Days of Remembrance, Days of Hope

A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 1, 2006

Covenant with Teachers, Students and Parents

Before the children of the church return to their classes, we’d like to do something very important.  I’d like to invite our Director of Religious Education, Terry Ward, and our various Sunday School Teachers and QUUEST Guides to come forward. Terry directs the programs we offer to our children and youth.  I’d like to invite her to introduce some of the people who nurture and support these children.

(Terry Introduces Teachers)

Last month, most of our children and youth learned about covenants by studying the story of Noah.  Covenants are promises.  Do you, our teachers and guides promise to nurture and support the children and youth of our church?  Will you do all that is in your power to help each of them grow religiously and spiritually?

Of course, the best teachers in the world can’t do much if students don’t want to learn.  I’d like to ask each of our RE participants to be part of your class.  Will you care for each other and your teachers? Will you treat each other the way you would like to be treated?  Will you help each other learn?

Will the parents, grandparents and other family members of these children and youth rise as able?  Will you do all you can to help our children get the most out of our program?  Will you pledge to bring them promptly and consistently to church?  Will you pledge to give of yourself so that these children and youth can deepen in their experience of life?

And to the congregation: These teachers and these students need your support.  There are times that they will need assistance with special projects, there are times when they will need moral support, there are times that will need your direction and they will always need to know that you appreciate their efforts and that you work in their behalf.  Will you, the adult members of our community covenant your support to our teachers and our children?

Having so covenanted, let us go forward secure in the knowledge that these young lives are the embodiment of our future.  Let this promise be a blessing to us.  And now as we sing “Go Now In Peace” the younger members of our community, and their teachers, will return to their classes and activities.

New Member Ceremony

Two or three times a year we set aside time to welcome new members into our church  We have had a number of new members join in recent months—most notably nine new members as a part of our “Path to Membership” class this week  We’d like to take a moment to welcome and greet these new members—so if you have joined the church this year and have not been part of this ceremony before we invite you to come forward. 

In addition, if there are others of you who have been attending the church and would like to formally join the church we invite you to come forward to sign our membership book. Membership should not normally be entered into in one’s first or second visit but if you have been attending for a while and you think “Now” is the time then we invite you to come forward and fomally join the church.

(New Members introduce themselves and are welcomed by Ministers and Presidents)

Membership in this church is both simple and difficult.  It is simple because all that is required is to sign our membership book.  It is difficult because that simple act means you have joined a community searching for truth with no guarantee of success.  Membership means you are part of a congregation struggling for justice, knowing that the struggle is long and hard.  Membership means that you have joined with a people who strive to live in loving relationship with each other.  These are not easy things.  Truth is often unwelcome, justice can be slow and painful, and love is the ultimate challenge in each of our lives.  This church holds no set creed, which everyone must agree upon.  What we do affirm is that we must be tolerant of each other in our varied understandings of the religious life and nurture each other as we take responsibility, personally and corporately, for the world we live in and the life we lead.

Do you, the new members of this congregation, freely accept these duties of membership?

And to the gathered congregation, each new face and each new voice that joins with us brings with it joys and sorrows, skills and abilities, thoughts and beliefs.  Each time a new person is added to this body, this body is changed, and the growth is more than numerical.  With every new member, we become a new congregation.  Do you accept these persons into membership fully aware that as life is constantly changing so, too, the nature of this religious body is constantly evolving?

We then accept each of you fully into our ranks.  We formally extend to you the fellowship of our Church as a symbol and a reminder of the bond, which already exists between us and the hope of that bond growing stronger every day.  Please be seated.

A last observation, joining a church is but a beginning.  We look forward to becoming a new and more diverse congregation thanks to the presence of each of our members—new and old.  Please know, though, that churches aren’t perfect.  A time may come when the church disappoints you or breaks your heart.  There may be times when through action or inaction you fail the church.  Please know that the covenant between us offers the hope and miracle of healing as long as we stay in relation with each other.  The power of covenant does not go so far as to say it doesn’t matter what happened—it does assert, though, the hopeful truth that what is important is what happens next.  You are now a part of us—and we of you—may our days together be joyous.

Prayer and Mediation

A Litany of Atonement

Rob Eller-Issacs (SLT 637)

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For the selfishness which sets us apart and alone—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For losing sight of our unity—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.  For those and so many acts both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of separateness—We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

Days of Remembrance, Days of Hope

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 1, 2006

Some of you, no doubt, rely on Cable Television’s “The Colbert Report” to stay in touch with reality and the affairs of the world.  I say “No Doubt”—when I really mean “I Hope” because I don’t want to imagine that I am alone in relying on satire for instruction in current events.  For the uninitiated, “The Colbert Report,” is a parody of a cable news shows like “Hanity and Colmes” or “The O’Reilly Factor.”  Host Stephen Colbert draws simplistic lessons from affairs of the day—the lessons, of course, always fit nicely into his worldview reaffirming a shallow, simplistic and self-centered take on reality.  The caricature he embodies is that of a self-righteous, overly-patriotic, unabashedly-Christian, intellectual-hating, Neo-conservative.  The show is high level satire—a fact that is sometimes missed by viewers who take the whole production at face value.

I start with Stephen Colbert because he is running an ongoing joke that centers on the Jewish High Holy Days.  Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—began a bit over a week ago.  Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement when the names of the righteous are written in the book of life for the year—begins tomorrow at sundown.  Viewers of “The Report” have seen the installation of a new “Yom Kippur Hot Line”—an old style phone with a Star of David where the dialer should be.  This phone line, according to the gag, is designed to make it easy for Jews to call in and fulfill the Rosh Hashanah demand that the faithful make amends with friends, family and neighbor.  Stephen Colbert is at the ready to accept apologies from a variety of Jews he feels have offended him—Benjamin Nehtinyahu, Henry Kissinger, Joseph Lieberman, John Stewart—if you’re a Jew he’s ready for your apology according to the skit.  There is, of course, a touch of truth in all this.  There is always some truth in satire.  Jewish theology demands that earthly forgiveness precede divinely granted atonement on Yom Kippur.  Stephen Colbert is just making it easy for the many Jews who he perceives as slighting him to offer an apology.  He comes about “This” close to getting it right!

In traditional “Colbert-ian” form—the TV show misses the real point while oversimplifying Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur en route to a self-serving end.  That’s OK.  This is one of the few cases I can find in pop culture where there has been an attempt to rely on public knowledge of a religion other than Christianity to make a comic point.  Of course the point that is made is wrong and the whole affair occurs on a somewhat obscure channel in the morass of Basic Cable—but what the heck.

Years ago a Rabbi asked a group of minister I was in to teach about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and not worry much about Hanukkah if we were called to explore Judaism in our church.  I figure if Stephen Colbert can follow this advice—I can too.

This period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is known as “The Days of Awe.”  It is a time for preparation for religious action.  The faithful use the New Year to actually begin again—not to just continue from one year into another.  This sense of really beginning anew is where the “something” of value for us resides in these High Holy Days.

None of this is to deny our secular New Year—you might have noticed it on January 1^st!  While we give some lip service to beginning anew; while we adopt resolutions of how we will make the New Year better or different in some way—we are a bit weak on the strategic part of the new start.  In political parlance—we don’t let the fact that we are missing an Exit Strategy from the Old Year impede our intent to celebrate the New Year.  For our secular celebrants—New Year’s is more of a glorified end of the holiday season and a return to what ever passes for normalcy than a tool to help us begin again—particularly to begin again differently.

That is where the wisdom in the Jewish celebration is found, I think.  The New Year begins.  There is feasting and time with families but rather than just stepping back into life as it was—hoping it will be new and different—there is a time for introspection and preparation.  The focus of the ten days between the New Year and the Day of Atonement is, for the observant Jew, a time to measure one’s self against both personal aspirations and against God’s expectations for us.  An individual is to seek out ways to atone with one’s friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and companions before one can seek atonement from God on Yom Kippur.

How very different are the two approaches—one secular and one sacred—in how they treat the beginning of a New Year.  I won’t pretend that all Jews take Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur so seriously.  I know they don’t.  Some of us, and some Jews I know, balk at the idea of God’s expectations for us.  Still, there is something in the structural wisdom of these Holy Days that should be instructive for us.

The ethical demands of these Days of Awe are what Stephen Colbert was playing off on his show.  Some might find the satire in poor taste—to me it’s instructive.  We are to atone for our actions and inactions to other people before we can ask God to lift the burden that rests on our heart, our soul and our spirit.  Our reflection and our action must precede any desire for others—God or those whom we have offended—to offer forgiveness.  Who would think you could find such sublime wisdom hiding on Comedy Central?

Something profound is tied up in this holy time and it circles around several key issues: remembrance, action, forgiveness and hope.  First, we must remember.  We don’t have to stop to remember all the ways we have been wronged—quite the opposite since most of us already carry a list of ways others have sinned against us.  No, we are to remember the ways we fell short of our own aspirations—short of the demands of God and Community.

Second, our remembrance must lead to mediating action.  It is not enough to know our shortcomings.  Much neurosis and shame is accrued from simply detailing our imperfections.  If you aren’t going to go on to doing something about it—then I would recommend skipping the part about counting failures.  The only reason to know these things is to move on to action.  Not just action to do better next time—but action to try repair—to make reparation—for mistakes.

Third if we do these first two things—then, and only then, we may seek forgiveness for ourselves.  I don’t know where the phrase “to err is human…to forgive divine” comes from—but I can tell you that it is only half-true.  To err is indeed human.  To be human is to be imperfect, to be flawed and incomplete.  The mistake we make is when we confuse forgiving with forgetting.  Forgiving, I am convinced, is indeed a human virtue.  Forgiveness, it is said, is ultimately giving up all pretension to a better past.  Our mistake is that we confuse forgiving with forgetting.  Forgetting is what we are really hoping for with most of the New Years resolutions.  We want to forget the ways we failed and have been failed.  Forgetting, by definition, skips the remembrance stage that is necessary on the road to atonement.

Make no mistake, there will always be more mistakes than ways to make things better.  There are actions we never get a chance to seek forgiveness for—there are actions others have taken against us for which no one will ever make reparation.  I am not going to tell you to forget these things.  I will tell you to put them aside.  Jonalu uses a phrase in prayer at memorial services that I think is to the point.  “If there are debts unsettled or forgiveness withheld may we find a way to make peace with the inescapable finality of this day.”

That is directly to the point.  Living is a difficult task.  It is fraught with peril and opportunity for failure.  None of us gets through with a clean slate.  All of us need help sometimes in getting past the ways we trip up and the traps we set.  This happens neither magically nor automatically.  The most precious commodity most of us carry is hope.  We seek to begin again—whether on a holy day, on an any day or every day—we seek to begin again so that we can be renewed again.

These days, more than most, I feel a need among us for hope.  The world is hard, our lives are hard.  There is a temptation to forget—when what our truest selves require is to remember.  We need to remember—to be called again to our highest aspirations and deepest humanity.  As our Jewish friends and neighbors partake in these Days of Awe, I pray we may learn from their example that our hope is renewed through remembrance and that forgiveness and atonement have both human and divine pedigrees.  What Remembrance, what Atonement, what Forgiveness provide is hope…not a hope for a better past—but the enduring and sustaining hope for a better future.  AMEN