Christian sermon after Yom Kippur

Sermon, St Anne’s Brondesbury. 30 September 2012. Trinity 17.

Gospel: Mark 9.38-50

Bluntly you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. So I am going to risk a confession. There was a time when I thought – and enjoyed thinking -  that the Bible was perfectly clear. I read Jesus saying: ‘Whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters’ [Matt 12.30 // Luke 11.23]. And I thought: That’s clear then. But later I read, well, today’s gospel passage, where Jesus says: ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’ [Mark 9.40 // Luke 9.50]. And I had a problem. It’s not a problem of logic. (Logically, one might conclude that everyone is simply for or against Jesus.) It’s a problem of theology. How can I say the Bible is perfectly clear when quoting it in one place if I know it says something that at least feels like the opposite elsewhere? 

‘Whoever is not against us is for us’. Now, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But I might have the smallest inkling about you. This is a community in an ecumenical partnership and involved in interfaith work in (let us remember) one of the most religiously diverse and religiously vibrant cities in the world. So I intuit that you might be a community which would quite like the Bible to be perfectly clear that ‘whoever is not against us is for us’. It seems a good, generous and hopeful statement. Whether you are that kind of community or not, I am happy to make a second confession: that’s my preferred starting-place. I like it that Jesus says whoever is not against him is for him. I struggle with Jesus’ claim that whoever is not for him is against him. Where do we/I go from here? 

I think there is one thing we can do, however we interpret these different biblical texts. We can make sure we are slow to say someone is ‘against Jesus’, without overwhelming evidence. We can make sure we are not being prejudiced, when we say that someone is ‘against Jesus’. And we can make sure we are not being prejudiced when we say a whole faith or faith community is ‘against Jesus’. You might say this is obvious. I might reply: the Church has historically not been good about living out this obvious truth.

For countless numbers of Christians it has in fact been obvious that ‘those others over there’ are ‘against Jesus’. And we know this, because we know what those others believe, even without asking them. The epitome of this attitude has been the Christian judgement on Judaism-after-Easter, and of rabbinic Jews. They are abandoned, to be punished. They killed Christ. Their religion is an empty shell. It is cold legalism cowering before a distant and/or bad-tempered God. It is law not grace. These things have been something like the ‘commonsense’ of Christianity from, well, earliest days. And we gain nothing by denying it.

I want us to look at the claim that Judaism (as we know it, the Judaism of the rabbis) is cold legalism seeking justification from a distant and/or punitive God. I want to do so precisely now, because in the week I had the huge privilege – and I do mean privilege - of attending services at a local synagogue for Yom Kippur. To get the emphasis right (and bear with me on this), I am going to look at only a few prayers from the Eve of Yom Kippur service, called Kol Nidre, and I am going to go backwards, starting with the end and ending at the beginning.

Kol Nidre ends, like many ordinary synagogue services, with a popular hymn, Adon Olam or Lord of the world. Here is a close translation of just one verse:

He it is who is my God, my life, my redeemer, my rock, my cord, when time is hard.

He it is who is my banner and refuge, the portion of my cup,

when I call out.

In other words, he it is who is God close to me, who is… lots of things, but never distant and punitive my nature. He is it to whom I turn for grace.

You think that prayer must be the exception not the rule? Well in the main body of the service (and throughout the High Holy Days) comes another moving sung prayer: Avinu Malkenu, ‘Our Father, our King’ (and, yes, note the ease with which Jews call upon ‘our Father’. It ends with this prayer:

Our Father our King, have mercy on us and answer us, for we have no good deeds of our own. Show us righteousness and mercy and save us.

I say again: ‘Our Father, our King, have mercy on us and answer us, for we have no good deeds of our own.’ And I say again: In Judaism, on its most solemn day, what you do is pray to God for grace.

And there is more. From the beginning of the service comes a statement repeated three times. The translation I have reads, slightly unnaturally like most translated liturgy:

And all the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, and the stranger that sojourneth among them: for in respect of all the people it was done unwittingly.

Someone has proposed a loose paraphrase, which brings out more the sense of the Hebrew (it’s a citation from Numbers 156.26). It goes like this: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

Yes, the Jewish congregation thinks of itself and all other Jewish congregations (hence it is ‘them’ rather than ‘us’) and says, in effect, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?’ You think the person suggesting this is a naïve Christian just pretending that Judaism is the same as us? You’d be wrong. The person who made this claim is… Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi.

And one more thing. Before this statement or prayer comes the declaration beginning Kol Nidre, which as I’ve already said gives the name to the whole service. It means ‘All Vows’. It is a declaration that vows made to God which cannot be kept are to be annulled. I quote:

They shall be absolved, released, annulled, made void and of none effect: they shall not be binding nor shall they have any power. Our vows shall not be vows: our bonds shall not be bonds: and our oaths shall not be oaths.

Some things to note. First, the musical setting of this statement (it is not a prayer, quite) is just beautiful, and stirs the heart in and of itself, as indeed does so much of the liturgy I have spoken of. If you have a musical bone in your body, do try to experience some of the Jewish High Holy Days at some point.

Second, note that the vows in question are those made to God. You are not claiming you can annul vows made to your neighbour. Those you have to keep or negotiate about.

Third, this is not saying that vows are trivial, and you can make them and break them at will. Rather it is saying that as persons and as congregations we know that even at our strongest we are weak. It is our nature to promise to God more than we can deliver. At the very least, we forget. Life intervenes.

And fourth, well, I wonder if you noticed… noticed that the verbs were all future tense? Our release from vows unfulfilled extends ‘from this Yom Kippur to the coming Yom Kippur’. I find that just extraordinary.

Here you are, on the most solemn day in the Jewish year, beginning 25 hours of serious fasting. It is a day spent largely in synagogue, praying and singing of repentance and turning anew to God in sorrow. You throw yourself on God’s mercy and ask for strength to live a better life. In all this, there’s a belief in grace all right. But! But the grace abounds yet further. You begin this process of repentance by admitting to God that your repentance may or will in important ways fail. Yes, you are taking yourself and your true standing before God most seriously. No pretence, no excuse  – ‘we have no good deeds of our own’ – and you are saying that you know even that is not enough. You will promise more than you deliver. You need God to have mercy not only on your sins, but also on your promises. It is in that spirit that: ‘Our vows shall not be vows: our bonds shall not be bonds: and our oaths shall not be oaths.’

Brothers and sisters, many of us have a sense that we have much to learn from Judaism and Jews. It is a way of life which values life, what makes for life and liveliness. I happened to be in Golders Green last night and saw crowds of people buying greenery for the joyful feast of Sukkot, the main Harvest Festival. Perhaps many Jews will sing their babies to sleep tonight singing as a lullaby, ‘It is good to be a Jew’. That’s a literally magnificent affirmation of life for the 21^st century, given all that happened in the 20^th century.

But for those who do sense that, let us go a step further, and own that we Christians – who are always talking about grace – also have much to learn from Jews and Judaism about – precisely - grace.

I don’t know if the journey I have taken us on, from the end to the beginning of the Eve of Yom Kippur, can convey the majesty and pity, the sorrow and hope of the liturgy of Yom Kippur. After all, without the music and the sounding of the shofar, with its visceral call, you get less than a shadow of it. But I do dare to hope that here are enough hints that Judaism is a religion of grace.

So, let me say it: It is sinful that Christians have been so very quick to judge it wholly cold, legalistic and indeed damned. We cannot cut ourselves off from our ancestors on this, as if we were altogether a different breed. Can a people so committed to God of grace - grace revealed in books we ourselves call ‘Scripture’ - be fundamentally ‘against Jesus’? Make no mistake about it: our answer to that question will help to shape the kind of Church we make, proclaim and become, even if we ourselves have no direct interaction with Jewish people. This is about who we are as Church.

‘Whoever is not against us is for us’, says Jesus. Is the Bible perfectly clear on the matter? Maybe; maybe not. But, brothers and sisters, let us go on attuning ourselves to the echoes, the beautiful echoes, at once alien and familiar, quite probably brought by or shared with the angels, which are out there, in Judaism, and the wider world of faiths. Amen.