Sermon: Put Me In, Coach

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One Yom Kippur a Rabbi imagined he stood before God and had the following conversation:

God asked him, “Have you studied all you should?”

The rabbi said “No.”

Then he was asked, “Have you prayed all you should?”

Again he answered, “No.”

He was asked a third question, “Have you done all the good you should?”

And this time, too, he said, “No.”

And God proclaimed, “You have told the truth, and for the sake of truth you will be forgiven.”

 

We are now smack in the middle of the Jewish High Holidays days — Rosh Hashanah has already happened and Yom Kippur starts Friday night. Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the new year and Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. And this whole 10-day period is known as the Days of Awe. Some Jews used to believe, and maybe two or three still believe, that during these days, God would decide whether, based on your behavior over the last year, you would live or die in the next – whether you would be written into the Book of Life or not. Today, most Jews think of these days in a broader sense as a process of transformation. They are a time to break old patterns, heal wounded relationships, and return to our best selves.

 

I want to be able to say to you, this transformation, it’s an easy 3-step process. Boom, boom, boom. But honestly, thinking more about it, it’s really more like a complicated 6 step process:

            1.         Disengage, temporarily, from your life

            2.         Get real with yourself about where you are and how you showed up in the last year.

            3.         Seek forgiveness for anything you’ve done that hurt others or the earth. This means literally going around to your friends and family and coworkers – anyone you feel like you have failed in some way, acknowledge what you did and apologize.

            4.         Forgive others for the ways they have failed you. Be generous with your forgiveness and show love to others and to yourself.

            5.         Set your positive intention for the next year.

            6.         Re-engage with your life.

 

So… disengage, get real with yourself, seek forgiveness, forgive, set your intentions, and re-engage. Logical enough, right? You would think that if this were the sequence that we’re supposed to follow, that the Jewish calendar and liturgy would reflect that. You would think that the self-scrutiny and atonement and seeking forgiveness and forgiving would all happen first, then you’d wipe the slate clean and start fresh with the new year as the last step in the process. In other words, you would think that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, would come first and then Rosh Hashanah, the new year, would come second.

 

But that’s not what it is. It’s the opposite. The new year has already started and the Day of Atonement has not yet arrived! The new year has started and we’re not done dealing with last year. The new year has started and we still have baggage. We still have unfinished business. We’re still angry at someone we love, we haven’t broken that self-destructive habit, we’re still saying hurtful things, we’re still being hypocritical, we’re still sabotaging ourselves, we’re still shy and alone, we’re still working at a job where we don’t respect the work we do, we’re still not trying our hardest. We’re still not studying all we should, praying all we should, doing all the good we should.

 

And yet the new year has to come. Because if we wait – if we wait until all that stuff is figured out, if we wait until every hurt is mended and all our baggage is resolved – we’ll be waiting forever. We’ll never get back in the game.

 

We all know people, and maybe some of us are people, who have gotten stuck here. Stuck at steps 1, 2, and 3 in the process – disengaging and dwelling on our failures, waiting to change or, worse yet, waiting for someone else to change before we move on to the next steps.

 

Dr. Seuss describes this syndrome as a terrible place called “the waiting place.” “Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
or a plane to go or the mail to come,
or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.”

 

I have a friend, Jon, who has made a mess of relationship after relationship. He wants desperately to get married and have children but time and again, he pushes his partners away, finds their flaws intolerable, can’t get excited about them, says hurtful things, and sabotages the relationships over and over again. He’s waiting for the right partner to come along and at the same time, waiting for himself to become the right partner. He feels like he has failed so many times.  He berates himself – why did I let that one go? I could have been married by now!

 

He’s in therapy to figure it out, of course. He decides that he must just not be ready for a relationship. He needs to work on himself first. He needs to get over his mother issues, his father issues, the time he got slugged by a kid at school and went crying to his teacher instead of fighting back, the time he let go of that helium balloon and it went up into the sky, lost forever. He needs to get over all of this first, and more, before he’s ready for a relationship. And so he’s on the bench. He’s not saying, “Put me in, coach,” he’s saying, “Don’t put me in. I’m not worthy, I’m not ready, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. I don’t know if I want to be ready.”

 

Many of us in this room have been that guy, in one way or another, waiting on the bench of life until such time as we are perfect. Maybe it’s not applying for a dream job because we don’t think we’re “qualified,” maybe it’s not trying to have a baby because we need a bigger place first, maybe it’s not voicing our opinion in a meeting or not writing an Op-Ed because we feel like we don’t know enough (women especially hold back like this a lot). Whatever it is, when we hold back and sit on the bench – when we get stuck at steps 1, 2, and 3 and never get to steps 4, 5, and 6, I believe that we do ourselves and the world the greatest disservice.

 

The world needs our participation, every one of us. The Coach (whether you want to call that “God” or your own wisest, bravest self) wants you in the game. The story I told at the beginning illustrates this. It seems like God is looking for any excuse at all to excuse the rabbi and send him back out onto the field. “Have you done all the studying you should? No, well, how about praying? No? okay – that’s okay. How about good? Have you done all the good you should? No? hmm… well, that’s okay. Let’s see here. How can we make this work? Well, you told the truth didn’t you? You told the truth. So see? You’re in. I’m writing you in the Book of Life. Get back in the game!”

 

The universe doesn’t want us to fail. The universe wants us to engage, imperfectly and with all our heart. When I told this rabbinic story to my husband Jeff, he came up with an alternative version. In his version, when God forgives the rabbi, the rabbi argues. “Just cause I told the truth doesn’t count for that much. Look at everything I didn’t do! And I didn’t do it the year before either, you know. I’m not worthy to be written into the Book of Life! Keep me on the bench, coach.”

God says, “Did you go to Hebrew school by any chance?”

The rabbi says, “Yeah.”

God says, “Who’s the Judge of who’s worthy? Me or you?”

The rabbi says, “You.”

God says, “Right. And who’s infinitely wise and all-knowing, me or you?”

The rabbi says, “You.”

God says, “Right. And do you happen to remember – what happens to people who aren’t worthy?”

The rabbi says, “They don’t make it.”

And God says, “Right. And did you happen to notice that you’re still alive?”

 

Leonard Cohen, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, takes this concept a step further: We’re not only worthy despite our failings, we’re worthy in part because of and including our failings. In the offertory song we heard earlier, the lyrics say, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

 

All of our life experiences, our successes and our failures, our floundering and our moments of brilliance, our suffering and our joy are what make the lines in our faces that make us uniquely ourselves and fully human. We all have cracks and they are part of the gift that we bring in everything we do. They are part of the integrity we bring. The lesson of the high holidays is to “forget our perfect offering” and instead, to offer what we’ve got. The new year comes first. The six steps of the sacred process of repentance and return can’t be done in sequence. If we try, we’ll never get to the end. This doesn’t mean that we don’t admit our failings and try to work on ourselves and our relationships. Of course we do. But there’s no such thing as a clean slate. We have to do it all concurrently and imperfectly and incompletely – disengaging, re-engaging, getting real, setting our intentions, forgiving, asking forgiveness. All the time, all together.

 

We make our commitments and we look into the future. We say to ourselves, “Do I know that I’m going to do all the studying I should? No. Do I know that I’m going to do all the praying I should? No. Do I know that I’m going to do all the good that I should? No. Good. Now get back in the game.” We have opportunities to get up off the bench every single day. My friend Jon can throw himself into a new relationship, even if he’s not sure he’s perfectly ready. Maybe you can apply for that job or make that public statement.

 

Today, even, here at First U, we have our Faith-in-Action Expo. You’ll be able to browse all our different activities and groups and work teams and find lots of different way to get in the game here. Love music but worried that you’re not a good enough singer? Join the choir! Want to work on reproductive rights but don’t know much about the issues? Join the Women’s Alliance! Believe in the power of welcoming, but don’t know many people here yet? Become an usher! There are a million ways to bring your gifts to this community and to the world community. You’ll see an abundance of the opportunities if you say to yourself, like a First U member did in his or her dharma statement printed in your Order of Service, “I believe that community is holy and I participate!”

 

There’s no such thing as a clean slate. The new year always comes first. Even with all our unfinished business, every day is a new chance to work it out. Every day is a new chance to say, “Put me in, coach.” Every day is a new chance to begin again in love. Shanah tovah. Happy new year.