HomeCHALICE LIGHTING
I light this chalice for the future. May it be full of hope and life and love.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Let us enter this house of meeting and this time of worship with trust in the goodness of all that is. May those who feel despair find here new hope, may those who feel sorrow find here new happiness, and may those who feel pain find here the healing presence of others. May we all join in humble sharing of strength and joy.
WORDS OF GATHERING
Good Evening. As this day ends and Yom Kippur begins, we have gathered here to acknowledge and accept the past, and to move forward into the future with uncertainty for what the future will bring, but with faith in ourselves, in our ability to change and grow, and for some of us, with a faith in the divine and in the readiness of God to forgive, to relent and to change what is written in the Book of Life.
REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD
In this portion of our service we remember those loved ones who have passed out of life. We pause to reflect on the gifts they gave us of life or love or knowledge.
(Readings)
Those who have loved us in the past saw something in us that sometimes we fail to see. They saw something in us that sometimes we fail to live up to. May our real remembrance of them be our commitment to fulfill the promise and goodness they recognized in us.
OFFERTORY WORDS
On Yom Kippur we pause to recognize the gift of life that we have received, no matter how long or brief it may be. As a symbol of our willingness to return gift for gift, the offering will now be received.
SERMON
Good evening once again.
I was thinking about the readings connected with both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the book of Jonah and the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, and one interpretation could be that they each are a story of God making a decision for death, and then relenting, changing his mind, and opting instead for life. I am sure this is not a new theme for most of you, but it is the first time I have put the two stories together in this way.
In Jonah God is going to punish the Ninehvites, but because they repent and change their ways, he withholds his angry judgment.
In the Genesis story, God first orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and then, at the last minute, stops the sacrifice and provides Abraham with a ram instead.
The Genesis story says this is a temptation or testing of Abraham’s faith, so that God never really intends to have him sacrifice Isaac. But what if, instead, God did mean for Isaac to die and then, at the last, relents from that plan and offers life instead. Since in those days it was common for people of the region to sacrifice their first son, or their first child, this would mean not only life for Isaac, but life for every first born to come.
In some ways this is an uncomfortable interpretation, especially for those who believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and immutable (unchangeable). If God suddenly becomes a being who can change his mind, then that challenges some people’s faith. And so some interpreters make the claim that God never intended to strike the Ninehvites, that instead he knew they would repent and that punishment would not be “necessary”.
But I find that explanation unsatisfactory. It seems to me to be merely an example of the all too common human practice of harmonizing things with our preconceived ideas.
It seems clear to me that the God of these stories can and does change his mind.
And that is the point of using them as readings during the High Holy Days.
The message to individuals is two fold.
First, death is a punishment for bad behavior and the judgment on whether or not we will die in the coming year is made now, tonight. Now, before I move on to the second point it must be said first that I believe that death comes to us for many reasons. It is not punishment; it is the natural winding down of our bodies or it is the flourishing of some other life form like bacteria or virus, or it is the result of “random” accident or there is some other natural explanation for it.
However, in the philosophy, if you will, of the High Holy Days, it can also be a punishment from God. And on Yom Kippur the Book of life is sealed for the coming year. I believe that is really a metaphor for the unpredictability of our time of death, but we should take the claims of these days seriously if we wish to draw out their full meaning.
And so, the first point was that death is punishment for bad behavior, for sin.
The second point, though, is that as we move into the Days of Awe, God’s decision is changeable, or at least, is “influenceable”. (According to the spell check on my computer, I made up that word.)
The message is, no matter what you or I have done, and no matter how bad you or I have been, God can be swayed to relent from his plan to punish us and can be convinced instead to write our names in the Book of Life.
He changed his mind about punishing the Ninehvites; he changed his mind about having Isaac sacrificed. He changed his mind from death to life.
The message of these days, I believe, is that God wants me to live, and God wants you to live. And he is willing that it should happen.
Two questions for all of us:
First, am I willing that I should live? Really and truly live. Fully live. What would that look like, what would it mean for me to fully live? Would I do anything differently than I do now?
Second, am I willing that others should live? Am I willing to be as forgiving towards others as I hope God or life will be towards me?
As we go forth from here tonight, how different would our feelings be, how different would our lives be, if we did so in the spirit of people for whom death was ordained but for whom life is now given by reprieve?
Accept that as the gift of tonight. For however long we have, merely the next five minutes or the next fifty years, death was ordained, life is now granted by reprieve. What will you do with it, and how will you share that gift?
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