Public Ministry : : News : : Forrest Church

The Book of Life is Open

Forrest Church • Yom Kippur—September 26, 2001

However conscious we may have been any prior September when closing one chapter in the Book of Life and opening another, for many of us on this evening, in this year, in this city, the central image of Yom Kippur is especially poignant. The days of Awe culminate in a day of Atonement, a word that at its root means At-one-ment. With the book of our life open for revision, we seize this solemn occasion to emend its text, that we may open the next chapter with a clean slate.

At Passover, when those of us from the Jewish tradition (together with those who, like me, have married into it) join around the sedar plate, we are asked "What makes this night different from every other night?" From Tuesday, September 11 onward, a like question finds its answer within our hearts, for nights have been different since that fateful morning, and our days as well. The new year we are entering is transfigured by an unconscionable act of horror, perpetrated against every one of us and against everything we stand for as people of this nation and as people of faith. Tonight, symbolically, we mark passage from the known into an unknown world.

Those of us who had become inured to violence have witnessed an act of violence that defies incorporation into life as usual. Those of us who were living, whether happily or restively, in our own little worlds have become full citizens of a far more capacious and demanding world, a world that invites us to rise to its occasion, to engage our minds and spirits, to become who we might be. All of us have shared in one sacrament of grief. All are consecrated into a higher consciousness of life’s preciousness and fragility. Many members still, we cannot but be more conscious of the one body.

This doesn’t diminish the individual importance of our lives; it enhances them. It cleanses them. Think for a moment of that little list of grievances we each were so fond of consulting sixteen days ago. It looks different now. All those irritants and nattering dilemmas that we, in our unholy self-absorption, wrote so large, all those petty things that needlessly separated us from others, in the light of this new day appear either far more manageable or much less important than they did before. That is to say, the excuses we were wont to make for ourselves have lost a great deal of their persuasive power. Witnesses to so many acts of sacrifice, valor, and kindness, how can we help but aspire to be less selfish, more valiant, and kinder people?

I have talked to people this week who finally, after months, even years of procrastination or rationalization, have committed to make something finer of their lives. People who have been prompted by these terrible events and their extraordinary aftermath vow at long last to turn their lives around. "I’ve finally stopped drinking for good," one man told me. God bless him. "I haven’t been to church for twenty years," another confessed. "I’ve got to get my spiritual life in order." A third almost wept, "This has brought my husband and me back together. It’s a miracle. I can’t believe it. We’ve lost three friends. A dear cousin. And yet somehow in the midst of this tragedy we found one another." In ways less dramatic perhaps but life-changing nonetheless, almost every one of us has awakened to life’s challenge and possibility with new resolve–to be a little more loving, a little harder working, a little less selfish, a little more attentive. We have greeted the new day with a new heart.

Atonement, or at-one-ment, has three dimensions. To atone is to be made one with ourselves, with our neighbor, and with our God. Honest with ourselves, we cleanse our lives of self-deception. This completes the first circle of At-one-ment, the circle of inner-peace. The act required here is one of confession. We acknowledge our failings, both deeds done over the past twelve months that compromise our integrity and deeds left undone that begged our doing. By confessing (being honest in our personal inventory), through an act of inner union with our higher selves we participate within our very souls in the saving action of at-one-ment. Atonement in this case is another word for integrity.

The second circle of atonement is reconciliation. We become one with our neighbor. Sometimes to do this we must ask forgiveness. Those we ask may not forgive us, for to forgive another is sometimes very hard. But to acknowledge our need for forgiveness in itself can be saving work. So long as such an acknowledgement is coupled with a vow to change, our world is changed by it, because we walk through the world differently than we did before. And for us to forgive another carries the same, saving power. With reconciliation comes at-one-ment. Having made peace with ourselves, we extend the circle of oneness to include our neighbors.

Finally, in its highest sense, atonement is the way in which we make our peace with God, the Holy, the sacred, the ground of our being. This ground has been rent in ways unimaginable a little more than two weeks ago. But God had nothing to do with that. God does not employ terrorists. God–by what ever name — is the power of life which unites us with one another. Forces that divide us are, literally, diabolic (the word means to separate or divide). But as we have witnessed in so many eloquent guises, the diabolic acts that were intended to divide us have united us instead. In our oneness we witness to the spirit of God among us, the healing spirit, the power that saves.

In Latin the word salvation means health. "Salve!" people would say when they greeted each another. "Good health to you." By the same token, health, whole, and holy share the same root. Theological at-one-ment unifies creature and creator, sanctifying the creation. As mere words, what I have just said means nothing. But when we transform saving words into healing deeds they really do work. We bless the creation. To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, "Here on earth, God’s work truly becomes our own."

We are doing that work here, right now, this very night. The work of Atonement. At-one-ment. God’s work and our own. The Book of Life is open.