Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent
By Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels -
In case you didn’t already know, I’m a music guy. So, when looking at the Lectionary for today, my eye first saw the hymn for Ash Wednesday, “Savior, When in Dust to You,” which Jose graciously offered to sing after my sermon. It intrigued me because the title is only a partial sentence. I had no idea about the core ideas of the hymn. I had a feeling it included a theme of humility before and within God, and that notion was confirmed when I read the lyrics. However, in the complete text, the emphasis is on Jesus as sacrifice and sacrifice made to Him, made evident by the last line of each stanza, “Hear our penitential cry!” I know these words do not originate in the Gospel. They are one man’s perspective, Robert Grant the composer of the hymn. Still, isn’t it interesting that his view is that despite people’s acceptance of Jesus’s martyrdom, they still need to ask for forgiveness? Why is that? I find it also interesting that asking for forgiveness is also part of the thematics of today’s hymn, with phrases like, “Inspire repentance for our sin, and free us from our past,” and “So teach us to deny ourselves that we may know God’s love.” Why is it that humans who believe either in God and/or in Jesus as God’s son find it necessary to demonstrate how remorseful we are for the things we’ve done? Doesn’t our belief, our faith, already take care of that?
Interestingly, a prayer that we Jews read during our High Holy Day of Rosh haShanah, our Jewish new year, may provide some insight, even though it approaches the notion of repentance from a somewhat different direction. In Hebrew, the prayer is called Unetaneh Tokef. A reasonable translation of the first few words of the prayer comes out something like, “Let us acknowledge the weighty holiness of this day.” The first paragraph goes on to detail what it is that gives the day both its weight and its holiness. It is because on this day, God sits in judgement of our wrongdoings. One-by-one they pass before the Divine Presence. When the judgement is complete a verdict is noted in the Book of Life.
In the second paragraph the personality of the prayer shifts dramatically. It begins by saying, “On Rosh haShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” Yom Kippur is our day of atonement, when we acknowledge and attempt to make recompence for our wrongs. That these wrongs and their accompanying verdicts are written into the Book of Life on the New Year is one thing, but that they are irrevocably sealed into that book on the Day of Atonement, is a more threatening expression. The prayer makes us aware of this process with a set of simply worded questions. Some of them are:
How many will pass, and how many will be born?
Who will live, and who will die?
Who in their time, and who not their time?
Who by fire and who by water?
Who by hunger and who by thirst?
Who by earthquake and who by drowning?
Who will rest, and who will wander?
Who will be safe, and who will be torn?
Who will be calm, and who will be tormented?
Who will become poor, and who will get rich?
Who will be made humble, and who will be raised up?
Contemplating these questions forces us to recognize that we don’t control the future. The process of ruminating over these stark realities is a sobering experience. We Jews do it annually on our High Holy Days. Christians do it similarly during Lent.
For the Jewish people, the last line of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer softens the ominous nature of the questions. It says,
“But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (turning/returning, prayer and, acts of righteous justice) deflect the evil (ruthlessness, mercilessness) of the decree.”
“Turning/returning” refers to the process of the admission of guilt and apology, not to God, but to the person harmed by our action, inaction, words or silence. As an example of what this process means and how it is supposed to spill over from the High Holy Days into the rest of the year, I’ll tell you a story about something I did in the days following September 11, 2001, when I religious school was back in session. I walked from class to class and, adjusting my words so that they became more mature from kindergarten through sixth grade. I apologized to the kids on behalf of the generation before them. I told them that we really thought we had a handle on world affairs and were doing the hard work of international relations that would ensure their safety and the safety of all children worldwide. We were naïve in the assumption. I told them they would have a lot of work to do.
The three-fold process of teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah, is also a powerful image creating an inner voice, giving us a trifecta of guidance. Turning/returning, “Before you turn around, recognize where you are, that you strayed from a better path.” Hold that recognition. Understand it. Internalize it. Slowly, start turning around to see what it will mean to navigate your way back to where and how you want to be. Retrace your steps and notice your missteps.” Prayer: “Now, contemplate your actions. Replay your thoughts, replay your reactions. What were your motivations for behaving the way that you did or failed to do, said or failed to say? Turn that into prayer, not a prayer of penitence to God, rather see how you can pray with God so that you are part of the judgement process.” Finally, tzedakah, acts of righteous justice. “What can you do or say that might mend the hurt you caused, even a bit. If you are not able to address your wrong directly to the injured party, what can you do in the world at-large to bring justice where it is lacking, safety where there is hate and violence, hope where there is despair?”
With these three steps of penitence in mind, I reflectively translated some of the questions of the Unetaneh Tokef like this:
Who will live like a fire that warms and welcomes others in from the cold?
Who will live like water, giving and sharing life and love?
Who will live with a hunger for helping, bringing sustenance to those who have none?
Who will shake the foundations of a stale status quo and be an earthquake for freedom so that those who remain trapped within roles of unfulfillment and inequality might be released?
Who shall live with creative restlessness, bringing rest, safety, and shelter to those who have no rest, who are fleeing injustice, violence, and natural calamity?
Who shall live with a richness of spirit, sharing their prosperity with those whose lives, souls, bodies, and minds are impoverished?
© Neil Comess-Daniels
Neither the self-imposed limitations of Lent nor the traditional fasting on the High Holy Days can accomplish the sincere repentance and penitence we hope to bring to our holy seasons. We can’t deprive away or starve away our behavior, either purposeful or habitual.
I cannot leave this sermon without a mention of our current international crisis. We cannot petition God to rectify this tragedy, nor can we ask the Divine to forgive any of us for not doing more to prevent what is happening, especially to all the innocents, especially the children. Yet, we cannot ask God to grant Divine dispensation to any acts of violence we might take, even if they might be humanly justified. Our mission is to add one more question to the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, one more item to the agenda for Lent: After so many wars that have only led to more wars, who will die because of our inability to wage peace? This is not for God to answer. Instead, we must find God within us and us within God and bring forth the answer to our own prayer. Amen.
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Rabbi-in-Residence - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
March 6th, 2022
