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.