ATONEMENT

October 3, 2014
Day 156

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not Jewish.  I have great respect for Judaism, and have had several wonderful opportunities to pray with Jewish friends and celebrate the Jewish holidays, but no, I'm not Jewish.

Atonement, though, just means apologizing, admitting a wrong, whether or not you feel the word "sin" should be used.  In that sense, we could all use a lot more atoning in our lives.  We could all stand to say "I'm sorry" more than we do, to admit we said something we shouldn't have, or did something we now regret.

On Yom Kippur* all over the world, Jewish men and women everywhere will fast from sundown to sundown, and spend most or all of the day in prayer and reflection. 

Most specifically, they will be praying to God for forgiveness of their sins.  In Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashanah, God writes down the fate of each person for an entire year in the Book of Life, and then on Yom Kippur, you are to repent for your sins in one last plea before your fate is sealed.

Now all of this I pretty much knew, or mostly knew, but a few years ago, The West Wing taught me something I'd never heard before.  Apparently on Yom Kippur, you must ask God for forgiveness of your sins, but on Erev Yom Kippur (the day before Yom Kippur), you must ask your fellow man for forgiveness.  You cannot go to God asking for forgiveness until you first ask forgiveness of others.  In other words, you need to say you're sorry to your fellow man before you can think to ask such forgiveness from God.

Personally, I find this remarkable.  In a family argument, the mother or father doesn't just want their child to apologize to them, but also to the sibling they hurt.  Say you're sorry to your sister, they might tell us, or Now apologize to your brother for what you said.  It makes complete sense then that we would want to find healing and peace here before going to our Father (or Mother) in Heaven.

I try very hard to be the kind of guy who says "I'm sorry" when I've said or done something wrong.  When I purposely caused some kind of pain or some kind of annoyance to another driver on the road or to a fellow customer at the store, or so on, I believe in offering an apology.  I do this because it's the right thing to do, but I confess I have an ulterior motive too, so tell me if this sounds familiar...

I'm sometimes eager to apologize for my fault because I want to hear the other person offer an apology as well.  It may be that they need to hear it from me first, I don't know, but I do try my best. 

Am I perfect?  Far from it!  Do I not apologize at times?  Mm-hm!  But I know I do usually say I'm sorry whenever I have intentionally hurt someone.  Once again, I'm no preacher, and once again, you don't want to hear me preach anyway, but once again, I believe it's good for me to offer this little sermon here anyway. 

I am genuinely sorry for my imperfections of character, for all my faults, and even for all my sins, and I do hope my friends and family, as well as strangers everywhere, will know I am sorry.  I may not be Jewish, but I sure do live with guilt at times, and I hope others will forgive me for my offenses to them.  This Yom Kippur, may we all know greater peace, greater regret, and yes, greater forgiveness from one another.  To put it another way, may we all see God in every soul we meet.

*Yom Kippur is pronounced yohm khi-poor.
It literally means Day (Yom) of Atonement (Kippur).