Sermons

October 5, 2008
Taking Responsibility

Taking Responsibility
a sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS:
1. From Aeschylus, The Eumenides, 458 B.C.E.:
"Chorus: ...Are you the murderer of your mother?
Orestes: I did the deed.
Chorus: ...Who advised you in this bloody deed?
Orestes: The god of oracles. Here he stands to witness.
Chorus: Commanding murder with a prophetic nod?
Orestes: Yes! Yet even now I do not blame the god."

2. From the Dalai Lama, The Path to Tranquility, 1988:
"In this ever-changing world there are two important things we should keep in mind. The first is self-examination. We should reexamine our own attitude toward others and constantly check ourselves to see whether we are practicing properly. Before pointing our finger at others we should point it at ourselves. Second, we must be prepared to admit our faults and stand corrected."

3. From The Bible (TANAKH, a New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1985), Leviticus 16:29-30
"And this shall be to you a law for all time: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial; and you shall do no manner of work, neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you. For on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins; you shall be clean before the LORD. "

THE SERMON
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the highest of the High Holy Days, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. This year Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Wednesday, October 8.
In the Torah, in the book of Leviticus, it is said that on the Day of Atonement “self-denial” shall be practiced. Fasting for the entire day is seen as a fulfillment of this biblical commandment. Those who are sick are forbidden from fasting, so they do not harm themselves. Judaism considers fasting on Yom Kippur to be a physical discipline that translates into ethical behavior. Yom Kippur is a day of intense self-searching and honest communication with the Almighty. This search requires an internal calm which derives from slowing down our biological rhythm. Fasting on Yom Kippur, then, provides a key to inner awakening.
Yom Kippur is a time to make amends and seek reconciliation with Adonai [the LORD] and with our fellow humans. It is the culmination of the Days of Awe, the days between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Adonai opens the “book of life” on Rosh Hashanah, and closes the book on Yom Kippur. During this time Jews are required to forgive the people in their lives – their family, friends, neighbors and business associates – and to ask those same people for forgiveness for the wrongs they have done and the hurts they have committed. Only after you have asked your neighbor for forgiveness, and forgiven your neighbor, can you go to Adonai, the Eternal, and ask forgiveness for your sins against the Adonai.
In other words, prayer cannot atone for wrongs done, unless you begin with an honest and sincere attempt to rectify those wrongs, and the sincere intention to avoid repetition.
What a wonderful practice of reconciliation! If truly practiced, this is an exceptionally good way to end the old year and begin the new one, wiping the slate clean and vowing to do better in the coming year. How good it would be if we could really do this. How good it would be for Israelis and Palestinians to ask one another for forgiveness, to grant forgiveness to the other side, and begin the new year with a resolve to not repeat the mistakes of the past! How good for all nations to do this! How good it would be if we did this in our own lives!
And yet so very difficult! How incredibly hard it is to really take a fearless look at our own actions, to admit were we were wrong, and to ask people for forgiveness! How easy it is to see how others have wronged us, and how hard it is to see that we, too have participated in the wrongs of the past year. It would be so much easier to just go to the synagogue, privately admit our wrongs, and pray for forgiveness. Even to go and confess to the priest, as Catholics do, while that has some measure of difficulty, is nothing like actually asking forgiveness directly to the person we have wronged.

Forgive and remember ~
In the Twelve Steps – as pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, and used by other groups as well, including Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Sex ans Love Addicts Anonymous – participants in Twelve Step programs are encouraged to make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of their behaviors; admit to themselves, to God, and to another human being the nature of those wrongs; ask God (as one understands “God”) to remove those defects of character; make a list of all persons who have been harmed by those wrongs; and make direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. This is a process of atonement, a vital part of emotional, spiritual and ethical growth.
This kind of direct atonement makes sense to me. Go directly to the person you are having difficulties with. Forgive and ask forgiveness. It isn’t easy – in fact, it is very hard. Sometimes it is actually impossible. The Twelve Steps make it clear that there are times when to try to make direct amends might further harm the person we have wronged. There may be times when we have done something so hurtful that we simply have to stay away. And maybe the person we have wronged isn’t able to forgive.
I must say that I don’t believe in “forgive and forget.” I do believe that forgiveness, when possible, is as important for the one who is doing the forgiving as it is for the one who is forgiven. But sometimes it’s not possible.
Take the issue of an abusive parent or spouse, for instance. If the perpetrator is unable or unwilling to admit guilt, and ask forgiveness, then forgiveness is clearly not going to happen. And even if the perpetrator admits to the wrongdoing and tries to make amends, the person who has been abused cannot forget what has happened. If you can forgive, by all means do so, but “forgive and remember.” Don’t forget. Don’t leave yourself or your children unprotected from possible future abuse. Keep firm boundaries with the abuser.
Still, when it is possible to forgive, and to admit guilt and make direct amends, that is how we bring about reconciliation.

Substitutionary atonement ~
Most Christian denominations teach something called “substitutionary atonement.” It goes lie this: Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the entire human race has fallen into a state of sin. God is angry about our sin, and we all owe a debt to God that we cannot possibly repay. Therefore, God sent God’s Son, Jesus Christ (who also happened to be God) into the world to die on the cross for our sins. He died willingly and deliberately in order to save us from our sin.
Those who teach this doctrine say, that by the death of Jesus on the cross some kind of a deal or bargain was struck, some kind of transaction took place. But it is not clear to me who are the parties to this transaction. God and Satan? God and the human race? Who negotiated this deal? And why was this bloody, painful execution the best idea God could come up with? How, exactly, does this murder actually make things okay between us and God? If you or I murdered our child, we would go to prison for life. If God causes the murder of God’s own Son, it is called “salvation.”
But the idea that the Jesus’ torture and the shedding of his blood somehow pleases God, that God requires this “blood sacrifice”, is an idea that I find appalling. I do not believe the nonsense that God was so angry because Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit that all people were condemned to death – but that God was so happy because we killed God’s only Son (who is actually God) that we were all forgiven!
The human Jesus did not preach that God was that angry with us. In fact, according to Jesus, God rather likes us! Sinners, heretics, and other outcasts didn’t seem to bother Jesus all that much. To the contrary, those were the people he hung out with. Jesus, in fact, seemed to see people in a better light than they saw themselves.
The doctrine of substitutionary atonement isn’t taught in the Eastern Orthodox churches, and wasn’t a big deal in the first 1,000 years of Western Christianity. It was St. Anslem who fully developed the doctrine in Catholic Western Europe around the year 1,000 of the Common Era. Today’s Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants make it central to their teachings, but it is not universal in Christianity.
I believe that Jesus was a human being, that he was a great rabbi or teacher in the tradition of the Jewish prophets, and he did not intend to die for the sins of the world. He died as he did because he believed he was called by God to live in a certain way, and teach certain truths, the “good news” or gospel; and those teachings and that way of life were more important than his own personal safety. His teachings upset the Romans (and the wealthy collaborators who derived their power and wealth from the Romans). And so he was arrested and executed. But he did not set out to commit “suicide by cop” or “suicide by Roman Legionnaire” by getting arrested and executed. His death does not save us. Our own acts of taking responsibility are what save us.
So I don’t buy the Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the most common Christian approach to atonement. Direct atonement, as practiced in Judaism and in Twelve Step programs makes so much more sense to me. So I believe my theology is much closer to that of a Reform Jewish Rabbi than to that of a Fundamentalist Christian pastor.

The House of Atreus ~
I want to wrap up this sermon on atonement with a story from Greek mythology. Sometimes we move forward by looking at the past. Like many Jewish and Christian myths, this story is rooted in the ancient Mediterranean.
On a blustery January day, eight winters past, soon to be nine, Mickey and I climbed the acropolis, a relatively low hill, at the Greek city of Mycenae (Mykinis or Mee-KEE-nees in modern Greek), and passed through the Lion Gate into the city. As it was not the tourist season, we were the only people at that magnificent archaeological site. Among other things, we stood in the ruins of King Agamemnon’s bath, where he was murdered by Klytemnestra, his wife.
It was not a happy marriage, not a happy family. King Agamemnon was a member of the House of Atreus, a cursed family. Atreus had been a strong ruler who made Mycenae into the greatest and most powerful city-state in Greece, but he was also a great criminal. His brother, Thyestes, had an affair with his wife and tried to steal the throne from him. In revenge, Atreus committed a particularly gruesome murder, killing Thyestes’ children and feeding them to him at a banquet. This crime brought down a curse from the gods on the House of Atreus.
Agamemnon was the son and heir to Atreus. When Agamemnon wanted to send his fleet to attack Troy, the winds constantly blew the wrong way. He became convinced that the only way to get the winds to blow favorably was to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigeneia, to the goddess Artemis. Artemis, however, disapproved of human sacrifice, and at the last minute, she substituted a deer and the child was spared. (This compares to the biblical story of the binding of Isaac.)
Iphigeneia became a priestess of Artemis. However, Klytemnestra, her mother, thought her daughter had been killed, and she vowed revenge. While Agamemnon was away at the Trojan War, Klytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus plotted against Agamemnon.
When the war ended, Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with a war prize, Cassandra. This “second wife” made Klytemnestra even more angry. As a guide told us at the National Museum in Athens, “When you have two wives, you get a Greek tragedy!”
Cassandra, it turns out, was also cursed. Apollo had given her the gift of foreseeing the future, but when she did not return his love he gave her the curse that no one would ever believe her. She warned the Trojans to not let that horse into the city, and now she warned Agamemnon to not enter the palace, but her warnings were ignored. While Agamemnon was taking a bath, Klytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him. For good measure, they also murdered Cassandra.

The Furies ~
But the story isn’t over – and this is the short version! Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, eventually learned the truth of what had happened. Orestes went to Delphi and asked the oracle of Apollo what he should do. The oracle told him he must avenge the death of his father by killing his mother! When he arrived back at Mycenae his sister, Electra, also urged him to kill their mother. Orestes agonized over the decision, but eventually killed his mother and his stepfather, Aegisthus.
Orestes had been caught between a rock and a hard place. The Greek code of honor said he must avenge his father’s death, and the oracle of Apollo urged him to do so – but matricide was also a great crime. As a punishment for his sin, the gods punished Orestes by sending the Furies after him. The Furies were three ghastly harpies who could be seen and heard only by Orestes. These frightening apparitions tormented him day and night with their constant and cackling criticism and threats.
What kind of beings were the Furies? We could rightly say they were Orestes’ guilty conscience.
The furies pursued him everywhere, and Orestes became a lonely and tormented wanderer. After many years he appealed his case to the gods. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and justice, arranged for a trial. Apollo spoke on behalf of the defense, saying that he had put Orestes in an impossible situation. He had given Orestes no choice but to kill his mother, and so the defendant really couldn’t be held responsible.
At this point the defendant did a strange thing. Orestes contradicted his defense attorney, Apollo. He took responsibility for his crime. He said, “I did the deed. There is no denying the fact. I do not blame Apollo.”
This defense, or lack of defense, surprised the gods. No one in the House of Atreus, that incredibly dysfunctional family, had ever taken responsibility for their crimes. They always blamed someone else, or blamed fate or the gods. But Orestes didn’t blame the gods, or society, or his family. He took full responsibility for his own actions.
The jury was evenly divided. Then the goddess Athena cast the tie-breaking vote. She acquitted Orestes, and transformed the Furies into the Eumenides, loving spirits who give wise counsel and bring good fortune.
The Eumenides are also referred to as “bearers of grace.” M. Scott Peck writes, “The hallucinatory Furies, who could only be perceived by Orestes, represent his symptoms.” They were the private hell of his own emotional dysfunction. By facing the problem, and taking responsibility for his actions, Orestes was finally able to begin the journey toward his own better mental health. When he finally faced the fact that he had been free to make choices – and had made the wrong choice – his Furies were transformed into a source of grace and good counsel.
Most of us, if we live long enough, make some bad choices or terrible mistakes. I have, and maybe you have, too. Some people struggle with anger, others with addictive behaviors. Some of us insist on always having our own way, always controlling. Some of us were raised with racist or homophobic attitudes. Maybe some of us were not good parents. Maybe some were not faithful spouses. Maturity is a process that takes a lifetime. But we will only begin the process when we are able to look within and understand how we contribute to the problems we find ourselves in.
This is the meaning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is an opportunity for at-one-ment, for all of us to be at one with one another in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness. If we want to make changes in our lives we must start, as Orestes did, by taking responsibility. The journey of our emotional and spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. It also requires choosing a path and taking a first step. The words of the prophets and teachers such as Moses, Jesus, the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, are there as guides. Therapists can often help. But no teacher or Scripture or formula or psychologist can carry us there. We must take a path, and begin the journey.
Amen.