Forgiveness

 

One of the joys of being a minister at the Interfaith Community Church in Ballard, is getting to lead services that honor our varying faiths.  Last month, I had the privilege of leading an “Honoring Ramadan” service.  This coming Sunday, I'll be leading an “Honoring Yom Kippur” service.  At these services we seek not only to celebrate a holy day (in these instances, from Islam and Judaism), but also see if there might be something of the message of that day for and from our other traditions. 

 

For a Christian viewpoint, I had asked a delightful and interesting retired Presbyterian minister to participate in this Sunday’s Yom Kippur service.  He agreed to.  But then life happened.  He had to cancel.  And when I turned to some Christian friends of mine from seminary, all had commitments this Sunday.  So I’m going to have to be a “switch hitter.”  I’ll represent Judaism for most of the service, but for one portion I will need to call on my studies and my years as a choir Director in the Methodist Church and represent Christianity.

 

How best to do that?  Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement.  Yom Kippur shares with Ramadan a theme of forgiveness.  Last month we looked particularly at our personal need for forgiveness: to feel forgiven by God, and to forgive ourselves.  This month we’ll be looking particularly at forgiving others.  Yom Kippur asks of us not only that we ask forgiveness from those we have hurt, but also demands that we accept a sincere apology from someone who has hurt us.  What might be a Christian take on honoring that theme, I wondered.  And then it hit me.  All those Sundays directing Methodist choirs.  The Lord’s Prayer.

 

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  How many times have I said The Lord’s Prayer without looking deeply into that sentence? 

 

We say to God, “Forgive us, as we forgive others.”  But that assumes we DO forgive others.  And is it not saying to God, if we can’t forgive others, we realize you can’t forgive us?  There it is.  Yom Kippur.  Right there in The Lord’s Prayer.

 

Jesus also asks us to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.  But what if we don’t like ourselves?  If that’s the case, do unto others suddenly takes on a whole new light. 

 

If we are going to do unto others as we would have others do unto us, we had first better learn to like ourselves.  If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we had first better learn to love ourselves.  And if we are going to forgive others, we are first going to have to learn to forgive ourselves.

 

It can’t, of course, stop there.  Whether it’s liking ourselves, loving ourselves or forgiving ourselves, we’ve missed the point if we stop there.  It must be the beginning, but it cannot be the end.  Once we like, love and forgive ourselves, we are to turn to greater world and extend to it the same courtesy.  That’s what the Lord’s Prayer asks of us.  That’s what Yom Kippur asks of us.

 

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  How powerful that would be if we truly attended to it.

 

Whatever our spiritual paths, may we all be forgiven and forgiving. 

 

 

A Question of Pride

 

I will confess, I cannot think of the word pride without having a cartoon penned by Wallace Tripp flash in my mind.  A group of lions is walking past water that is cascading from above.  The title?  Pride Goeth Before a Fall (the shamefully out-of-print book that contains it is “A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me”).  Pride. 

 

My latest dance with pride came last week.  At a gathering, someone I knew said, “I’m proud to be a Unitarian.”  I asked “Why?”  “Because of what we believe.”  In the name of civility, I let it go. 

 

In all honesty, I’m not a big fan of pride: in any of its manifestations.  I am certainly no fan of pride in  a belief.  At the risk of overwhelming bluntness, I don’t care what a person believes.  Well, that’s not true.  I do care.  I find what each of us believe endlessly fascinating.  But a point of pride?

 

More to the point, you may well believe in “the inherent worth of every individual.”  Dandy.  But should a person be proud of believing that?  I think not.  As I said, I’m really not a fan of pride, but if a person must take pride in something, let it be in an action, not a belief.  For me, treating all people as inherently worthy is of infinitely more importance than simply “believing” it.

 

All religions, well all the religions I’ve encountered and as an interfaith minister I’ve encountered quite a few, teach us to treat each other with love, respect and compassion.  We may say that, as a follower of a particular spiritual path, we believe in these precepts.  So what?  So what, unless those beliefs prompt us to actions that are loving, respectful and compassionate?

 

This week I’ve watched many who professed pride in their Christian beliefs, beliefs taught by a loving and compassionate Jesus, encouraging disrespect and even violence by fellow “Christians” in an effort to “take back” America.  Yeah, right. 

 

This week I was also horrified as I read an article concerning the placement of rabbis in Israel’s formerly intentionally secular army – in part in an effort to reassure Israel’s soldiers that God is on their side.  And before you laugh or cry, know that similar things appear to happening within the U.S. military.

 

One of the most destructive concepts in human history is the divisive “God is on OUR side.”  It gives us the “right” to torture, murder, slaughter because, after all we are on God’s side!  And God is on ours.  Or so we imagine.  It is still another manifestation of “Right Belief” – the idea that one religion, or one denomination within a religion, or non-religion has the ONLY right answer to the question of God.

 

A well meaning friend recently asked me why, at my age especially, I was inviting the work, not to mention the grief of starting a new church – an Interfaith Church.  This is why. 

 

We need to learn to respect each other.  We need to learn that the entirety of the human race is “us.”  We need to learn that there is no “them.”

 

This Sunday, my UU choir will be singing the song “All Things Are Connected.”  All things ARE connected.  So are all people.  My prayer is that we can shelve pride for a while and really work hard on compassion, love and respect.

 

 

Who Are We?  What Are We?

 

I’ve been listening to what passes for the debate over health care.  I will admit that I am deeply troubled.  I am troubled not merely by what the paranoid delusionals say.  I am troubled as well, and indeed more deeply by what passes for the “rational” response to them.

 

Truth in packaging.  When Joe Wilson, the congressional representative for a district in South Carolina, made his petty, irresponsible and ill-mannered outcry of “You lie” during the president’s address to the joint session of Congress, I was disgusted and infuriated enough to find out that the person running against Representative Wilson next year is Rob Miller.  I then went to Act Blue and contributed $50 to Mr. Wilson.  But that said, there is something else that is deeply troubling.  Indeed it makes the boorishness of Joe Wilson pale by comparison.

 

Mr. Wilson was wrong when he declared that the health care bills being considered would provide care for “illegal aliens.”  And that, in point of fact, is what bothers me.  He was wrong.  Totally wrong.  Why, why was he wrong?!  Democrats today in both the House and Senate are working overtime to make sure that it is even more ironclad than it already is that an “illegal alien” will not benefit from health care reform.

 

Is that who we are?  Do we seriously want to check to make sure a person is in the country legally before we will act to save that person’s life?  Have we so completely moved away from what Jesus and so many others have taught us about compassion?  Has the parable of the Good Samaritan so completely withered within us that we will not lift a finger for “them”?  We are only interested in “us”?

 

Last week we mused about the pathology of hate.  I would submit it is destroying us.  All of us.  It is much to easy to make it about “the crazies.”  But who are we?  What are we?

 

Am I my brother’s keeper has never been more about us than it is today.  We are becoming a nation of Cains.  That’s us.  Not the crazies.  Us.

 

A gaggle of race-baiting, small-minded, right-wing zealots are actually providing a public service.  They are letting us see who we are – if we are brave enough to look in the mirror.  Instead of confronting them, we try to appease them.  Instead of calling them on their hatred and lies, we try to convince them that things aren’t really as bad as they think.

 

I frankly don’t see much of any use coming from the rabid rantings of the radical right.  But in this they are correct.  Appeasement doesn’t work. 

 

To our politicians, to our religious leaders, to our fellow members of the human race who happen to inhabit the United States of America, I say this.  We appease these people at our peril.

 

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”  Not in the United States.  Not unless we are willing to stand up for the convictions that we say we have.

 

Health care ought to be a right.  It is not a privilege.  So said Jesus, Mohammed, Hillel, the Buddha and so many others.  What about you?

 

 

 

Pathology of Hate

 

Though it seems to, it should surprise no one that there is such an uproar over the president wanting to talk to the students of the United States: urging them to study hard and stay in school.  So what that President Reagan made such an address?  So what that the first President Bush made such an address?  If President Obama is going to speak, it must be a socialist conspiracy!  Numerous parents have declared their outright fear of having the president speak to their children.  School districts will “protect” their children by banning the message.  Commentators are urging parents to keep their children home to avoid being “indoctrinated.”  The governor of Minnesota, apparently looking to his own political future, is happily feeding the paranoia.   

 

Some are laughing about it.   The White House has sloughed it off as the “silly season.”

 

But it’s not the silly season.  It is a warning.  Hate is on the rise in this country.  And we ignore it at our peril. 

 

The prophets of hate need to be taken seriously.  They cannot be appeased.  We either call them out for who they are or reap the consequences. 

 

The “other” is a danger, these prophets of hate tell us.  So it begins.  So it has always begun throughout history.  For some today, the “other” are so-called illegal immigrants.  For some the “other” is personified by the black man who is president.  These people want their country back.  Their supremely white country.  They are angry and, in case you haven’t been paying attention, they are well armed.

 

Some at health care “town halls” have been parading with picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache.  You want to talk Hitler?  Let’s talk Hitler.  German society looked upon Hitler and his Nazis as the “silly season.”  And many people on the “right wing” side of society in post WWI Germany thought they could use the mindless anger and violence that Hitler offered for their own political ends.

 

Lies need to be called lies.  Paranoia needs to be called paranoia.  We need to wake up and soon.  If we don’t, I believe that violence is coming.  Hateful, mindless violence.  I remember much too well the violence of the 1960’s.  I have no desire to see it repeated, or worse exceeded.

 

People on the left need to speak up and against what is happening.  People in the center need to speak up and against what is happening.  And most important of all, people of good will and conscience on the right need to speak up and against what is happening.  Hate must not be allowed to continue to be a political tool.  Hate has to be named.  If it is not named, it cannot be stopped.

 

As an Interfaith minister, I want to speak against this simmering hatred and call upon all, all to reject it before it boils.  Christian and Jew, Muslim and Buddhist, Hindu and Baha’i, Humanist and Sikh.  Liberal, conservative and independent.  We need to speak up.  We need to speak out.  And we need to do it now.

 

All of our spiritual paths call us to love.  The flip-side of that is to reject hate. 

 

76 days since the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan on the streets of Tehran