Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5771 – Day 1, (over) Repentance

So the other day, I was sitting in my office and in walks Ted. He looked both terrified and exhilarated. He said to me, “Rabbi, the most amazing thing just happened to me. I was outside touching up the paint on the outside of the Temple to make it nice for the holidays. I was up on the ladder; I had just about finished painting when I noticed that there was a little space right under the roof that needed some more paint. I looked at my bucket and it was practically empty. I hated to have to go all the way down the ladder, get more paint and come back up again. So I poured a little bit of water in the bucket, it was latex paint; I mixed it around and applied it with my brush covering that space under the roof and came back down the ladder. All of a sudden, the skies darkened, there was thunder and lightning and I heard the voice of God and you know what God said to me? Repaint and thin no more!!!”

But seriously folks, what exactly is repentance? Like with so many things, that answer depends on who you ask. Back in 1979 and 1980, I taught in the High School program at the religious school of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.
One of my brightest students Aaron Panken went on to be a rabbi with Ph.D. and is now the dean of the Hebrew Union College in New York. Another exceptional student Oren Etzioni went on to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is now a tenured professor at the University of Washington, a venture capitalist and one of the foremost authorities on Artificial Intelligence and information technology. At the time I taught them, Aaron was just a very smart kid but Oren was already semi-famous for being the son of Amitai Etzioni, a Ph.D. in sociology who was serving as a domestic policy advisor to President Carter. In 1997, along with David Carney, Amitai Etzioni edited a book entitled Repentance: A Comparative Perspective. This is an exhaustive study of repentance in all its sociological and religious manifestations. Certain basic aspects of the civic and religious forms of repentance remain the same yet there are considerable differences in the theoretical underpinnings and the practical applications of it.

Before we get into Etzioni’s theories on repentance and the common elements within civic and religious repentance, let me tell you what inspired me to begin researching repentance. First of all, these are the High Holidays, the Days of Awe, the Ten Days of Repentance. The preceding month of Elul with the daily blowing of the Shofar and the recitation of the Selichot prayers prepares us for these days. During Elul, we should perform a heshbon nefesh, an accounting of our self, to review our actions over the past year so that on this day, the first day of the year 5771, Rosh Hashanah, we can begin to repent our misdeeds, apologize, make amends, and seek forgiveness. In other words, today is all about teshuvah, repentance. But there was another reason as well for this topic. Over the summer, I heard a news report that astounded me and caused me to wonder, “What exactly is repentance and what are its parameters?”

Keith Oberman from MSNBC gave a report about an article written in the July 24th issue of the Wall Street Journal. In that article, Stephanie Simon wrote from Colorado Springs, CO about the return of the Reverend Ted Haggard to the pulpit of a church. Four years earlier Reverend Haggard resigned as president of the politically powerful National Association of Evangelicals and from the megachurch he founded after admitting that he had bought methamphetamines and had a sexual encounter with a homosexual prostitute. While he was one of the most prominent church leaders in the U.S., Reverend Haggard would decry homosexuality and drug use from his mighty pulpit. In his tortured letter of confession, he called himself “a deceiver and a liar” who wrestled with “repulsive and dark” desires. He left town and he left the state with his wife promising to follow a new path and stay away from ministerial work. In the past few months, Reverend Haggard has moved back to his former community and launched a new church that has grown to a congregation of 200 people. Enthusiastic as ever, Reverend Haggard says he is back doing what he was born to do. As he put it, “Tiger Woods needs to golf. Michael Vick needs to be playing football. Ted Haggard needs to be leading a church.” Why he chose to explain his divine mandate to minister a church by comparing himself to an adulterer and an animal abuser, I do not know but the rest of his comments are the most revealing. As Ms. Simon wrote, ‘He acknowledged some grave lapses of judgment in the episode he refers to as “my crisis” but Mr. Haggard also said that in his sorrow and shame, he accepted too much guilt after the scandal broke. “I over-repented,” he said.’ When I heard that, all I could think of was that bank commercial with the little kid with glasses trying to put the eggs into the basket who says, “What does that even mean?!” I over-repented. Is that even possible? How can one over-repent? In Jewish terms, repentance is not over until forgiveness is achieved and the sinner does not repeat the sin when given the opportunity. Was Ted Haggard forgiven for the sin of misleading his mega-congregation? Perhaps. Has he found himself in a similar situation and resisted the temptations? I do not know. I am sure that in our communication crazy society someone would have put it on facebook or youtube if the situation presented itself. How can he say he over-repented? Is he implying that his repentance is over, that he no longer needs to feel sorry or ashamed, that it is totally gone and forgotten? Or is he saying something else.

Now we know that certain words can mean one thing to one person and something else to another person. This is especially true of people in different cultures that speak the same language. If you were in South Africa and you were told that you would get something “just now,” expect to wait a while. And if you were in Mexico and you used the word “cojer” that in Panama is a perfectly acceptable Spanish verb meaning “to take,” you might get some very strange looks. So before I judged, I wanted to see if repentance meant the same thing in other cultures and religions.

Amitai Etzioni begins his book on repentance by writing about civic or secular repentance. When you punish a child for wrongdoing, there is the time out, the penalty phase, which is then followed by a period of apologies, making amends, and reconciling with those who were hurt or offended by the child’s actions. Once the apologies and other actions to repair the damage viewed as sincere and sufficient, the child is returned to his or her former status. Dr. Etzioni laments that this last phase of repentance is currently absent from today’s civic society. He uses the example of Senator Gary Hart who suffered public ridicule and shame for his extramarital affairs and was summarily deposed from his front running position as the 1988 Democratic Presidential candidate. In 1995, seven years after having suffered defamation and loss, being forced out of the national political scene and paying the price for his brazen infidelity, Gary Hart tried to run for a seat in Congress and was roundly derided and discredited and unable to resume a career in politics. In other words, once guilty, always guilty, once an ex-con, always an ex-con. The process of repentance in secular and in religious society must have a conclusion that involves full reconciliation and full restoration of the guilty to his or her former position. Professor Etzioni laments that in today’s society, there are criminals who have gone through the full process of sincere repentance and yet they are still branded as criminals; without closure, without reintegration into society.

We know that in Judaism as in civic society the quality of the repentance, the sincerity of the remorse, the heartfelt sense of loss and the suffered punishments and chastisements should lead towards atonement and forgiveness. Our Talmudic sages teach us that it is forbidden for us to say to a penitent person, “Remember your past misdeeds.” On the contrary, we must do everything in our power to encourage a person to engage in true repentance. As we read in our High Holiday prayer book, “It is not the death of sinners that God seeks, only that they turn from their former ways and live!” In Judaism, only the cruelest and most evil people who feel no guilt and lack all remorse for their actions would never have a chance at full atonement yet it seems that in our contemporary secular culture, society is always skeptical about a person’s sincerity in repentance and never seems to be satisfied by a person’s payment for his or her sin to grant them atonement or forgiveness.

Is that what happened in the case of Ted Haggard? In his claim of over-repentance was he trying to say, that he had suffered more than enough and that civic and religious society were never going to judge him favorably despite his sincere repentance and remorse? No, I don’t think so. He did suffer for his misdeeds but his current statements make it clear that he does not feel true remorse for his sin. He speaks about the homosexual affair as a massage that somehow went wrong and that he does not have same-sex attractions. He says that some church leaders went on a witch-hunt accusing him of engaging in a pattern of misconduct including inappropriate relationships and sordid talk. He laughs this off by saying that his only fault was cracking a few crude jokes. He tearfully confessed his sins in front of a national television audience on the Oprah Winfrey show but now he downplays them as if they were no big deal and along with his insincere remorse, he ignores the fact that his real sin was in misleading the congregation. It seems clearly evident that he has not yet repented and surely has not over repented for that sin.

Amitai Etzioni breaks down repentance in to three crucial elements, the three R’s of repentance. The first one is true remorse. It is hard to describe what true remorse is but we can identify what it is not by examining its polar opposite. False remorse is characterized by transferring guilt to others; for example, Eric and Lyle Menendez accusing their parents of abuse to exonerate themselves for murdering them. False remorse also involved trivializing the crime and disparaging the law. Professor Etzioni uses Lyn Nofziger, an aide to President Reagan who trivialized his conviction for influence peddling calling it tantamount to a parking ticket. Had Dr. Etzioni written his book today, I am sure that he would have used Ted Haggard’s example of calling his inappropriate behavior and sordid speech as just “cracking a few crude jokes.” Offering apologies with defeating qualifications as in the case of Senator Packwood of Oregon who in response to the accusation of repeated sexual harassment said, “I’m sorry if I did those things they say I did,” is a further symptom of false remorse. Along with true remorse not bearing any of the above symptoms of false remorse, the truth of a person’s remorse is the most convincing when it does not sound faked, rehearsed or devoid of emotion but said with sincerity and, although this is rarely the case, when there is little or nothing to be gained directly from its expression.

The second crucial element that must be part of any process of repentance is restitution i.e. doing penance or making amends whether by means of punishment, monetary compensation to the victims and/or to the community, or any other appropriate suffering or humbling experience. Religious suffering, at least within the monotheistic religions, can range from social isolation, self-affliction through fasting and other abstentions, to corporal punishment usually administered through self-flagellation. These are not meant to be ends in themselves but merely the pathways towards atonement and ultimately forgiveness. Eztioni points out that in civic society this phase of repentance usually involves isolation through incarceration. The problem is that imprisonment often short circuits the restorative reconciliation part of the process of repentance because the sinner or shall we say the criminal now associates him or herself with the alienated part of society, is not given a real chance at rehabilitation and cannot reestablish his or her position within law abiding society. This is why we have so many repeat offenders and why recidivism keeps our prisons crowded, which further inhibits the rehabilitation process for incarcerated criminals. Following a June 2006 study by a bi-partisan government commission on America’s prisons, we learned that to reduce overcrowding in our prisons 95% of prison inmates are released back into society after the completion of their sentence. Within three years of their release, however, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated. This high recidivism rate clearly calls into question the effectiveness of America's corrections system. Prisons might keep the criminals off the street which prevents them from committing crimes while imprisoned but, in most cases, they do not help a criminal do a full teshuvah and return to being a law-abiding citizen once they are released.

What is missing in the process of civic repentance today is the critical third step; restructuring one’s life. This element of repentance is often overlooked. In contemporary society, we focus on the sincerity of the remorse expressed and the proper punishment and penance paid by the sinner but we miss this third and most essential element without which repentance is not complete. Our Talmudic sages and the great medieval scholars and thinkers such as Saadia ha-Gaon, Bahya Ibn Pakuda and Rabbi Moses Maimonides described this third step as the quintessential acid test of true repentance. In the Talmudic tractate about Yom Kippur, the third century Babylonian teacher Rabbi Judah teaches us that a true penitent is defined as one who twice more encounters the object or person that led to his or her original transgression and does not repeat the transgression. Professor Etzioni writes that it is not enough for an adulterous person to show remorse and be punished. That person must never again commit adultery otherwise those first two elements of repentance, remorse and restitution, will be insufficient and ineffective. True reintegration into law-abiding, moral society must not be granted until a period has passed in which the guilty parties have had a chance to demonstrate that they have restructured their lives and themselves. Therefore, in the case of Ted Haggard, the jury is still out, his repentance will be deemed sincere and true if and when he finds himself in the position to commit his former sins again and does not do it. Only then will his repentance be over. Until then, it is morally offensive and grossly inaccurate for him to declare that he over-repented. According to Dr. Etzioni, remorse, restitution and restructuring are the critical, unavoidable, and essential steps in the process of repentance. Repentance in Judaism follows that path but does Dr. Etzioni’s theory of repentance hold true in other religions as well.

On August 6, sixty-five years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan, I was coming from a visit at Harbor Place, and as I was turning from Jennings Road onto US 1, I looked over at the guy who stands there on that corner every day proclaiming the gospel and calling all people to come to Jesus and I saw written on the big wooden cross that he leans against the traffic light pole the words “Repent and be saved.” I wondered what kind of repentance would lead to salvation and not to forgiveness or atonement. Does repentance means something different in Christianity?

The late evangelical theologian and scholar Reverend Dr. Harold Brown wrote a chapter in Dr. Etzioni’s book on Christian views of repentance. He wrote that in Christianity, repentance depends on the redeemer and not the individual. Belief and allegiance to Jesus is the key to repentance and forgiveness rendering free will and individual responsibility of lesser consequence. While Christianity and all religions teach the need for people to follow the rules and behave within the moral constraints just as civic society expects its citizens to abide by the laws, the stress on personal responsibility found in Judaism and in civic society is not the same for Christians. While in Judaism we must personally repent of our actions and ask forgiveness from our fellow human beings before we can ask God to forgive us on Yom Kippur, there is no such requirement in Christianity. For Christians, there is no distinction; a sin against God is a sin against our neighbors and vice versa. Dr. Brown describes the elements of Christian repentance as genuine remorse, determined resolution to never repeat the sin, evidence that the person has begun to live in a new way and full restoration and reintegration into the community. Notice that the element of doing penance, making amends, or suffering some kind of deprivation or punishment is not included in Dr. Brown’s description of Christian repentance. Could that be the key to understanding Reverend Haggard’s remarks? Perhaps.

I researched a little further and read the chapter in Dr. Etzioni’s book about repentance in Islam written by Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub, a Lebanese Muslim who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and served for ten years as the Director of Islamic Studies at Temple University. Professor Ayoub writes that Islamic repentance is known as tawbah, an Arabic word similar in meaning to the Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, which means returning. In Islam, tawbah is returning to God with contrition, supplication and penitence eager for salaam submission to God’s will. The word tawbah and its derivatives appear 87 times in the Quran. In Islam, God (Allah) is ready to forgive if the sinner turns with complete faith in God alone. Notice once again, an absence of any need to seek forgiveness from your fellow human being, let alone your fellow Muslim. For Muslims, repentance is an act of divine grace. Suffering or self-affliction, especially within Sunni Muslim tradition, is not part of the process of repentance. Aside from absolute faith in Allah, human actions have no influence or effect on repentance or forgiveness.

While it may be interesting or even fascinating to discuss and discover other religious or secular traditions about repentance, we are here today on the first of the Ten Days of Repentance to fully commit ourselves to the process of repentance. Truth be told, there really isn’t a starting point to repentance and it cannot be completed within ten days. Our daily prayers include a plea for forgiveness for our multiple sins and transgressions. The Talmudic ideal is for a person to spend each day in repentance. In the Talmudic tractate on Shabbat, Rabbi Eliezer is quoted as saying, “Repent one day before your death.” When the late Rabbi Albert Lewis quoted these words of Talmud to Mitch Albom, his eulogist and the author of “Have A Little Faith,” Mitch Albom replied “But how do you know it’s the day before your death?” and Rabbi Lewis raised his eyebrows and said, “Exactly.” Rabbi Eliezer and all our sages are teaching us that since none of us know the day we are going to die, we should repent everyday. Consequently, for us, no one can ever over-repent but we can certainly repent insufficiently or inadequately or insincerely.

Most of us have committed acts over the past year for which we are now sorry. Whether through acts of omission or commission, willfully or by mistake, we have done things that were hurtful or misguided for which we need to repent, express remorse, and ask for forgiveness. In “Have A Little Faith,” Rabbi Lewis teaches us of a little known Jewish traditional practice at a funeral of going up to the coffin and asking the deceased to forgive everything you have ever done to hurt them. Rabbi Lewis comments that he doesn’t want to wait that long and so he uses his last High Holiday sermon to his congregation to repent and ask them to forgive him for all the things he should have done that he did not do and all the mistakes he made which he should not have made. Thankfully, this is not my last High Holiday sermon to my congregation although it might be my longest but I wanted to take this opportunity to repent and ask you all to forgive me for all the things I should have done but failed to do and all the mistakes I may have made that I should not have made.

In Judaism, we can never over-repent. It is not possible. True repentance can bring lasting change to people and communities but it will not happen overnight. Repentance and therefore forgiveness is a process that takes time. In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima, the first use of nuclear weapon which killed 140,000 people, only 50% of Americans felt remorse and a desire to apologize over the dropping the atom bomb on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Then President Clinton decided not to offer a public apology to the people of Japan nor did he believe that one was necessary. Fifteen years later in 2010, for the first time, a representative of the US government, Ambassador John Roos, attended the ceremonies in Hiroshima commemorating the event. It was not exactly an apology or an expression of true remorse but maybe it was the first step towards healing. Repentance takes time and we cannot and should not try to speed up or inhibit the process but it must be allowed to proceed and hopefully reach its ultimate conclusion of forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration. Like Yogi Berra used to say, “It’s over when it’s over.”

May it be God’s will that we eagerly embrace the opportunity given to us today and all these ten days of repentance to acknowledge our wrongdoings, sincerely express our remorse, seek to reconcile and reunite with friends, family members and fellow congregants, perform a true repentance and pursue forgiveness, healing and peace. And let us say, Amen