A passenger on a boat once noticed another drilling under their seat. Shocked, they shouted, “What are you doing?” The other replied, “Mind your own business. I paid my fare—this is my seat.” The first passenger then cried out, “Fool! Don’t you realize that if water comes in under your seat, we are all doomed?”
The Jewish Talmud teaches that we are responsible for one another. We are one body; the weight of one transgression is shared by all. Transgressions enacted in community are not just one person’s failure—it is something we carry together, because we are human.
We all fall short, or might under similar circumstances.
We all fail, even when it goes unnoticed.
We all think unkind thoughts, even when unspoken.
We all at times have chosen convenience over care—
picked gas over electric, tossed plastic in the wrong bin, ignored someone’s suffering, or passed up an opportunity to help.
I remember a member of my congregation’s Green Team once approached me Sunday after church in the parking lot to ask me a question. “The Green Team sent me,” she said, “to find out why didn’t you buy a Prius for your new vehicle.”
I had plenty of rationalizations at the ready: Priuses can’t tow my camper. It’s just a little Toyota four-cylinder engine. I purchased carbon offsets. After unloading all those answers, all true, she remained unsatisfied. Finally, I admitted, “I like trucks?”
Said another way, to paraphrase St. Augustine: “We like things we should not like. We do things we should not do.”
The need for forgiveness is universal. If somewhere in your heart there’s no desire for forgiveness, we should talk.
And just as our harmful actions ripple outward, so do our good deeds. Every act of kindness benefits the whole world.
The Jewish High Holy Days began with the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ended ten days later, this past Thursday, with Yom Kippur. These “days of awe,” as they’re also called, invite us to consider how failing to recognize our shortcomings—and to correct them—breaks covenant with the world. It isn’t owning the drill that sinks the ship—it’s refusing to see our shared responsibility. We all hold power to harm. We sink when we forget our connectedness.
Two of my grandfathers were Jewish, and other relatives. My mother never claimed a Jewish identity, so it wasn’t passed to me. But this proximity to the Hebrew faith within my family cultivated a deep respect for the practices, rituals and intentions of Judaism, especially around repentance and forgiveness. I don’t pass Yom Kippur without considering what I write in the Book of Life.
Each Rosh Hashanah, this Book of Life is opened for us to write, metaphorically, those things for which we seek forgiveness. Ten days later, on Yom Kippur, the book is closed and those acts and repentances are sealed for the year. This is both a encouragement to take our actions seriously—and also to move forward once the book is sealed. It is a new year with new opportunities to do better in how we act, treat each other, and behave.
Now wait—behave? You might say, “Don’t tell me how to behave. I’m a UU, I aim to misbehave!” (Yes, I quote from the sacred text of Firefly.)
Of course you do. Sometimes intentional misbehaving (see what we’re doing there?) sometimes intentional misbehaving is the only response to injustice, bigotry, the patriarchy, White supremacy, bullying, jack boot thuggery, ICE, these times. But all religious traditions, even ours, have something to say about behavior. Some religions teach behaviors of fear and division. Ours teaches behaviors not just of love, but loving action. For example, covenant is a practice that shapes our behavior. For Buddhists, practices of right speech and right action recognize that actions harming others require forgiveness of self and compassion for others. And compassion for self and forgiveness of others. Teacher Jack Kornfield writes, “We have all betrayed and hurt others, just as we have knowingly been harmed by them. It is inevitable in this human realm… but without forgiveness the world can never be released from the sorrows of the past.” As several writers have quipped, he writes, “forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” And a way to move past transgression.
The word transgression, or sin, is a difficult word for UUs. But for us, it’s about actions, not identity. We do not judge someone for who they are, who they love, how they pray or don’t pray. We are not born in sin, nor are we condemned by it. But we do hold ourselves accountable to our actions. Drilling a hole in the ship is wrong. Don’t do it.
And here is something that makes us different: if you start drilling that hole, we don’t call you out, we call you in, as Rev. Joyce preached last week. Calling someone out shames them; it doesn’t stop the drilling. Calling them into relationship at least pauses things while we talk. It’s hard to drill and talk at the same time.
The image of church as a ship isn’t mine. Danish Lutherans once hung ship models in their sanctuaries as a reminder that the church isn’t about staying safely in port—it’s about taking to the open sea, where there is risk, challenge, exploration, very tight quarters, and where we are all in it together. A hole will sink us all, and along with it, the mission entrusted to us.
Since last year’s election, the decline in attendance across progressive religions has leveled off as people seek community. I think it has to do with hope. Where do you find hope in times like these? For me, it is here—a ship and sanctuary for the soul. A chance to make a positive impact.
If you’re wondering what forgiveness and redemption have to do with compassion, the theme for the month, it’s everything, because compassion is the key. To forgive another requires compassion and empathy. We won’t allow a person who has harmed us to hurt us again, but in compassion, even if it’s just compassion for the suffering of all souls, we may find a path to forgiveness. Not always. Forgiveness may take more time than we have in a lifetime, but compassion can unlock our hearts and make it possible.
Compassion is also a key to self-forgiveness. For many of us, having compassion for our own failings is harder to cultivate than compassion for others. Again, it’s a key to unlock our hearts and approach these important questions: how have my actions lessened the suffering of others; how have they improved the world; how have they influenced my own well being?
Rabbi Neal Katz of Congregation Beth El in Tyler, Texas, says these are the questions to ask during the Days of Awe: Have my impacts on others been good, bad, inadequate? What actions can I take before the book of the year closes—to make life better for myself and those around me? Even though the Jewish book of the year was sealed on Thursday, I remind you we’re UUs. Take this invitation home with you this week. The UU appendix to the book of life need never close. Any time’s a good time to cultivate compassion, to forgive, to reconcile.
In our upcoming all-congregation interim startup workshop, we will explore similar questions through storytelling and sharing: What excites us about this congregation? What do we do best? What do we want to do more of? Where have we fallen short of our own expectations? What impact do we want to make, together? Since this church only changes ministers once in a generation, this is literally a generational moment. I hope you will all come.
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One of the central Yom Kippur stories is Jonah and the Great Fish. Of all the great stories of the Hebrew scriptures—the Exodus, the Garden stories, David’s reign—we get a fish tale for the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. In case you need a review, here are the cliff notes. One day God asked Jonah to go to a place called Nineveh to tell the people living there to stop being wicked bad. But Jonah didn’t want to help them. He wanted righteous hellfire and brimstone to rain destruction upon them.
So Jonah runs catches a ship going the opposite direction. While taking a nap, a bad storm begins to toss the boat around, the sailors blame Jonah, and over the side he goes.
Then comes a giant sea monster fish, and Jonah spends the next three days in its stomach. Jonah asks for forgiveness, gives thanks for not drowning, and is given a second chance to make good on his broken, sacred covenant. This is the nature of forgiveness: to ask for it, to grant it, and to negotiate a new covenant of promise. When Jonah gets to Nineveh, he is surprised to find that the people there are sorry for doing bad things. They’ve repented. All is well and forgiven, but Jonah wanted some sweet, sweet OT vengeance. So Jonah goes and sulks under a tree, and God lets him be unhappy. Sometimes forgiveness and redemption are difficult. We don’t always get our ways.
Why tell this story year after year? Rabbi Shais Taub writes that Jonah’s story is our story—the human struggle between walking toward what feeds us in love, promise, and courage, or toward fear, apathy, and broken promises. “You are Jonah,” he writes, “The real you, for “Jonah”— in the Kabbal —is another name for the soul.” During the Days of Awe, we are in the belly of the fish, amending our behavior, seeking forgiveness, and seeking to restore relationships. That’s what the fish story is about.
This level of redemption demands not just reflection but action. It requires Teshuva, as we heard in our reading by Rabbi Ebstein—a deep commitment to change. We all do things we regret, especially in times like these where nerves are frayed and tempers are primed. We are “only flesh and blood.” We forget. Teshuva asks us to name and accept our regrets, and do our best to begin again, in love.
Our litany today was written by Jewish UU minister Rob Eller-Isaacs. His prayer echoes the Jewish Al Hayt—a confession of 54 potential sins prayed in community 10 times. But notice the pronoun isn’t “I” but “we.” Because failure of one is failure shared by all.
We forgive ourselves and each other,
we begin again in love.
Forgiveness is the key that keeps bringing us back to covenant.
We say the same words of our covenant each week together because it is so easy to forget our promises of connection. Because in our hearts we long to stay connected. We forgive ourselves and each other. We begin again in love.
Without forgiveness, there can be only isolation or novelty in our relationships, for it is human to transgress and break faith. Without forgiveness, we are either going to be alone or constantly seeking new companions. Forgiveness seems just part of the growth process.
And so, as the book of life is sealed this year,
may we forgive our transgressions and shortsightedness,
may we forgive those who have transgressed upon us,
may we forgive the unrelenting suffering of this life,
may we forgive not just on this day, but on all our day’s journeys.
We forgive ourselves and each other. Let us begin again in love.