Yom Kippur: A Healing Wholeness
Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
September 19, 2010
Reading In Judaism, this is the season of the High Holy Days. This is a sacred, intentional time for
reflection, for prayer and for seeking forgiveness.
And so I open with this reading from Rabbi Jack Riemer for Yom Kippur.
On Turning
Now is the time for turning.
The leaves are beginning to turn
from green to red and orange.
The birds are beginning to turn and
are heading once more toward the South.
The animals are beginning to
turn to storing their food for the winter.
For leaves, birds, and animals
turning comes instinctively.
But for us turning does not come so easily.
It takes and an act of will for us to make
a turn. It means breaking with old habits.
It means admitting that we have
been wrong; and this is never easy.
It means losing face; it means starting
all over again; and this is always painful.
It means saying: I am sorry.
It means recognizing that we have
the ability to change. These things
are hard to do.
But unless we turn, we will be trapped
forever in yesterday’s ways.
God, help us to turn - from callousness
to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness
to purpose, from envy to contentment, from
carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith.
Turn us around, O God, and bring us
back toward You. Revive our lives,
as at the beginning.
And turn us toward each other, God,
for in isolation there is no life.
Sermon Yom Kippur: A Healing Wholeness by Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, marks the celebratory close of the High Holy Days in Judaism.
The High Holy Days begin with Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Day in the Jewish calendar, and end 10
days later on Yom Kippur.
According to Jewish tradition, it is said that on Rosh Hashanah, God opens the Book of Life and the
Book of Death, and that all humankind passes before God to have their names written in one of the
two books. Commentaries suggest that the what the Book of Life and the Book of Death speak to is
what will happen to in the afterlife. It is said that to have one’s name inscribed in the Book of Life is to
have a good year ahead. On Yom Kippur it is said the book is closed and one’s fate for the year is
sealed.
That is pretty heavy stuff, huh? How does one ensure that his or her name gets written into the Book
of Life? It is called tesuvah. The entire month leading up to the High Holy Days, the month of Elul, is
set aside for tesuvah. The word literally mean “to turn,” and the practice of tesuvah means to look
back over the past year and remember the places where we have gone wrong, where we have hurt
someone else, where we have been unjust, or lost our way. Then it means to turn, as in to make a
change in the ways we have done wrong, to turn our lives around. There is also a spiritual component
of tesuvah which speaks to turning ourselves toward what is holy, or what is good, to reconcile
ourselves to God.
But here is the thing. How do we reconcile ourselves to God? How do we turn our lives around and
right our path? The answer is the most challenging parts of tesuvah. It is said that if you sin against
God, you must seek forgiveness from God, but if you sin against another person, you must seek
forgiveness from that person. It would be easier if we could take all of our burdens, all the places
where we feel guilty because we have hurt others and look up to the sky, to the heavens and say,
“Forgive me, I am sorry.” But that kind of act is not the work of of making change, or reconciling
relationships.
This is one of the reasons that 12 step programs insist that people go to those they have hurt and
name what they did wrong and seek forgiveness. Being honest and naming the mistakes we make
allows for real accountability, honesty and change. It takes courage to go to another person and admit
we were wrong. It takes courage to say, “I am sorry” and beyond on that, to ask, “Will you forgive
me?” This means standing face to face with someone, vulnerable, and to risk the other person not
being able to forgive us. This is the difficult but necessary work of tesuvah, of turning, of repairing or
healing relationships, of making amends.
In her poem, “You Can Talk,” the African American writer Alice Walker draws a distinction between
divine healing, and healing right here between people. She writes:
You can talk about
The balm in Gilead
But what about
The balm
Right
Here
What about
The healing of
The wounded heart
When someone
You have harmed
Gleefully
Embraces you?
In Christian tradition, the balm in Gilead is a reference to the healing salve, the atonement, that Jesus
brought to the world, or that one experiences through faith in Jesus. The balm in Gilead is what the
spiritual says will heal a sin-sick soul. Yet, Alice Walker elevates the power, the healing power of
reconciliation right here among one another--the healing power of being embraced, loved, held by
someone you have hurt. In the spirit of tesuvah, she brings emphasis to the healing salve of
reconciling our human relationships.
Yom Kippur means Day of Atonement. To atone derives from the words “at one.” The origin of the
word means to become united or reconciled, to be at-one. Traditionally, both within Christianity and
Judaism, atonement has been about salvation, reconciling oneself to God. “Getting right with God,”
atoning to God of one’s sins--how many times have we seen this turn into self-righteousness? Yet in
stories and teachings and traditions across religions, there is the message that the way we do this is
by being in right relationship with one another.
While it is not always practiced now, fasting used to be an important part of honoring the High Holy
Days. Similar to the Muslim practice of Ramadan, the High Holy Days called on Jews to abstain from
food and drink, work and sex, perfume and other indulgences. One of the readings from the Torah,
the Jewish Scripture, that is read in synagogue for Yom Kippur is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 58.
It describes true fasting
(Isaiah 58: 5-14).
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,...?
6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter?
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
9 ...."If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,...
11....You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
The prophet Isaiah is calling the people to the work of atonement that reaches beyond our individual
lives. It is a reminder that the work of reconciliation is not easy, and it not just about individual
blessing or relief, but also about turning the tides of oppression, of stepping out to aid our neighbor,
the stranger, the hungry, the oppressed.
The meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, of the High Holy Days in Judaism has several layers.
One of those layers is to look back at the way we have hurt friends or loved ones in our life and the
work of saying we are sorry, acknowledging we were wrong and asking for forgiveness. It is the work
of healing, or reconciling our relationships.
Then there is the work of looking back and seeing where we have sold ourselves short, or let
ourselves down, when we have hurt ourselves. In these cases, we have to find a way to forgive
ourselves. Not to punish, but to forgive ourselves, release ourselves from guilt and let the burden go.
Then there is the teaching that if we have sinned against God, we need to seek forgiveness from God.
What does it mean to sin against God? This is a tough question--particularly if you don’t believe in
God. But let’s give it some thought. Perhaps this type of sin is when we fall victim to envy, forgetting
the many blessings we have. Perhaps it is when we lose our sense of gratitude, or reverence for life.
Perhaps it is a failure to have concern for those outside our small circle, a failure to see the stranger,
the one who is hungry, a failure to fast as Isaiah says by freeing the oppressed.
We cannot always take on all three of these levels of tesuvah. And for some relationships
reconciliation is not possible, or the time is not ready yet.
Sometimes death robs us of the chance to do the work of reconciliation. On Yom Kippur, we are called
to acknowledge those pains, forgive in ourselves what we can and lay our burdens down. It may take
many, many Yom Kippurs, many years and rituals of letting go to find healing and wholeness for the
most difficult places of hurt.
Healing comes when we feel the pain of those scars lessened, when we are able to lay our guilt, our
grudges down, and be free of them. Healing also comes when we turn from isolation and find
ourselves more closely joined in community. There is a wholeness that is created, an at-one-ness that
is created, a stronger unified whole when we do the work of reconciling past hurts and renewing
relationships.
The wisdom of Yom Kippur and the practice of tesuvah, is really about strengthening community. It
provides a mechanism to keep a community strong, to bring neighbors together, and to call us to see
our lives in relationship to the wider community. This create wholeness, seeing the whole, and the
way to turn ourselves from isolation toward that wholeness.
When we experience the wholeness, and the strength of reconciled spirits and community, then we
are called to look to the turning that Isaiah calls for. When we look beyond the personal and the family
to see that the work of atonement, of reconciling ourselves --to God, or to humanity, means seeking
reconciliation of broader structures of injustice and oppression. This is very humanist in outlook--for it
sees that call to get right with God as a call to right relationships among humanity and creation.
There is a story that captures this essence written by the English poet, James Leigh Hunt, about an
Arab Muslim saint, Abou Ben Adhem.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”--The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “the names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou, “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
and Lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.
Exalted above love of God--is love of one another, fellow humanity. The moral of the poems is that
this is the source of true blessing.
The real power of Yom Kippur is about creating and experience the balm that is already here when we
focus on reparations and reconciliation among one another, within a community and between peoples.
We are all in need of atonement, of salvation, in need of ways for our hearts to feel lifted, to be
reminded that there is good in us, that our lives have meaning, that we mean something to others.
I do not know whether or not there is a God. I seek continually the answers to the those mysterious
questions--but I have no claim to certainty. But what is certain, and echoes in these ancient traditions
and wise poets is that the healing wholeness that we seek to center our lives in, to bring us back to a
center of peace--is not found in searching the heavens, but found in the much harder work of love and
forgiveness, making amends and reparations, becoming unified and reconciled here and now in our
lives, our families, and among our fellow humanity.