This evening, Yom Kippur begin. At this time, members of the Jewish community seek to amend their behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and against other human beings. The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt . At the end of Yom Kippur, one considers one's self absolved by God.
Yom Kippur is the day to atone for offenses against God's righteousness. On that day, the judgment entered at the outset of the Days of Awe is finalized. Yom Kippur is, essentially, one's last appeal, the last chance to change the judgment, to demonstrate one's repentance and make amends.the day is marked by fasting and prayer.
On the first evening of Yom Kippur, the service begins its long confessional statement with some transgression almost anyone can identify with. It asks for forgiveness for "the sin we have committed before Thee by hardening our hearts" and goes on to mention "sins we have committed before Thee in speech" and "the sin we have committed before Thee by wronging our neighbor." Most people can relate with confessing these kinds of transgressions because they can think of numerous times when they have done them.
But then comes a part of the prayer that can be puzzling. Unlike most Christian confessions of sin, the prayer asks God’s forgiveness for the sins committed "unknowingly." This challenges our Christian sensibilities somewhat. We know that while on the cross Jesus asked God to forgive his executioners because "they know not what they do." Still, most kindergartners can persuade their mother that he or she didn’t mean to break a sibling's favorite toy. Our usual understanding of guilt says that we cannot be responsible for things we did not mean or for things we knew nothing about.
The foreign logic of confession for unintentional transgressions becomes a little more clear when we realize that during these holydays, Jews do not just repent for their own sins. They repent for the sins of all the people. This is a hard concept for us to swallow: to take responsiblity for something we were not personally involved in. The concept of collective repentance has been, until recently, quite foreign to most of Protestant Christianity. True, in Roman Catholicism there are whole communities of monks and nuns who intercede every day for those who do not have the desire or the capacity to pray for themselves. But the Protestant tradition, with its strong emphasis on the responsibility of the individual person before God, has not ordinarily looked favorably on these practices. As Martin Luther once put it, every person has to do his own repenting and his own dying. No one else can do either one for you.
Eventually, however, contemplating the confessional prayers of Yom Kippur provides deep insight to our own faith. First, with regard to confessing sins we do not know about and did not do intentionally: in fact, do often hurt other people without intending to and sometimes without even knowing. Sometimes we learn later how something we did or said wounded someone painfully. But there may be many other times when we do such things and never hear about them, even though the sting still afflicts the other person. This is why I have come to believe that asking for forgiveness for the hurtful things we have done without even knowing them is important. It makes us think carefully about what we might have done in the past and remember to be more careful in the future.
The observances and devotions of Yom Kippur can help us find insight into many questions concerning the social nature of sin (and grace) corporate (and individual) responsibility for injustice and for the reconciliation that can bring peace. It gives us wonderful food for thought as we assess our blessings in the coming harvest time especially as we face hard times in our nation and society, still one of the richest and most blessed in the world.
(Thanks given for insights found in A Christian Observes Yom Kippur by Harvey Cox.)
No comments:
Post a Comment