This is a tale of two tattoos -- a parable of regret and redemption.

There was a man who had been a devout Jew. As a boy and young man, he had joyfully worshipped his God in the village shul, and he kept all of God's commandments and laws.

But when he entered his twenties, the man turned away from God, he rebelled against his law-laden religion, and went off to live in a faraway city. Once there, he chose a secular life, and in an act of clear defiance against his tradition, he had bold colorful tattoos inscribed over the surfaces of his arms and chest. Each time he admired the tattoos in the mirror he felt liberated from his restrictive past.

But, one day he awoke and yearned to turn back to his God, to reenter his community. In keeping with tradition, the man knew that he would first have to undergo a mikva (or ritual bath) in order to purify himself before God prior to entering the temple. He returned to his village and hurried excitedly to the mikva.

 Once he had disrobed and was poised to step into the bath, a community leader blocked his way and angrily admonished him that, according to strict Jewish law, no one who had demeaned and mutilated himself through the act of being tattooed was permitted to enter the mikva for fear that it would defile the water.

 The tattooed man sat dejected on the edge of the bath and began to softly weep. Would he never be reconciled again to his God or to his community? would his tattoos forever be like the proverbial Mark of Cain, preventing his redemption?

A second man came upon him crying and bent down to inquire of his suffering, and the tattooed man explained his plight. The second man held out his arm, upon which one could clearly see a crude row of blue identification numbers that been tattooed there, against his will, by the Nazis at Auschwitz. The Holocaust survivor took the tattooed man's hand and gently said, "Come. Let us step into the bath together."

I love this tale because it is so poignant, and also because it has everything to do with what I'd like to get at today in my sermon -- brokenness and wholeness, perfection and humanity, estrangement and reconciliation, forgiving and being forgiven -- the human condition in a nutshell.

 First, I'd like you to consider which of the characters in the parable you most identify with. Is it the sincerely repentant tattooed man, whose mistakes have estranged him from his community, but who seeks the healing waters of forgiveness and redemption? Is it the perfectionistic community leader, who arrogantly steps into the shoes of a wrathful God and is unwilling to absolve the sinner?

 Perhaps it is the Holocaust survivor, who has somehow moved beyond the heinous trespasses against him despite the daily reminder of his tattooed forearm; a loving comforter who forgives the tattooed pariah on behalf of his community and as a representative of a loving God?

  I must admit that I identify with all of them in one way or another -- I have made mistakes, some of which have left tattoos visible only to me; at times, I have maintained absurdly high standards at the expense of relationships. Yet, more often than not, I have reached out in support and forgiveness, and I deeply believe that we are each called to do no less in our lives.

 So why is it that the words, "I'm sorry," the phrase, "I forgive you," and the admission, "I messed up, I am imperfect," tend to get stuck in our throats? Why do we often sit dejected on the edge of the bath, when the healing waters swirl nearby?

 Every day our nation is confronted with an onslaught of details about President Clinton-- his misdeeds and half-truths, and with his increasingly humble pleas for forgiveness and redemption. And, so here we are -- wondering what to do, how to feel and respond, how to decide whether to forgive.

 Wednesday is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and even though I am no longer religiously Jewish, I welcome this yearly opportunity to join in spirit with our Jewish brethren to contemplate our transgressions, to restore our right relation to ourselves, to the divine as we each know it, and to others. It is a time when we are encouraged to deal with remorse in a healthy way, as we lift oppressive guilt from our hearts and souls through forgiveness. It is a time to choose the cleansing bath of self-love and renewal, rather than the hair shirt of self-loathing.

 A key passage from "The Gates of Repentance," the Yom Kippur liturgy book (quoted by President Clinton himself at a recent prayer breakfast), explains that these sacred Days of Awe are a time for "turning." "The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange," it reads. "The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to store in their food for the winter. For leaves, birds, and animals, turning comes instinctively. But, for us, turning does not comes so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy. It means losing face. It means starting all over again. And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do..."

  Who can argue that self-reflection is not easy, forgiving our imperfection is not easy, forgiving trespasses against us is not easy, renewal and rebirth are not easy. Turning does not come so easily for us. But the alternative is no cakewalk, either -- unforgiveness begets hard feelings, hard hearts, a hard and heavy burden to bear, a hard road back to wholeness.

 In all honesty, I don't think I can go any further in this sermon without mentioning "sin, " a very prickly and tough word to say and hear because it pushes so many hot buttons. "Sin," or what a colleague calls "the second most dreaded word in Unitarian Universalism." Apparently, there is some debate about whether it is the word "evil" or the word "canvass" that takes the top prize! At any rate... venal sin, mortal sin, cardinal sin, original sin -- it all gives some of us the willies!

 Unitarian Universalists are notorious for avoiding this topic. We even expunged the following line from Rumi's famous poem when we concocted our UU hymn #188: "Come, come ,even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, come, yet again, come." We heard that line reinserted musically this morning in our introit. But sin is very real and so is the need to be cleansed of sin, to be both the forgiven and the forgiver, to have our integrity and our connections restored.

What do I mean by sin and what does it have to do with forgiveness and with us ? In my view, the liberal theologian Paul Tillich got it just about right when he defined sin as our estrangement from the sacred as we each understand it (or what I will refer to in this sermon as "God"), and the corresponding separation from our best selves and from our community. We lose the relational, we are isolated from meaning; we are left in sin. Remember that when Cain is driven from the Garden of Eden, he laments: "My punishment is greater than I can bear." As Tillich puts it, sin (as estrangement) becomes it own punishment. Don't we see this outcome at work in the despair of the tattooed man?

I agree with Tillich that a loving, forgiving God tends the wounded and chastised soul. God wants us to be whole and reconciled, renewed in the warm healing mikva rather than stuck miserably on the cold hard edge of the bath.

  My husband, David, who is now a non-practicing Catholic, recalls almost viscerally the palpable relief and renewal which accompanied absolution. "I felt like I was in a true state of grace," he remembers. "There was something so potent about hearing the priest say I was forgiven -- my sin was lifted; I would walk out of church and the whole world would seem new to me, the slate was wiped clean. "

 A UU friend of mine, also raised as a Catholic, puts a different spin on confession. She recalls how her priest would begin each Lenten Mass by bellowing, "We are all sinners here." (and he didn't mean sin in Tillichian terms). For the remainder of the service, she would sqwunch down in the pew so that he couldn't see her sinful face or read her sinful thoughts. She knew that later she would have to confess her sins to him and she felt such anxiety and shame.

She told me, "Now I confess my sins directly to God and to the people I've wronged. I don't want or need a surrogate. I can forgive myself and love myself now in a way that wasn't really possible back then." My friend concedes that it takes a lot of practice before one can eventually internalize forgiveness without hearing it from the mouth of a minister or a priest.

 The concept of sin figures prominently in the observance of Yom Kippur, as well; so much so that the traditional opening words of the service are: "By consent of the authorities in heaven and on earth, we permit sinners to enter and be part of the congregation." Typically, everyone in attendance assumes those words are addressed to him, to her. Religion and conscience have communicated the idea that they have not always been the people they should be, and it is to Judaism (and the Rabbi) that they turn for an affirming message of forgiveness and acceptance.

 The point is that whether we are Jewish, Christian, UU, or otherwise, we need to recognize having done wrong, regret it, and resolve not to repeat it. We need to confess -- one way or another. It is a "terribly hard thing to do," but personally, it sounds like something worth working at.

So, how good do we have to be, to be forgiven? An A+, a B+, a B-? The Rabbi Harold Kushner blesses us with a wonderful new book which asks just that question -- How Good Do We Have to Be? In it, he shares his belief that the fundamental message of religion is not that we are sinners because we are not perfect; but rather that the challenge of being human is so complex that God knows better than to expect perfection from us.

 After all, within the Biblical tradition (one of our UU sources), our imperfection is God-given. God might have envisioned perfect, but if you browse back through Genesis, you'll find that God pronounces his creative efforts , "good," not perfect. It's right there in black and white!! This would render the so-called original sin an original "blessing." It reminds me of the folk saying, "I'm not much Lord, but I'm all I've got."

 Because we are inherently, even blessedly imperfect; but as Kushner reminds us, the task of religious community is to wash us clean of our sense of unworthiness and to assure us that when we have tried to be good and have not been as good as we wanted to be, we have not forfeited God's love, what is best within us, or the support of our fellow human beings. Let's remember that when the Biblical God marked Cain he did so not only to identify him as a murderer but also to shield him from vengeance.

 Yet, to say that God pardons us for our misdeeds and welcomes us, warts, tattoos, and all into the mikva is not really a statement about God or about God's emotional generosity. It is a statement about us. When push comes to shove, will we be the self-righteous community leader or the compassionate Holocaust survivor? Will we thrust forward a hair shirt or a helping hand?

 Earlier in the prayer by Kim Beach, we heard these words: "May we with gentleness and genuineness forgive ourselves." That could well be a mantra for our times! Especially, since some of us have no doubt internalized a message from parents, teachers, loved ones, and society that we are only deserving of love, praise, or forgiveness when we are perfect or pretty darn close.

 It just isn't so, says Rabbi Kushner. On the contrary, the most valuable phrase in the Bible, he tells us, comes from Genesis 17, when God says to Abraham, "Walk before me and be tamim." Although the King James translates tamim as "perfect" and the RSV opts for "blameless," Kushner prefers the translation, "whole-hearted." God asked Abraham to be whole and to have integrity, not to be perfect.

 What about us? I believe that if we can learn to embrace our own inherent blessed fallibility, and strive for wholeness rather than perfection, then we will be more capable of tackling the challenge of forgiving trespasses against us and against the community...something else that certainly can be "terribly hard to do."

 In the novel, The Brother's Karamozov, the character Ivan recounts in excruciating detail the atrocities he has witnessed on his journey across Russia, and he asks his brother Aloysha, "Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive such a man?

 I echo Ivan's sentiments when I ask, How can we forgive, how do we forgive the rapist, the child molester, the unfaithful partner or disloyal friend, the oppressor, the misbehaving President, the neglectful parent, the unfair teacher, the bullying sibling, the hate monger. When it is all happening to us, how do we deliver the goods?

 First, let's be clear. Forgiving is not condoning, soft-pedaling evil or downplaying sin. In the end, forgiving is about us and about liberating ourselves from the anger and resentment of the past. Forgiving frees us of the double jeopardy of a miserable life added to the pain of the original wound.

 Forgiveness is a healing bath that can soothe past wounds that we can neither change or forget. Surely, we see this notion exemplified in the Holocaust survivor. He can not rewrite history or expunge sins against him, but he can make choices about his future -- will he be estranged or reconciled; courageous or self-pitying; broken or whole, even when confronted with a painful and permanent scar?

 The beloved Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han echoes the Lotus Sutra when he urges us: "Do not maintain anger and hatred. As soon as anger and hatred arise, practice the meditation on compassion in order to deeply understand the persons who have caused anger and hatred. When you begin to see the enemy suffering, that is the beginning of insight." Again, I believe we are called to do no less in our lives.

 Now is the time for turning. So if you feel like the tattooed man or like the Holocaust survivor, take heart and look around you for a dejected comrade or for an outstretched hand. Your sin is no more unforgivable. Your imperfections are no more remarkable. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, come, yet again, come.

 Forgiveness can be that open byway to an unseen future that our painful past has shut. When we forgive, we take God's hand, walk over the threshold, and experience the healing that is just waiting for us to make it real. We take one another's hand, and we step together into the mikva.

 Amen and Blessed Be.
 
 
 
 

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