Rev. Sharon K. Dittmar

October 8, 2000

Two weeks ago I attended a seminar for clergy on conflict dynamics. My colleagues and I spent most of the week broken into small case studies group. In one exercise we were asked to select qualities with the least power. I noticed that one of the male colleagues from my group selected "femininity" as a quality with the least power. This irritated me. I was disappointed and surprised. I liked this colleague and I had come to trust him.

The next time we broke into our small groups, before I even sat down, I said, "Bill, did you really choose femininity as a quality with the least power." He said, "Yes". A female colleague next to me started to ask him why, then there were more questions, and suddenly Bill was entirely on the spot. He became angry, particularly with me, and then defensive, and then I found myself farther away from understanding him than before I asked my question.

I could have left it like that. My question was fair but something felt wrong. I felt wrong. Maybe it was the thought of ending my conflict dynamics class in a fight with someone I had just sat next to for four day. (Do you think they could withhold my course certificate for something like that?)

Even more, over the course of four days an extremely diverse theological group of ministers had become friends. So often I enter a group of clergypersons and I am an outsider or unaccepted because I am not a Christian. Within this group I was accepted. Bill in particular had taken the time to ask me about Unitarian Universalism. He was curious and respectful.

I just wasn't willing to throw this all away, especially when I knew I had made a mistake. My question wasn't wrong, it was where I had asked it - in front of our group, which made Bill look bad, which then made him angry, and then made him intractable, and then made me angry. It began so simply, as all good conflict does, and then it became bigger and bigger.

I could have walked away with my morally just anger. What self-respecting feminist lets a comment like that go by? Bill certainly didn't need to get so defensive. But the thought of Bill and I in wrong relationship was bitter, the thought of sacrificing our newborn theological understanding was even more so, and what irked me the most is that I knew it was unnecessary. More than I wanted to walk away, I wanted to be in dialogue.

In the end I chose to apologize. Our whole group had seen and participated in the argument, so I apologized to the group. I said "The question I asked Bill earlier was fair but I asked it in the wrong place and I put him on the spot. I made a mistake." And here I looked at Bill and said, "I am sorry." In an instant I could tell that our group was right again. We sat in silence for a moment before another colleague said, "It takes a big person to apologize." I really hadn't expected that, and I'll tell you, it felt good.

What felt best of all is that I knew our relationship was no longer broken. Oh sure, there is an excellent chance that Bill thinks I'm one of "those" feminists, and I certainly think his ideas of gender equity are suspect. That's not the point. The point is that if we ever met again, we'd have a chance to talk about it. The point is that I put him in a bad position, and regardless of the moral high ground, I owed him an apology. The point is that apologies restore right relationship, atonement, or "at-one-ment" as one of my Rabbi colleagues likes to say. The point is that apologies and when we can offer it, atonement and forgiveness, makes us strong, not weak.

Mary Gordon writes

Out of the living darkness, the germs from which life can reknit itself to begin again.

Tonight at sundown Jews around the world will celebrate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Yom Kippur is the final day of a ten-day period of introspection that began with the blowing of the shofar, or ram's horn on Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year. The shofar reminds Jews to scrutinize their conduct. It also reminds Jews that living in the past is a form of psychic death, and that Judaism is about choosing and honoring life through continual growth. After hearing the shofar, Jews have ten days, known as the Days of Awe, to examine their souls and actions during the past year, and to seek atonement with God and those they have wronged.

So far I have used the words atonement and forgiveness interchangeably. Both appear in the High Holy Days liturgy, but there is a difference. Rabbi Irving Greenberg explains

Atonement requires more individual reflection, responsibility, and choice than forgiveness. Atonement requires an inner change. Theologically speaking both atonement and forgiveness are acts of grace, gifts of a loving God. Practically speaking, atonement is inner change while forgiveness is absolution from sin whether or not there has been inner change. Realistically speaking, all too often we have seen, given or accepted forgiveness that is cheap, insincere, undeserved. Atonement sets the bar higher by demanding more of us as humans.

Recently I had a theological epiphany about forgiveness. Call me slow, but it just recently occurred to me that if you are Jewish, forgiveness as broadly understood by our culture, is a lot harder to achieve (and yes, I do believe that our cultural understanding of forgiveness is Christian). After all part of the Christian covenant is that God sent his son, Jesus, to cleanse the sins of the world. Christian are forgiven for sins, saved, in Jesus' name, through his suffering and crucifixion.

My personal observation is that this has led to cheap grace and sloppy forgiveness within the Christian community and our American culture. "We are saved in Jesus. All things are possible in Jesus. We are saved and forgiven." But did we ever reflect and make an inner change?

I called a Rabbi friend to ask her opinion. She had lots to say, obviously having noticed this distinction much sooner than I.

She said, "Ya, forgiveness sounds great. I wish I believed in it like Christians. But we aren't forgiven just because we believe in God. We have to work for it. It's a harder discipline, but it's also truer."

Atonement is a corporate ideal, but more importantly it is individual and directly relational. Offenders can only seek forgiveness from those they offended, and only those who have been offended can forgive the offenders. The Talmud teaches (Yoma 8.9), "For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones, but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another."

In other words, we are held accountable for our own mistakes. No one can stand in for us, no one can cover for us. There's no calling in a third party or intercessory to shift the blame, distract attention, or mediate. Likewise, it is no one's business but our own. We are directly and solely accountable to the person or persons we have offended.

I don't want to be completely critical of forgiveness. It is a vital ethical and religious concept. My theological concern is this; with Jesus (or sometimes Mary) as an intercessory figure, it becomes possible to believe we are forgiven, or saved, without really doing the work, without really turning, sometimes without really facing or being directly accountable to the people we have offended.

No matter what our faith, there is an all too human tendency for us to deny our mistakes, to grudgingly give apologies, to say "I'm sorry" without really making a permanent change in our hearts. I know you've been there. I have. Even atonement leads to sloppy, insincere apologies, but with the theological emphasis of atonement it is just a little bit harder to get away with it. And for Jews, every year there is a ten day period where you get to remember and live with your mistakes, including insincere apologies.

There is one other reason I like atonement over forgiveness, it creates a space when we cannot forgive. With Jesus as a role model, there can be extra pressure on Christians to forgive wrongs, to turn the other cheek. After all, Jesus the suffering servant, the martyred victim, forgave and saved a people. How then can I withhold my forgiveness from someone? How indeed.

Every year someone makes their way to my office saying "I are burdened because I cannot forgive someone or something." In every instance the person has a story about violence, loss, and a gross misuse of power that must make the very earth cry. And every time I listen and respond "No one can decide when to forgive but you, and sometimes it is not possible to forgive. It is enough that you survived." My colleague Rabbi Rick Steinberg writes:

There are some acts so violent that they may not be forgivable. But what about all the other ones, even hurtful, unjust betrayals? For most of these, we must forgive if we are to live. I learned this when I spent almost a decade enraged by the behavior of a beloved cousin's husband.

My cousin's husband was easy to dislike, opinionated, spiteful, domineering, angry, unfaithful. So I disliked him, in fact I hated him. I was well-justified in my hatred. I had the moral high ground. Everyone, except my cousin, knew he was a fool, a dangerous fool.

Several years into this feud I had a spiritual advisor who suggested I pray for him. It was an interesting task, praying for someone I despised. To tell you the truth I couldn't do it. All I could think about was the wrong done to me and my cousin, how we didn't deserve it, how she had been hurt, then how I had been hurt, how it had damaged our relationship. I was at an impasse. Then after ten years, I finally realized that my rage was destroying not him, but me, and I began to let it go.

I had become a victim of my own rage. Long standing anger had left me alienated, and isolated from other family members. I was trapped in the past, co-creating my own psychological death into the present and future. It took ten years for me to understand and admit that my beloved cousin had some responsibility for the situation, and so did I. I just couldn't blame her husband for everything anymore. I had responsibility too. Certainly for some actions and events, but even more that I had chosen to hold on to the glamour and power of anger rather than cultivate the labor-intensive modesty of forgiveness and peace. After ten years I could look back and see that I had liked my anger all too well, and it was killing me.

Author and minister Frederick Buechner writes:

The thing that is so hard to accept is that in truly forgiving someone else we gain liberation from feelings like anger, hurt, shame, blame, and powerlessness, that began in justice, and end in control. The great irony being that these feelings control us, not the offender, but the victim, the bystander, the participant, the silent witness. We become a double victim, once from the offense, and twice from our own feelings, the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. Mary Gordon writes:

Anger, resentment, blame, they are exhilarating, glamorous, even powerful, yet ultimately destructive. The question each of us must ask is, "Can I trade exhilaration, glamour, and power for an unexciting life of peace, liberation, and joy in the presence of others?" It feels irrational to forgive and to seek forgiveness, yet it is a blessing.

Author Betty Flanigan writes:

When we make a sincere apology we share power, we admit that we are fallible and even more important, that the opinion of someone else matters. Christian Baldwin says that "Forgiveness is the act of admitting we are like other people." We admit that we are human. We admit we are not in control. We face the possibility of rejection. We admit that relationship, community, is as important as our unassailable individual rightness. "Anger has the glamour of illicit sex, forgiveness the endlessly flexible requirements of a long marriage."

Forgiveness honors relationship rather than individual rightness. Forgiveness recognizes that we are interdependent. The secret of forgiveness and forgiving is that while we share power with another, we also regain our own power. We regain the power of peace and joy in one another's presence. We trade in the powerlessness that kept us clutching at past resentments for the power to create a better future. We choose life.

When I initiated a disagreement in my conflict course I sat and thought about it for an hour before I chose to make an apology. It took me that long to figure out my part and Bill's part, and what I wanted to apologize for if anything. Judaism is very wise to offer ten days of reflection and reconciliation at the start of every year. It takes time to unravel the strands of our words and actions and those of the people we love and hate.

What worried me the most in this instance was the fear of "losing face", of Bill believing that because I had apologized, I had no right to question him in the first place. As a young, female minister you have to understand that those stakes were rather high for me. I finally chose to apologize because I realized it was the only way to be the feminist I want to be. My apology freed me from being helpless, a victim of gender stereotypes. I felt strangely powerful after I apologized to Bill, because I had given both of us the room to be ourselves, fully fallible, fully unique, and fully in relation with one another. And so we began again.

Tonight at sundown, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins. It is the final day before the Gates of Heaven close, the final chance to make ourselves right with others and have our name written in the Book of Life for another year. At the end of the sermon we will take time for silent reflection. Has this sermon reminded you of someone? Yourself? A friend, family member, colleague, or neighbor? Are you struggling to accept forgiveness? To seek forgiveness? Do you have a wound that will never heal and a scar that will always ache? If so, how will you find another way to live?

Please join me in a time of silent reflection followed by a litany of atonement. We have before us a chance to remember, a chance to turn, a chance to begin again. Use it well. Shanah Tovah. I wish you a blessed New Year.