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September 29, 2004
Face to Face with God
FACE TO FACE WITH GOD
September 26, 2004
Modern Judaism retains the traditional rituals of the Torah. However, the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Common Era. The Hebrews scattered away from the center of their worship. Most modern Jews live in the Diaspora.
Therefor the practice of Judaism had to change. Rabbinical Judaism emerged from the shards of the temple. However, the story of the ancient practice is still with us. One facet of the story is the scapegoat.
In the original ritual, the high priest brought three animals, a bull, and two goats as a special offering. First, the bull was sacrificed to rid the temple of any de-filement caused by the misdeeds of the priest and his family. Second, one of the goats was chosen by lot, and then sacrificed to rid the temple of the defilement caused by the misdeeds of the Israelites. And third, the second goat was sent away, not slain, to cleanse the people themselves of their misdeeds.
However, as the ritual developed, another critical element was added. At each stage, the high priest made confession to God. First he confessed the misdeeds of his family. Then he confessed the misdeeds of his priestly tribe, the Levites. And third, he confessed the sins of the people. As he did so, he laid his hands upon the head of the goat, and transferred their sins into the goat. Then the goat was chased out and away from the city--literally taking the misdeeds out and away from the people.
There was one other element of the ritual that was critical. This is the only time the people of Israel spoke aloud the name of their God. At all other times they used Adonai, or the Lord, to refer to God. On this day, when they were face to face with God, they spoke his name aloud. The pronunciation was never written and closely guarded. We no longer know the name of God.
Like all ritual, Yom Kippur is highly symbolic. And, like all Jewish ritual, it is deeply embedded in the life cycle of the year. Only ten days earlier Rosh Hash-anah, which marks the beginning of the year, was celebrated. The Days of Awe, which lead up to Yom Kippur, have their own special prayers. And following the High Holy Days Sukkoth, the harvest festival comes quickly.
Many religions have a similar day--a day when the god of the faith is petitioned for forgiveness, when sacrifices are made, and celebration follows. People can become deeply burdened by their misdeeds. People can become angry when wrongly treated. A ritual allows a method to release the anger, and lighten the load.
For religious liberals, the language surrounding such rituals can be troublesome. So, let us look at the language and see if we can deconstruct it so that the ritual may be helpful to us.
Let us take the really big one first--God. For the ancient Israelites God was a very real presence in their lives. God had led them out of Egypt, God had led them to the land of Israel, flowing with milk and honey. God had given them the greatest gift of all--the Torah. God had given them instructions on how to build a temple, and the rituals that should be conducted there.
Few religious liberals claim a god of this type. Many religious liberals do not claim a god at all. Those who do so often envision a force rather than a person-age, or a mystical presence rather than a lawgiver. However, most religious liberals acknowledge something larger than the self. That may be the larger community of humankind, or the even larger community of all living beings, or the even larger community of all that exists in the ever expanding universe.
For purposes of discussion and economy of language I ask that you allow the word God to substitute for that which you claim as your transcendent community. Thus, when we say face to face with God, please imagine the larger community with which you relate.
Now, the next big challenging word--confession. How many of you are ex-Catholics? Those who are have a lot of overlapping, confusing memories of confession. Going to confession was the price one paid for the privilege of participating in Holy Communion. Protestant faiths often practice unison con-fessions. A unison confession allows one to judiciously select which portion one will not say, or mumble, or say with one's fingers crossed. It is a little safer.
We liberal religionists don't practice confession. So, we avoid the embarrass-ment of speaking to the priest, or the mental gyrations in selecting which portion of the unison confession we will say. … However, we are not perfect. I hope this does not disillusion anyone. Let me repeat--we are not perfect. We make mis-takes. Not very many, of course, but still--a few.
I remember waking in the morning and facing getting my three children off to school. The youngest, Richard, was hyperactive, and hated school. This was the day I had PMS. I would vow, before my feet ever hit the floor, that I would not yell at Richard before he left for school. I never made it. Not once under those circumstances.
Now, I was a young mother who read all the latest literature, and I knew that yell-ing at your children was not a good thing to do. For years I beat myself up about that. I wish there had been a method, a ritual in which I could participate in order to seek and be granted forgiveness.
I'd be happy to confess--I am a baaaad mother--if the burden of guilt could have been lifted from my shoulders. I think confession can be good for the soul.
Forgiveness is the next big religious word. From who or what do we ask for-giveness? This is the dilemma we, who are sophisticated religious liberals, ask ourselves. The first answer is, of course, from the person we have wronged.
But that is also tough. It takes a lot of courage to face the person you have wronged and ask forgiveness. And, if the wrong was a great one, it takes a lot of strength to grant forgiveness to the wrongdoer. This is not easy stuff!
However, there are other wrongs we humans do that are not directed against a specific person, but rather against what we shall call God. Let me suggest that those who pollute the water, the air, and the land itself fit in this category. Let me suggest that it is far easier to throw that little flashlight battery in the nearest wastebasket than put it aside and later hunt up the nearest safe disposal site. If you want a picture perfect lawn it is easier to use fertilizers than it is to develop an organic lawn, even though the fertilizers eventually end up in Muskegon Lake.
Thus, if we repent of our misdeed and cease our polluting actions, from whom do we ask forgiveness? I suggest we ask it of what we are today calling God.
The ancient Israelites had a process they followed during the Days of Awe that preceded Yom Kippur. It was a process of forgiveness. First, they remembered their misdeeds. They examined their lives during the last year, and they called to mind the mistakes they made. Perhaps someone repeated an item of gossip that was damaging. Perhaps someone cheated another. Perhaps there was a fight.
After remembering, the obligation was to repent. This just means one felt sorry for their misdeed. We do that all the time. After loosing a stream of invective at the idiot who just cut in front of the car, with no signal, we're usually sorry. We're sorry we lost our temper and we're sorry any passengers witnessed our question-able behavior. We repent of our action.
And, it's fairly easy to ask forgiveness of our passengers. It probably would be unwise to chase after the idiot who is now eight cars away after cutting in front of other drivers just to ask forgiveness for calling him names he never heard. So, we have followed the process. If we then vow to ourselves, "and I'm really going to try to control my language better in the future," we can probably mark this particular misdeed off our list.
However, let us say there is a bigger problem. Let us say that the misdeed actually hurt someone. Let us say that you had repeated some gossip that was untrue, and the person you told had some power over the victim of your impul-sive behavior. Let us say that your action resulted in your victim failing to get a job he or she was seeking.
You didn't mean to cause this response. You had no real ill intention toward the person. It was just some careless words, but they made a big difference. And it might be that your victim does not even know what you did.
But you can't forget. That first step, remembering, doesn't take very long. It's always there, in the back of your mind. It is not difficult to remember; you just wish you could forget.
You will not really be free of this burden until you confess to your victim, express your sorrow and ask forgiveness. It won't be easy and it won't be painless. How-ever, it needs to be done.
It may be that your victim will not grant forgiveness the first time you ask. The rabbis taught that one must ask three times, and that all reasonable people should grant forgiveness at the third request. If not, you have done all you can do, and can approach God on Yom Kippur with a clear conscience. You have done all you can to keep in right relationship with the other humans around you.
However, you must also be in right relationship with God. Asking and granting forgiveness among your community members is one way to do that. But there is your direct relationship with God.
If you have damaged your relationship with God, either through inattention to God's requirements for worship, or damaging God's creation, you must ask forgiveness through prayer on Yom Kippur. If done with a sincere heart, God grants forgiveness.
Most of Yom Kippur is spent in prayer. It begins the night before when adult worshippers begin their fast, and it continues through the afternoon of the holi-day. There is a prayer used in some congregations at the evening service before Yom Kippur. It was written by Rebbe Levi Yitzchak.
Lord of the World, I stand before You and before my neighbors--pardoning, forgiving, struggling to be open to all who have hurt and angered me. Be this hurt of body or soul, of honor or property, whether they were forced to hurt me or did so willingly, whether by accident or intent, whether by word or deed--I forgive them because we are human. May no one feel guilty on my account. I am ready to take upon myself the commandment, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' (Waskow, Arthur, Seasons of Our Joy, Beacon Press, Boston, 1982, p. 39)
You may be saying to yourself, "This is all very interesting, Nana', but what does it mean to me? I am not an ancient Hebrew, nor am I a modern Jew. Why should I even be interested in methods of forgiveness?"
The current issue of Newsweek magazine (Sept. 27, 2004) has an article named Forgive and Let Live. Basically the authors say we should forgive because it is good for us. One of their contributors quoted Confucius, who said, "If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves."
Recent research by the foundation A Campaign for Forgiveness Research found:
"…that forgiveness works in at least two ways. One is by reducing the stress of the state of unforgiveness, a potent mixture of bitterness, anger, hostility, hatred, resentment and fear (of being hurt or humiliated again.) These have specific physiologic consequences--such as increased blood pressure and hormonal changes--linked to cardiovascular disease, immune suppression and, possibly, impaired neurological function and memory. …
The other benefit of forgiveness is more subtle; it relates to research show-ing that people with strong social networks--of friends, neighbors and fam-ily--tend to be healthier than loners. Someone who nurses grudges and keeps track of every slight is obviously going to shed some relationships over the course of a lifetime. Forgiveness, says Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, a researcher at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, should be incorporated into one's personality, a way of life, not merely a response to specific in-sults. (Newsweek September 27, 2004, "Forgive and Let Live," Jordana Lewis and Jerry Adler, p. 52.)
Our mental and emotional health has specific consequences on our physical health. We damage our bodies and shorten our lives when we carry around the burden of unforgiveness. However, forgiving is a complex process. Everett Worthington, executive director of the foundation, A Campaign for Forgiveness, distinguishes between "what he calls 'decisional forgiveness'--a commitment to reconcile with the perpetrator--from the more significant 'emotional forgiveness,' an internal state of acceptance. Forgiveness does not require that we forgo justice, or to make up to people we have every right to despise." (Ibid.)
I struggled with the idea of forgiveness for a very long time. My daughter was murdered, my husband killed in a vehicular homicide car crash. How could I possibly forgive the perpetrators of these crimes? It was not okay that either was dead.
Then I came to understand forgiveness in a different way, what I would now call the "emotional forgiveness" of which Mr. Worthington speaks. I came to an in-ternal state of acceptance. I did not forgo justice nor stop despising the people who killed my loved ones. But I stopped allowing them to control my life. I did not dig the two graves that seeking revenge would have required. I was able to proceed with my life, changed, but not focused exclusively on pain.
I speculate that forgiveness is not only good for the individual, but also good for society at large. When large numbers of people carry burdens of anger and stress, they contribute to the anxiety already present in our society. One incident of road rage can contribute to other such incidents. The angry person who kicks a dog on the way out the door leaves behind a dog that may well bite someone. Anger taken out on a child teaches the child that adults have the power to hurt children. This sets up a pattern that may be replicated in the future.
If we forgive people the small misdeeds they do, we may build a society that contains less stress and anxiety. And large sins may also be forgiven. In South Africa the Truth and Justice Reconciliation Committee is experimenting with a model that follows the process set forth by the ancient Hebrews. Instead of seeking imprisonment for all those people who struggled and fought and mur-dered and tortured in the days of apartheid, the process seeks reconciliation. People are invited to confess their part in the crimes of the era, to repent of their misdeeds, and to ask forgiveness. The forgiveness is granted.
I believe the God of the ancient Hebrews would be pleased. I believe that this model can be extended. Next Saturday we will be hosting a seminar called "No Future Without Forgiveness" in which this model is used to examine a possible future for Israel.
I invite you to participate in the seminar. Registration and sign up sheets are available in the Social Hall.
Wouldn't it be a fine irony if the system envisioned and practiced millennia ago by the ancient Hebrews was returned to Israel through South Africa? Wouldn't it be a grand development to use the practices of Yom Kippur to help bring peace to the tortured land of our spiritual fathers and mothers?
However, let us not forget that peace starts with the individual. Let us each re-member the process of forgiveness, taught by the ancient rabbis and confirmed by modern psychology. Let us remember the deeds we performed that brought pain and distress to others. Let us repent of our misdeeds and seek forgiveness. Let us grant forgiveness when it is sought. Let us go forth cleared of our burdens of guilt and unforgiveness. Let us celebrate our meeting with God, face to face.
Amen.
Blessed Be.
Shalom.
Saalat.
Posted by nanak at September 29, 2004 11:07 AM