to be saved from being murdered and said “do not shed any blood; throw him in the pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay hands on him.” When Joseph reached his brothers they took his coat of many colors and after stripping him of it they threw him into the pit. After these deeds, the brothers sat down to eat a meal and as they ate, they watched a caravan of Ishmaelites from and in doing so saved my life, Gilead coming with their spices, balm and laudanum bound for Egypt. Brother Judah went in another direction and said to his brothers “Instead of slaying Joseph and leaving him in the pit for wild animals, let us sell him to this caravan of Ishmaelites and not lay hands on him. After all he is our brother.” His brothers agreed and sold Joseph for 20 shekels of silver, and the Ismaelites took him to Egypt. They returned the bloody coat to their father and Joseph was believed to have died from animal attack.

Joseph did well in the land of Egypt. He worked very hard and bought himself out of slavery, and rose in importance to become close to the king or Pharaoh. Eventually drought and famine came to Canaan where Joseph’s family lived and his brothers had to come to Egypt to buy food. He had his brothers brought before him and contemplated taking revenge against them but could not. His brothers did not recognize him as a man but were fearful of his power and when they were again brought to the palace he began weeping and all heard him say, “I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt. Be not grieved nor angry but hurry back to my father and speak to him from his son Joseph: You will live near me, you, your sons, your grandsons, your flocks and herds and all that belongs to you and I will provide for you through the years of famine to come. You must tell my father who I am in Egypt, and all you have seen and bring him back here to me.” All the brothers, the 12 sons of Jacob, wept upon each other’s shoulders.

PRAYER: A RESPONSIVE LITANY OF ATONEMENT

Leader: For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference.

LEFT SIDE: WE FORGIVE OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER; WE BEGIN AGAIN IN LOVE.

RIGHT SIDE: FOR EACH TIME THAT OUR FEARS HAVE MADE US RIGID AND INACCESSIBLE

Leader: We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

LEFT SIDE: FOR EACH TIME THAT WE HAVE STRUCK OUT IN ANGER WITHOUT JUST CAUSE

RIGHT SIDE: WE FORGIVE OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER; WE BEGIN AGAIN IN LOVE.

Leader: For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others

LEFT SIDE: WE FORGIVE OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER; WE BEGIN AGAIN IN LOVE.

RIGHT SIDE: FOR THE SELFISHNESS WHICH SETS US APART AND ALONE

Leader: We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

LEFT SIDE: FOR FORGETTING THAT WE ARE ALL PART OF ONE FAMILY

RIGHT SIDE: WE FORGIVE OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER; WE BEGIN AGAIN IN LOVE.

Leader: For those and for so many things big and small that make it seem we are separate.

ALL: WE FORGIVE OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER; WE BEGIN AGAIN IN LOVE.

SERMON: Atonement

We are reflecting on two of Judaism’s high holy days this morning, Rosh Hashanah, which was September 30-1 October, is their spiritual New Year. And Yom Kippur, which ended the ten days of repentance and atonement this past Thursday.

Rosh Hashanah is a time of repenting for bad actions toward other people, a time for looking inside, asking what kind of people our actions have shown us to be in the past year. Before forgiveness can happen, we have to confess to the people we believe we have wronged.

Yom Kippur, the end of this ten days, is called the Day of Atonement. “Atonement” is a wonderful theological term, and its spelling is its meaning: at-one-ment. Being at one with yourself and your highest and most life-giving values – or in theological language, with your God. To do this, you first have to be at one with your neighbors, so it’s really a complete kind of at-one-ment. We’d all be happier if we had it.

Most of Judaism is for Jews, just as most of Christianity is for Christians. But there are parts of all religions that are ours for the taking, and we want to learn from them if we can. Those parts are the insights into the human condition, and the wisdom for living more wisely and well. That’s part of what theologians call the Wisdom Tradition, and wisdom is always free, offered to all who are willing to hear it and take it to heart.

As we sometimes do on New Year’s Eve, Jews also make resolutions for the new year. And like the rest of us, they usually fail to keep many of them. The world seldom cooperates with all of our resolutions, and then what do we do? They’re harder than we hoped they would be when we made them. Life can put us in a hole or back us into a corner or frighten us, and we lower our expectations and our standards.

This is part of the religious lesson of that story of Joseph that Rabbi LeBurkien told you earlier. It’s a wonderful story, and I want to visit it from a different angle this morning. Joseph’s brothers were horrible to him. If you looked in the Hall of Fame for Dysfunctional Families, their group photo would be there. Some wanted to kill him, others to throw him into a deep hole so the wild animals would eat him, and the kindest of them decided simply to sell him into slavery. If you got to choose your brothers, nobody would choose them.

Years later, Joseph has risen to power through the strength of his own character and the luck of life. His brothers – due to bad luck, which in this story is also meant as a judgment on their character – are brought before him. Joseph can take all the vengeance he wants now. He can get even with them in spades for everything they did to him and everything they thought about doing to him.

But what would he gain? Sure, it would give him a wonderful cheap thrill, getting even. And you know how good that feels, don’t you? But then he would have stooped to their level. He would be showing that he was their brother in the worst way rather than in the best way. It wouldn’t be anything you could be proud of if you thought God was watching – and in these stories, God is usually watching.

What Joseph did in this ancient myth by acting out of love, out of his highest and proudest ideals, is more than most of us might do. That’s why the story has remained so powerful all these centuries. It calls us to a higher plane of being, to live out of only our proudest ideals. That’s important because life can still frighten us away from those high ideals if we let it.

Unless we can forgive a past that cannot be changed, we will carry anger, resentment and the hope for vengeance or anger or a paralyzing fear into the future. Then we won’t be starting a new year after all, but repeating some of the poisonous parts of the one we just had – like the movie “Groundhog Day,” reliving the same sorry situation again and again. So instead, we forgive ourselves and each other and begin again in love.

Joseph forgave his brothers, redefined them as brothers rather than enemies, they embraced and went into the future together, and into our common mythology as one of the most challenging and inspiring stories we’ve ever told. This isn’t just about forgiving some awful brothers. It’s really about forgiving life for not pleasing us. This makes it easy to see that this old story isn’t really about Joseph. It’s really about us, and about life. What do we do when we’re scared, angry or resentful? Because the world really isn’t made in the image of our desires. And every once in awhile, it rises up to remind us of that, and to say, “Now what will you do?”

Think of the current economic mess our country and growing parts of the world are in. It isn’t fair. You’ve read the same stories I have. The whole situation is more complex than I understand, and maybe there’s a lot more to it than we’re being told right now, I don’t know. But stocks have fallen, some people have lost thousands from their retirement funds, and other countries are panicked as well.

Nonprofits and churches are also worried because right now, in this panic, charitable giving is slowing down. People are afraid want to put their money under their pillow, or under a rock. And under the heading of Really Interesting Timing, we’re in the middle of our own annual pledge drive just as this whole subject of money has become one people don’t want to talk about. We don’t have anywhere near enough people on our stewardship committee to share the tasks without burning out. It’s hard to talk about money because people are afraid and don’t want to hear about it or think about it. A lot of people are afraid that the light at the end of the tunnel might be an oncoming train. This shows us once again that Denial isn’t a river in Egypt – the river runs right through us.

We are Joseph, thrown into a hole. Not by this or that Republican or Democrat or Congress, but by Life. Sometimes, it favors us, sometimes it doesn’t, because life isn’t created in the image of our own wishes or needs.

We are Joseph. Do we allow ourselves to be ruled by fear and anger? People could understand if we did, because it’s what many of them are doing. So many strong winds blowing us in so many directions right now. Which winds do we let blow us around?

Should we give up on the pledge drive, cancel the wonderful building campaign we have planned for our children, our programs, our future, cancel all two dozen of our split-the-plate recipients and sell the church for spare parts?

Now when we start thinking this way, we know we’re wrong, because this is a church where we are here because we want to learn how to serve high and brave and life-giving ideals, not fears that make us shrink back from life. We will not be frightened away from life.

We need to back off a little to ask whether it’s realistic to stay in a hole of doom and gloom, whether the sky is really falling as Chicken Little always, always believes, or whether there are life-giving and healing insights that are also true. They can come from folk wisdom and stories, but also from straight facts, so let’s start with some of those.

I read an article from a company called Resource Services Inc. this week that our new executive director Sean Hale passed around, and then went online to learn more about this company. It was founded in 1972 by two evangelical classmates from Baylor University, to help churches plan successful capital campaigns, and at one point, of the 25 largest successful church capital campaigns in history, all but one of them was planned by this company. So they have learned a lot about the vicissitudes of economics and economic history.

Here are just a few facts from a paper they published six years ago, during the panic after 9-11 (“Christian Giving in Uncertain Times” from the NACBA Seminar, a Presentation of Bill Wilson of RWI, July 9, 2002):

o The total amount of giving in the U.S. has increased every year but one for the past 40 years, including through wars, recessions and other crises. Each year we have given more than the previous year.

— These crises do tend to paralyze us for a short time, but in the calendar year following crises, the giving grew at a greater rate than it did during the crisis year.

— The larger a church is, the more likely their members are to support it. About 70% supported churches under 100 members, while about 87% supported churches of 500 or more.

— People in the South and West give more per capita than those in the Midwest and Northeast.

— “People with the strongest convictions are the most likely to support their worldview financially….” (from George Barna)

— Commitments to capital campaigns aren’t usually affected much by economic crises, partly because they’re received over a three-year period.

They suggest thinking about it this way: everything we give, Life gave to us first. It isn’t so much a giving as it is a giving-back.

The economy always recovers. Even if this is going to be compared to the great scares like the 1987 stock market crash, or the one way back in 1929, the economy is now far more global. As we’re seeing, economies all over the world are affected and working on it. Too much is at stake for too many people to let everything slide off a cliff.

In other words, it is safe to act as though our highest values are still our best guides to living now. We don’t cancel our split-the-plate practice, because we want to heal our world, not withdraw from it. We want to be people, and a church, that are conspicuous because we choose to serve life, to come alive, not to stay in the hole we’ve been thrown into.

As the preacher Robert Schuler once put it, “Tough times never last; tough people do.” We don’t get to choose our crises, but we do get to choose how we will act in them.

The next year or two may well be tough. Tough times are a part of living. They are the times that show us what we’re made of when we’re in that hole.

I can tell you that I’d rather be representing a church right now than any other kind of business. Because we’re not defined by productivity or the bottom line, and we don’t outsource your souls to another country. We’re defined by the power of the ideals we serve, and their ability to steer us through even – and especially – these wonderfully challenging times.

This past Wednesday I attended the Kol Nidre service at Congregation Agudis Achim, a local conservative congregation, and heard a new version of an old story. I want to share it with you.

An older man was out walking on the beach one day when he noticed, far ahead of him, a young woman who would bend down, pick something up, throw it into the ocean, then walk on until she stopped and did it again. Curious, he walked toward her, and as he got closer he saw she was picking up starfish, one at a time, and throwing them back into the ocean.

He walked up to her and said, “Why are you doing that?” “I’m saving starfish,” she answered. “The ocean washes them up onto the beach where they’ll die. I throw them back to their home.”

He laughed. “Why are you wasting your time? The ocean has been doing this for millions of years. Millions of starfish have died on the beach, and always will. Do you honestly think you can make any difference?”

She walked over to another starfish, picked it up, and threw it back into the ocean. She turned to the man and said, “It made a difference to that one.”

The man hadn’t expected this, because as you know, negativity and cynicism can usually silence most arguments, even when it’s wrong. But it forced him to think, and to act. As she walked on, he joined her, and before long he bent over, picked up a starfish, threw it back to the sea, and a big smile broke out on his face.

Some other people on the beach who had been watching this interchange began getting up and walking toward the ocean, picking up starfish and tossing them into the sea. Soon nearly everyone was doing it, and kept doing it until they had covered the whole beach. When the last starfish had been thrown back to its home in the ocean, the people all cheered and hugged one another.

Like the story of Joseph, that beach is a metaphor for life. Bad stuff is part of life, and sometimes we actually come to believe that we’re powerless – what difference could we possibly make? But the real truth about us is just how powerful we really are if we will act on our highest values, no matter what life brings us. Because people are watching. We are watching. We’re watching each other, and the courage of a few people can have an amazing effect in giving others the courage of their own convictions. Then before you know it, we’ve cleaned up the beach, kept this exciting and life-giving liberal church on its healthy path, and built a lovely new building for our children, our programs and our future. Then comes the laughing and cheering. Cheering ourselves, for having the courage of our deepest convictions, the courage to come alive, embrace our most life-giving truths, and begin healing ourselves and our world.

If you have hesitated to come into our pledge drive, or have entered it hesitantly and would be prouder to invest more of your money, time and spirit here, I advise you to come in boldly. Come join us on this wonderful and challenging beach of life. Help us clean the fearful and paralyzing debris off of it. Help us return everything to life.

Make the kind of strong and confident pledge you’d really like to for next year. If it takes us all a little longer than we think to restore health to our economy and you need to adjust your pledge next spring or summer, of course you can do that. But for now, be hopeful and bold because that gives life both to us and to you.

This isn’t an economic matter; it’s a religious mission. It is a mission of at-one-ment, coming to be at one with our proudest ideals and highest values. So come join us on this beach, and help us maintain it and ourselves as beacons of light, life and hope. The work together is inspiring and fun. And afterwards, there will be this party and this cheering that you don’t want to miss. Join us!

BLOWING OF THE SHOFAR

Now once more, hear the sound of the shofar,

Splitting the air, reminding us to let go of unworthy goals and selfish behaviors, and instill in our hearts a new spirit.

Heed the sound of the shofar,

Sounding its cry of awakening –

Urging us to accept the challenge to triumph

Over the forces of anger and fear.

And all of their many poisonous fruits.

Let us heed the sound of the shofar, O my people.

SOUNDING OF THE SHOFAR

Together we have celebrated the creation of the universe, the creations of nature, and the power of creation which is within each one of us. We are the creators and co-creators of our lives, our world, and our future. We have, each of us, a small power of creation like unto that of God. Let us go forth from here reclaiming our ability to know good from evil. We go forth as creative and powerful people, called again to serve only our highest callings, to come alive, to seek truth and to heal our world. Please join me in our responsive benediction.

RESPONSIVE BENEDICTION:

PREACHER: We leave this sacred time and place,

PEOPLE: But we carry its promise with us.

PREACHER: The world needs the spirit that we can carry forth.

PEOPLE: Let us become the life, the truth and the healing that we seek.

PREACHER: Amen.

PEOPLE: Amen.