|
|
||
HOME
|
|
Yom
Kippur 5768 Do-Overs
When we were kids playing a game and something interrupted us unfairly, we had a concept—do you remember it?—called a “do-over.” You know what I mean, don’t you? If a car turns the corner right into your football game, the play it interrupts is a do-over from the point of the interruption. If a dog steals the ball in the outfield and runs off with it, the play is a do-over. If you are jumping rope and your older brother grabs the rope just to foul you up, it’s a do-over. If you are about to score the winning basket and your mom makes you stop to take out the garbage, it’s a do-over. It’s a great, kid-friendly idea: from the exact moment when things went wrong, you get a do-over. Well, every now and then we grown-ups need a do-over, too. Perhaps that’s what Yom Kippur is for. It’s a chance to fix what we have done wrong in the past 12 months, to have a do-over. As the prophet Isaiah tells us, “though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them white as snow.” In other words, the last 12 months of mistakes—and maybe even more than that—can be erased by the process of repentance on this Day of Atonement. It’s a moral do-over, an opportunity to start anew. A fresh start, a chance to begin again. In fact, according to Jewish tradition, it can be even more than that. A couple of weeks ago, on this pulpit, I spoke about a fascinating passage in the Talmud that seems to imply that we can change not only the present, or the future, by our actions on Yom Kippur—we can actually change the past. Resh Lakish, the great 3rd century rabbi and legal scholar who began his career as a highway robber and only came to Torah through repentance, says that teshuvah, repentance, can remake intentional sins that we have already committed into accidental ones; and that teshuvah, true repentance, is so great that it can even take accidental sins and turn them into mitzvot, mitzvos, commandments, good deeds. What a powerful concept: we, ourselves, have the ability to change the past, to remake it, simply by our own actions and intentions. We can remake the past—it’s like Einstein’s explanation that time is a relative concept. We have the power to re-do even those things that have come and gone. We can go back to the point where we made the fatal error, and by the process of repentance, prayer and charity we can make a different choice. Wow. We each have the ability to change our own pasts. A real do-over. It reminds me of a movie from the 1990’s, City Slickers, in which Billy Crystal tells his buddy—I think he was played by Daniel Stern—“your whole life is a do-over.” There were a lot of films like that for a while, in which characters got a second chance to remake their fouled up lives. Groundhog Day with Bill Murray took the theme to its ultimate conclusion—you not only got a do-over, you had to keep doing the same thing until you finally got it right. So, Yom Kippur as the ultimate do-over. If you really repent, you can even change the past… I liked that as my central sermon idea for Yom Kippur. And then I saw an article in the Daily Star, recommended by my friend Ken Goodman. It said that Asarco, the large copper mining company, back in the year 2004 sold a parcel of land south of Tucson in the Santa Rita Mountains for $4.2 million dollars. Recently that same parcel sold for $20.8 million dollars. When Asarco saw that, it decided to file a lawsuit seeking to reverse its earlier sale. You see, they said, back in 2004 when they sold the land they didn’t realize it had $300 million dollars worth of copper in it; besides, at the time they were headed for bankruptcy and needed cash in a hurry; and all in all, when they thought about it three years later they realized that they really didn’t mean to sell it in the first place, and could they please have it back now, if they gave back the $4.2 million dollars? Basically, Asarco wanted a do-over. Make a bad business decision, get a do-over. Hey, why not apply that everywhere? How about a do-over for the University of Michigan football team, the winningest program in collegiate history, which was ranked 5th in the country when it took on a school named Appalachian State at home a couple of weeks ago? Michigan’s stadium holds 108,000 people, while Appalachian State’s holds 18,000. What a mismatch! It should have been a Michigan walkover, playing the scrubs by the second quarter. But it didn’t work that way. In one of the ultimate upsets in sports history, Appalachian State beat ‘em. Think Michigan wants a do-over, too? Or how about OJ Simpson, trying to steal back his memorabilia last week in Las Vegas... Maybe he should get a do-over, too. Hmmm… when you think about it seriously, maybe do-overs are not really OK. Because what’s the message of a do-over for everyone who did the right thing last year? What’s the point of even trying to stick to the straight and narrow if every loser in the next seat gets a do-over for every poor decision he or she made, everything he or she did wrong? Then again, who’s to say which one of us is the loser in the next seat? You know, there is a prayer in the opening sections of our service this evening, a kind of legal formula, which we will chant just before Kol Nidrei. This preliminary prayer, sung as the Torahs are taken from the ark to create the beit din, the formal court of judgment, is called Bishiva shel ma’alah… In its simple legal way it is both powerful and provocative. I read it to you now: In the court on high, and the court here on earth, by the decision of God, and by the decision of the congregation, we decree that it is permissible to pray with sinners. L’hitpaleil im ha’avaryanim—to pray with sinners. Of course, the simple question is, who are these sinners who are allowed to pray with us? And the even simpler answer is: we are those sinners. We have all missed the mark. We have all made bad decisions. We have all erred, transgressed. We are all in need of a do-over, one way or another. If I were to ask you, “Who here sinned in the past year? Raise your hands!” How many hands would go up? How many should go up? So nu, can you really have a do-over? Not exactly. Because decisions do have consequences, and actions cannot be taken back. The past, for all its relative permeability, is really past. And the present and the future are all that we can try to shape. We can shape the present, and perhaps the future—but we can also re-do one other thing. We can remake our attitudes towards others. And towards ourselves. And towards God. So what does it really mean to have a Yom Kippur do-over? Simply this: it means that in the next 24 hours you have a chance to forgive those who have offended you; to apologize for what you have done wrong; to ask God to grant you atonement for the ways you have failed to be the person you should have been. To do-over your own attitudes and the approaches that have failed you this past year. And so to begin again, afresh, with clean hands and clean hearts. G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.
|
