October is the month for the Jewish High Holy Days, which include The Feast of Trumpets (October 3), Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur (October 12), and the Feast of Tabernacles (October 17-24). As these celebrations begin, Rev. Liz will reflect on the importance and implications of Forgiveness.

We worship in person in the Meeting House. If you cannot join us in person, click here to tune in to our YouTube channel at 10:30 am.

 

“Forgiveness… Can You Imagine”

Sermon preached at the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI on October 6, 2024 by the Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay.

 

Entering the Jewish High Holidays, a time centered on reflection, repentance, and forgiveness, my thoughts zigzag this year between the individual and the international.  Always, at this time of year, I think – and preach – about elements on the journey of forgiveness and reconciliation as laid out in Jewish theology – a model we are generally less familiar with in America. Jewish theology holds this journey is – and must be – intimate and immediate. And unlike in the Christian model, forgiveness is not incumbent upon the person who has been wronged. Maybe we forgive, maybe we don’t. Instead, the burden is on the wrongdoer, to initiate the conversation and make confession and offer atonement and ask for forgiveness. Which is hard! We have all been in that place where we’ve done wrong and we know we need to say so and make it right – but even knowing that very clearly doesn’t make it easy. It can be scary; it can be humbling or even humiliating; it can be – worst of all – unsuccessful, rejected, denied. And it has be direct – we cannot confess to just anyone about a wrong we have done, we must confess to the one we have wronged. That’s often one of the hardest things to do. Likewise, in this model, we cannot receive absolution from anyone on behalf of the one we have wronged; we must either receive it from them themselves, or not at all. And it may be not at all – there is no guarantee that forgiveness can or must come. Asking for forgiveness is asking a real question; make no mistake. Take nothing for granted. There are no guarantees with something like this which has to be honest if it is to be anything at all. And what hangs in the balance, according to Jewish tradition, is one’s very life, our future, all our possibilities, depending on whether we can adequately apologize and atone to win forgiveness – or not. So there are complex and deep layers of thought and engagement involved, even if it is just about our own self and one other person. Add on that maybe we wronged more than one person in the past year – and that traditionally one is supposed to check in with all those we are in relation to in case someone felt wronged and we might not have noticed our action and its impact – and that’s a lot more forgiveness navigating to do. This is why there are nine ‘Days of Awe’ as they are called between Rosh Hashanah – the new year – and Yom Kippur – the day of atonement. So that there’s days and days of time to focus on relationships and the righting of wrongs.

But nowadays, it’s impossible to enter this time of reflection and renewal without thinking of the brutal Hamas attacks on Israel this time last year when around 1200 people in Israel were killed, 250 were taken hostage, many more were attacked or wounded – and Israel’s long lasting and devastating reprisals ever since, that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza including countless families and children and in hospitals, homes, schools and many other refuges that have become killing fields. To be clear, Hamas has continued to shell Israel throughout this year, together with almost daily and increasingly impactful shelling from Hezbollah, the Shia Islamist military and political organization that operates out of Lebanon. As you probably know, in recent days, Israel has responded with its own attacks on Hezbollah and Beirut, the Lebanese capital, with everything from exploding walkie-talkies to major shelling. Now, because of the anniversary of last year’s attack, which was timed to coincide with the Jewish High Holidays, and because of Israel’s devastating counter attack since last October– and because of the impact around the world, including increasing anti-Semitism everywhere including here in the United States, demonstrations demanding a cease fire and safety for Palestine and Gaza at universities and colleges across our nation, and demands for hardline suppression of those demonstrations from conservatives that has upended the leadership at many important institutions, because of all this, it’s honestly impossible to enter this traditionally personal time of engagement with only a personal focus. I can’t think only of myself and my loved ones at this time of year, and I certainly can’t preach a self-centered and defended perspective while we all wrestle with each day’s tragedies and complexities, so many of which we cannot control and cannot ignore.

But one of the gifts of our faith is that it does encourage – at least encourage, often require – us to seek – and when we seek we often find at least something, something that we need, something that can help. In reading and reflecting this week for wisdom to address this moment and these circumstances, I found a piece in the Boston Globe that quoted two Jewish leaders on the topic. R. Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, who advised anxious Jews to take a long view.  “If we’re going to look at this narrow frame of what happened on Oct. 7 and subsequently, we can become very discouraged,” he said. “We have the ability to step back and see it in the context of a long history… being misunderstood, being attacked, being hated, and then finding a way to be part of having justice prevail.” And Noah Farkas, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, who stressed the importance of  asking existential questions right now, saying “We are checking in with our higher selves to try to be better, asking, ‘What do we do with our lives?’” “The thing to do,” he said “is to choose and to act. To choose righteous things to do … to be caring about others.”

This folds right into something I was holding from the writing of the great 20^th c. African American poet Gwendolyn Brooks about the renowned singer and activist Paul Robeson:

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

 

That sounds to me like Ubuntu – the Zulu/Bantu word. I always tell you exactly because I want us to know – because it matters – Africa is not a country, it is a continent, and the many nations and peoples there are different and deserve to be known in all their particularity. So Ubuntu is a Zulu, Bantu word that means ‘I am who I am because of who we all are.’ Maybe everything these days sounds to me like Ubuntu, that utter clarity and conviction of interdependent existence and identity, because every day brings news of violations and denials of Ubuntu across the world and across our own towns and cities, even as the impact of those violations and denials reaffirms the truth of Ubuntu. And the more I reflect lately on life and living and the world and all its interconnections and tragedies, the more I see that also all themes and questions of faith, including our topic this morning, forgiveness, cannot be examined apart from our essential interconnected existences and identities. In this season of reflection and harvest, this is part of what the yield looks like this year.

Ubuntu is also in the writing of Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah, who wrote this poem, entitled […] between October and December 2023 in response to the war on Gaza:

“You will be when we be. You will stay when we stay.
You have made our tears yours, your memory
no longer possible without us.

“You will need our sky for yours to hold up,
and our sea waves to teach you return.

“We will return
though not
as you have.

“Say you’re sorry. Will you
say sorry once? How long before your first remorse?

“We absolve you of reparation, promise you forgiveness.
How long before you enter us to leave yourself?”

 

These days, with the escalation of attacks in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria and Israel, it’s impossible to know what the next day will bring and it’s impossible to see a path towards any kind of meaningful peace. And if or when peace finally comes, it will never be worth the cost of the tens of thousands that have been killed, injured, raped, starved or terrorized in the last brutal year that has broken our hearts again and again and again, even we who watch from afar, from safety and plenty, but also from countless campuses and institutions being torn apart by prejudice and reaction and rabblerousers who love to stoke the scorching flames of hate and destruction with the fuel of misinformation and extremism. Perhaps the only thing that is clear is that no one in power in any of these states is minded to confess, apologize, atone, and ask for forgiveness. This is about power and dominance, not justice or compassion or healing or peace as most of us would define it.

This sermon this morning takes its title from the song we heard earlier: It’s Quiet Uptown from the musical Hamilton (as we may know if any of us have ever seen the play over and over again, say after getting Disney Plus just so we could finally see it because we could never find or afford tickets to the show on Broadway and then once we saw it the first time, we had to keep watching it over and over again – whoops am I projecting? – never mind – ahem…)! The song is about what Alexander Hamilton and his wife Eliza Hamilton are going through because their marriage was already broken by his having had an affair – and then inexplicably published a pamphlet about it pointing out he never violated any professional ethics in how he conducted the affair. So they are struggling, and then their beloved firstborn son Philip is killed in a duel not far from where his father will eventually be killed in another duel some years later. Eliza and Alexander are both profoundly stricken by Philip’s death – and in the aftermath they move to another part of the city – and they change – as the song tells us. They are going through the unimaginable. And Alexander reaches out to Eliza, in the depths of their shared and separate despairs – and somehow, mired within all their heartbreak, they find their way back to each other – and Eliza finds it in her great and generous heart to forgive him. It is breathtaking – both the story and the music that tells the story of this extraordinary healing between them – are breathtaking in their rarity and power.

The last time I saw a true, public, healing moment was over 30 years ago – when then President Clinton hosted the signing of the Oslo Accord, declaring mutual commitment to a 2-state solution, by then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin – a former Israeli Defense Force General who had been elected on a platform of working for a 2-state solution –  and then Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat who had moved from being an anti-Zionist paramilitary leader to one willing to concede Israel’s right to exist. Those two literally mortal enemies shook hands – you could see the effort just that gesture took in the TV coverage that night – but they did it and opened a door to the hope of peace and mutuality. This commitment earned Prime Minister Rabin his assassination just 2 years later and began the long death spiral of that promise, which Israel’s next prime ministers did less and less to honor as they slowly turned from – and then shut – the door of hope.

What does this leave us with, in these days of awe – and anxiety, and devastation – as we work on our own impending election and the great challenges facing our own nation – and then our own lives and our own wrongs and being wronged that we hold on to or wish to let go of?

Find a way to be part of having justice prevail. Choose and act. Choose righteous things to do. Be caring about others.

Fady Jouday wrote another poem, also entitled […] – in fact many of his poems in his most recent book of poetry share this title, over and over again – because no titular phrase is enough for so much that is beyond words. Nonetheless he puts words to his agony and writes: (from […] p. 7)

Ceasefire now. Before Thanksgiving?

By Christmas or the New Year?

 

On MLK Day or Easter? Forever?

Before old tricks find themselves out,

 

And genocide is seen through, this year or the next

Decade, and scholars sign off on it.

 

Repetition won’t guarantee wisdom

But cease now

Before your wisdom is an echo.

 

We need to differentiate

Between the dead and the not-here.

 

We require you to restore your mind

To your heart, its earliest version,

 

Before the world touched it.

After the massacre

 

Who will emerge innocent?

And I, a serf,

Online or behind fences.

 

Ceasefire now. Sure, you will

have to grant more rights,

cede new ground. Sure,

 

revolution shall not last.

Shall not end.

 

‘We require you to restore your mind to its earliest version – your heart.’ That’s it. That’s the sacred center of everything this morning – yearning for forgiveness and reconciliation; yearning for peace, or at least ceasefire, and all that stands against it – selfishness, guilt, aggression, prejudice, the making of war and despoliation of the earth – as it says in the Haggadah my family uses each year at Passover – those scorching, modern plagues of humankind. We all need to keep restoring our minds to their earliest version – our hearts. Our hearts unscarred by life lessons and survival and facades and machinations; our hearts which know sharing is right even when it’s not easy, that friendship is necessary for everyone; our hearts which feel right from wrong before our minds rationalize away our empathy and openheartedness and generosity and gentleness – all those naïve indulgences of tender young life – from back when our mind and heart were one.

Find your way to be part of helping justice prevail. Choose and act. Choose righteous things to do. Be caring about others. In this season of reflection and reconciliation, repair and renew your connections with those you love. In this time of hostile reactivity and escalating violence, seek what is right, find what is right, do what is right. May we see, when we look back on these days full of anguish, how much they are also rife with possibility, set for the power and goodness of beloved community: how we came together for our highest aspirations, how much we learned on our journeys to forgive, atone, and be forgiven; how much we gained in our commitments to justice, compassion, to blending our strengths and capacities for the nurture and future of humanity and of our planet. Because nothing is written. So everything is possible, including every blessing. Can you imagine? This is a real question – can you imagine?  Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Every blessing, good people.