Day of Atonement

A week or so ago, Tim and I were talking about Jewish customs and how we Christians are the poorer for not having maintained some of those observances that Jesus would certainly have known. We do not have Rosh Hashanah, which is not known by this name in the bible but is called the Day of Remembrance (Yom Ha Zikkaron). We call it the Jewish New Year, but it is a far cry from the drunken revelry of our own secular new year celebration. It is a solemn occasion of introspection, of looking back over the year, and vowing to do better in the year to come. Even the most non-observant Jews can be found in the synagogue for this first of the High Holy Days, much as many non-practicing Christians can be found in church on Christmas and Easter. We also do not have a celebration of thanksgiving to God like Sukkot. Our own Thanksgiving is a National Holiday, not a specifically religious one, and it's rare to find many gathered in church on this day, much less the seven days of Sukkot, constructing tents and leaving them up for those seven days to remember God's blessings in leading the Israelites through the wilderness where they dwelt in tents, or booths. Nor do we initiate our children on the precipice of adulthood with a Bar or Bat Mitvah, recognizing their burgeoning maturity with a sacred rite.

Most importantly, I think, is that we don't have a Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. After Rosh Hashanah, the next ten days are known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim), as the introspection of the New Year continues so that one is ready on the Day of Atonement to acknowledge one's sins and failings to God. During those ten days, the faithful make amends to those with whom they may have a dispute, they mend fences, they seriously prepare to live a life reconciled with God. Yom Kippur is a day of prayer and fasting, refraining from work, and attending services. It is a beautiful tradition.

Now, some of you may say that we do have a new year when the liturgical year begins with the first Sunday in Advent. And you may say that Thanksgiving is, for you, a sacred holiday. And you might even claim that we don't need a day to atone because we say at prayer of confession and are absolved by a priest every Sunday. I would say that none of these bears the same sacred weight as the Jewish observances where the people gather as a whole community to engage in an ancient ritual as an expression of faith, of our human fragility, and our complete dependence on God.

I think that today - Good Friday - may be the closest we come to a Day of Atonement. I'm not talking about some doctrine about Jesus' atonement for our sins on the cross but about our coming to the foot of that cross and confessing the responsibility we bear for crucifying Jesus again and again in our own lives. What's that, you say? You've never crucified Jesus? We live in a country that would rather engage in combat than reconciliation. In this, the wealthiest and most powerful country in the history of the world, almost 2 million people have no place to call home. We rank 33rd in the world in infant mortality rates (behind such superpowers as Iceland, Slovenia, and Cuba) despite some of the most expensive health care in the world. We demonize anyone different from ourselves - gays and lesbians, Muslims, racial and ethnic minorities - and continue to perpetuate an inequality in wealth distribution that permits the top 1% to control more than 40% of the nation's wealth. We have allowed the criminal justice system and prisons to become profit-making institutions where the poor and minorities are overrepresented and black males, in particular, are far more likely to receive prison sentences than white males. We put up with bullying (and I'm not just talking about among children) and hateful speech as if our words and attitudes don't matter.

Jesus did not die on a cross so that we could go about our lives as if only we mattered. So would it be unreasonable to suggest that on this day when we remember how Jesus died that we should be the ones looking within ourselves for all the ways we continue to dishonor and reject God's love for us? God did not become one of us and live and die as one of us so that we could put ourselves first in all things, so that we could have while others have not, so that we could throw our own power and privilege around to get our own way. There is only one way and that is the way of the cross.

So as we spend these next days pondering how Jesus lay in a tomb for no other reason than that he threatened the world order of the Roman empire and the Jewish temple system, let us consider our own role in perpetuating a world order and political and social system that dishonors and disinherits the very ones Jesus commanded us to love and serve.

Atonement? I think it's our turn.

Hope springs eternal

Tim loves to say that the two most glorious phrases in all of human language are "He is Risen!" and "Play ball!" He is particularly happy when Opening Day and Easter occur on the same day, as sometimes happens, and he gets to hear both. Coming from a lifelong fan of the Cleveland Indians, this is pretty remarkable. Except for the great years of 1994-1997, there hasn't been much to cheer about in his lifetime, and even in those years in which the Tribe went to the World Series twice, losing to the stinkin' Braves in '95 and the stinkin' Marlins in '97 (when they were actually 1 out and 1 strike away from winning), there was an insidious undercurrent in the blood of a Clevelander that was convinced that it wouldn't actually come to pass, the championship would continue to be elusive. And so it has been.

Many writers have gotten all theological about the ties between faith and baseball, the Trinitarian nature of 3 strikes and you're out, 3 outs to an inning, 3 bases to home plate, and always aiming to go "home." For me, though, it's more about the time of year in which the season begins, the long season of 162 games, ending in the Fall Classic, now more often ending in November than October, but such is the nature of sports these days. Who'd ever have thought that hockey would end in June, the NBA season almost to July, and the Super Bowl would be played in February? Good grief. But I digress...

Opening Day of the baseball season is a springtime ritual. It happens when the crocuses and daffodils are just hitting their stride, the fruit trees are about to blossom, and the grass is suddenly green again instead of white with snow (unless you're actually in Cleveland, where it has snowed on many an Opening Day). The air is ripe with hope and new life, for which there is no greater metaphor than Easter morning. On Good Friday, when it seemed that all was lost, everyone went home and locked their doors and stewed in whatever misery most beset them, whether grief or guilt or shame. The women ventured out to perform their duties to cleanse and anoint the body, but even they were shrouded in tears and sorrow. In Mark's version of the story, a young man dressed in white tells them that Jesus has been raised, he's not there, and to go and tell Peter and the rest of the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee to meet him there. The original ending of Mark in verse 8 of chapter 16 says:

So they went out and fled from the tomb,

for terror and amazement had seized them;

and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Can you imagine if that really had been the end? What if they had told no one and that had been the end of it? Well, we won't know in this case, because some later editor tacked on a neat ending to Mark's gospel, having Jesus appear to Mary Magdalene and a couple of disciples and then to the rest of the eleven before his ascension. The divine will always find a way to be revealed, even if we in our fear and disbelieving do nothing to help it along.

Forty days later by liturgical accounting comes the ascension of Jesus, and in fifty days the Holy Spirit blew through the people on the day of Pentecost, unleashing its power in the creation of what we call "church." And we, as we begin our march through the season following Pentecost and its stories of how the church spread and grew, are accompanied by the steady and assuring cracks of bats on balls and thwunks of fastballs into catchers' mitts. There's a rhythm to these joined seasons that brings up memories of hot summer days in the South sipping tea so sweet your spoon could stand up in it and lying on the cool grass listening to the frogs chirping by the creek and swatting away the mosquitoes in search of a meal. With each Opening Day comes the hope that this could be the year that your team will still be playing in October, even if the last season ended in yet another disappointment.

Faith is like that, too. Falling and getting up and falling again, learning to rely on a grace we cannot deserve but that is always there, lifting us up when we fall, comforting us when discouraged or sorrowful, as the birthday prayer says. We're still in Lent as this year's baseball season gets underway, and spring is a little late in arriving in my neck of the woods. But I know it's there, because I'm hearing the chatter of baseball players and cheers of crowds, and even Indians fans are excited again, hoping that maybe there won't be 100 losses, maybe this team will surprise us after all.

Baseball and resurrection, life and death, falling down and getting up again. Hope does spring eternal.