The Way Back

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 27, 2015

The Way Back

Leviticus 16:29-31

“This shall be a statute to you forever:

In the seventh month,

on the tenth day of the month,

you shall deny yourselves, and shall do no work,

neither the citizen

nor the alien who resides among you.

For on this day atonement shall be made for you,

to cleanse you;

from all your sins you shall be clean before the Lord.

It is a sabbath of complete rest to you,

and you shall deny yourselves;

it is a statute forever.”

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It is the year 5776,

the month of Tishrei.

Or at least that would be the date

if we followed the Hebrew calendar.

Our calendars are built around

the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ,

but the Hebrew calendar starts long before Jesus,

long before Moses,

long even before Abraham.

The Hebrew calendar takes as its start date

God’s creation of humanity through Adam and Eve.

The Hebrew calendar was created

more than a thousand years ago

by a rather imperfect, imprecise attempt

to count the years backward

to fix a date when Adam and Eve first took form

according to Genesis.

It is not a “creationist’s” calendar;

it is a calendar that starts, rather

with the creation of humankind

as told by the book of Genesis

as a way to mark and measure time.

A thousand years ago,

it seemed logical and sensible

to create a calendar in this manner.

Our own calendar has its own imprecision:

since even after 2000 years,

we still don’t know the exact day,

the exact month, the exact year –

when our Lord Jesus was born.

Look at the Hebrew calendar and you’ll find

special observances scattered

throughout the year,

in much the same way we observe

the birth of our Lord,

his death,

and his resurrection.

For our Jewish brothers and sisters

there is Passover, of course;

and Hanukah;

and this time of year, Rosh Hashanah,

also known as the Jewish New Year.

The calendar page turns

and a new year begins on the Hebrew calendar.

Rosh Hashanah is not a single day,

like New Year’s Eve.

It is a holy time, spread over 10 days;

a time that is more like our Lent,

in that it is a time of repentance,

a time of renewal,

a time of redemption.

Rosh Hashanah culminates in what is

the holiest day of the year,

the day called Yom Kippur,

the Day of Atonement,

which this year was this past week:

it started at sundown on Tuesday

and ran through Wednesday.

In our lesson,

we heard God speak to his children,

our ancestors in faith,

telling them to set aside this special day,

this Yom Kippur:

“For on this day,

atonement shall be made for you,

to cleanse you;

from all your sins

you shall be clean before the Lord.

…This shall be a statute to you forever…”

Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness.

It is a day of repentance,

a day to remember how easy it is to stray from God

and how all need to be washed clean,

made whole through forgiveness,

forgiveness given freely, without condition,

by the Lord God.

Yom Kippur is a day to

seek forgiveness from God;

a day to seek forgiveness from others.

It is a day to offer forgiveness, as well,

to any, to all

                          

Yom Kippur is a day to be reconciled,

to let go of anger and grudges,

to bind up divisive wounds

that separate and push apart.

It is a day to remember that it is God’s will

that all God’s children live in community,

live in peace.

                          

Yom Kippur is a solemn day

with its fasting and prayers of repentance.

But it is also a joyful day

because it is a day of redemption for all.

It is a day of new beginnings;

the old is past, and new life awaits.

The word “sin” is wrapped up in repentance,

but within the Jewish tradition,

that word conveys quite a different meaning

from the meaning we often think it conveys

within our Christian faith.

We Christians hear the word “sin”

and we tend to equate it with “bad”,

a sin is something “bad” we’ve done,

a sinner is “bad” person,

even an “unworthy” person.

But the Hebrew word for sin

doesn’t translate as “bad”;

rather, it translates as something that  

“misses the mark,

has gone astray.”

The Greek word in the New Testament

means much the same thing as the Hebrew word:

miss the mark, gone astray.

Over the centuries we’ve loaded the word “sin”

with meaning that isn’t there.

To sin isn’t to be bad,

to sin is make a bad choice.

A sinner isn’t a bad person;

a sinner is a child of God

who has made a bad choice,

a bad decision,

and, as a result, has missed the mark

God has set for him or her;

the child has gone astray.

A sinner is never unworthy in the eyes of God,

for the sinner was created by God,

created by God’s love.

God didn’t think Adam and Eve

were unworthy or bad.

God punished them

but not because he thought them bad;

God punished them because

they had disobeyed him.

They made a bad choice

in listening to the serpent and

taking the fruit from the tree

when God had told them not to do it.

                                   

As the theologian Shirley Guthrie has written,

“The basic truth is not that we are sinners,

but that we are human beings

created in God’s image.

…Our sinfulness is something unnatural.

That is why it is such a problem.”

Sins turns us away from God,

when God created us to turn to him,

to draw near to him.

In the words of the Reverend Frederick Buechner:

“sin is whatever we do or fail to do

that pushes us away from God,

that widens the gap between us and God.”

To repent is simply to turn back

when we’ve gone astray;

to turn away from the path

that caused us to miss the mark.

Repentance leads us on the way back,

Repentance leads us back to God

where we will find ready forgiveness.  

Knowing that there is always a way back,

back to God,

back to forgiveness from God,

back to the fold of grace,

then makes it easier to provide a way back

sthrough forgiveness offered to others.

That’s the essence of Yom Kippur,

and why, even in its solemnity there is joy:

that no matter how wide the breach,

there is always a way back to forgiveness;

that no matter how great the hurt,

there is always a way back to reconciliation.

Yom Kippur provides a wonderful gift to us,

as well as to our Jewish brothers and sisters,

for Yom Kippur reminds us of the gift of forgiveness,

the importance of forgiveness.

Yom Kippur reminds us

that there is always a way back.

The breach between parent and chld,

brother and sister,

husband and wife,

neighbor and neighbor,

the breach within,

because sometimes forgiving ourselves

is harder than forgiving others –

any breach,

every breach can be repaired.

There is always a way back.

With hard work, of course;

forgiveness isn’t easy.

But forgiveness is,

as theologian Miraslov Wolf has written,

“what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

For it doesn’t just relieve us from

bitterness and resentment,

it enacts love,

laying the foundation for love…”

Barbara Brown Taylor always manages to put things

in wonderful perspective

and on forgiveness, she has observed,

“If God is willing to stay with me

in spite of my meanness,

my weakness,

my stubborn self-righteousness,

then who am I to hold those same things

against someone else?”

Barbara Brown Taylor understands that

there is always a way back for her.

And she also understands

that in the same way she is called to offer

a way back through forgiveness to any,

to all.

This is the lesson of Yom Kippur:

a day on the calendar,

a lesson in Scripture,

to remind us,

move us,

call us to forgiveness:

to repent,

to receive forgiveness,

to offer forgiveness,

all God’s children finding a way back –

back to the joy of reconciliation,

back to the fold of grace,

back to the arms of love.

AMEN