Image
One of the great gifts in my life as a Christian has been to have so many friends and colleagues who are Jewish and who have taught me about the beauty of the holy days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each September. Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of the first human beings and marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year. The Book of Life opened. For the ten days following, our Jewish sisters and brothers take on the work of deep reflection on their lives and doing repentance where necessary before the Book of Life is sealed again on Yom Kippur and one’s fate for the year is determined. “G’mar chatimah tovah.” “A good inscription and sealing (in the Book of Life),” is considered the fitting greeting.
As I read my newsletter postings of this past year, I am struck by how often I’ve sensed the need of some sort of repentance—personally, yes, but especially as a citizen of the U.S. which has always been a core part of my identity. Born on the 4th of July and all. I can’t create links to all the times I’ve dwelt upon this topic in the past year. But now again, in this sacred time of September, when the window for change is wide open, what does the call to repentance look like anew?
One of my favorite Jewish writers has been Abraham Heschel, author of many wonderful books, but one of my favorite of which is God in Search of Man. As a Western Christian, I think most of us tend to approach the Bible as a tome that can aide us in our human search for God. We turn its pages hoping that it will make God feel more real to us. Maybe prove to us God’s existence when we doubt it. Heschel reminds us that the Bible was never written with that purpose in mind. Our ancestors in faith had lived in covenant relationship with God for centuries when they wrote these words down. God was part of their daily life and they weren’t trying to write about who God was. God was mystery beyond all understanding and could never be captured in text.
Rather, Heschel writes, the Bible is the story of God’s search for us. Specifically, God’s search for a humanity that would finally live up to the role that God had planned for since the dawn of creation. Heschel notes that the first human—Adam—turned away from the human vocation in the Garden of Eden. So God walks through that garden looking for him, asking, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). And Heschel says that is the question that God has been asking ever since. It is the plotline of the whole Bible: the story of God in search of man. God in search of a human who will finally collaborate with God, to play their part in history. For Heschel, the Bible is not a revelation of who God is but who we are called to be.
In a recent article in Commonweal, Heschel’s daughter Susannah notes that in the last century so many of us have asked the question, “How could God let this evil happen?” How could God allow me to get sick? My friend to die? My city to be bombed? My country to be attacked? Even, the Holocaust to have happened? “By contrast,” Susannah Heschel writes, “for my father the question was not theodicy—our belief in God in the face of evil—but anthropodicy: How can God keep faith in us after what we have done?”
Or perhaps the bigger question of the present moment: how little we have done… in light of all the evil we have seen.
This past week my friend Bridget wrote me to tell me how her prayer group had discerned the need to write bishops across the country to show support for their recent efforts to speak out more on behalf of immigrants and refugees. It would be good if we as a Church could be even more vocal in that regard. I readily promised her I would join that effort. Maybe you will want to also. Courageous bishops need to know their people are behind them. Writing might feel like a small act, but, of course, before we can talk of repentance for what we have done, we need to stop doing the injury our country is still currently doing to immigrants, to people around the globe, to its own citizens. It makes little sense to focus on healing national hurts when as a nation we continue to still wound each other daily. Writing is a step that can be taken in the moment.
But even if communally we do not seem ready to demonstrate repentance yet (for we as a nation have not stopped sinning with much bravado and boldness on a daily basis), those of us who have awakened to the degree of sin we find ourselves in—in addition to trying to halt the current evil and support the current good—can begin to learn how to build a different, more truly human nation. (Yes, I know that was a long and complicated sentence!) Soon I’ll be appearing on Jonathan Lewis’ fine new podcast that is part of The Communion Project, sponsored by the Paulist Fathers. Sometime this fall, I’ll also be on The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin where we got to talk about what “offering up” might look like in the realm of repentance. The most recent episode of that podcast with Andrew Garfield about doing the Ignatian Exercises was the best yet. Even as I go through the Exercises again myself, I'm not thinking I'll be that profound as Andrew, but I do have a few thoughts :)
Meanwhile, G’mar chatimah tovah, my friends. May we each become the humans God is searching for us to be.
(Photo credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash)