Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Well, there are two opportunities for the longest messages of the year in a rabbi's calendar year.
[00:00:30] Who knows the first one?
[00:00:33] It's a good guess. Shabbat Hagadol is number one. Why Shabbat Hagadol? When is Shabbat Hagadol? It's the Shabbat before Passover. It is the time when there's a lot of things that a community needed to know about removing leaven from their home, about hosting a seder, about the proper way to make sure that all the leaven, the chametz was removed. And so that was a final opportunity to give detailed instructions about that. It also happens to be a very spiritual time in the life of a religious person, and therefore plenty of opportunity to talk about redemption and deliverance and covenants and all kinds of things. So that's a major, major message time. When do you think the other one is? Dave? Put out a good suggestion. Rosh Hashanah. That makes sense. It would seem logical. Or maybe the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. Right. As you're entering into the holiday. That was last week. Yom Kippur.
[00:01:39] That's another sensible option. Last chance to get yourself together as we're thinking about being sealed and inscribed in the book of life, written and sealed there. So which one of those do you think it is? Rosh Hashanah? Yom Kippur.
[00:02:06] It's neither. It's today.
[00:02:09] It's today.
[00:02:13] Shabbat shuvah.
[00:02:16] Shabbat. Oh, very nice.
[00:02:19] Shabbat shuva, the Shabbat of return. It is today, the Sabbath, that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is from our haftarah reading that we did today from the book of Hosea, which says, shuvah adon Shuvah, Yisrael. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. Now, why is it such an important message? Why is this the day?
[00:02:50] Because that's exactly what you are supposed to be doing right now. That is, this is the time in these ten days of awe, Rosh Hashanah was supposed to, you know, wake you up. Right? The sound of the shofar. It's supposed to wake you up to focus on self improvement, on prayer, seeking forgiveness, both from God, from other people. And you're supposed to know that right now we're headed toward Yom Kippur. And that's a big deal. The day of atonement, the signing ceiling, all of this Saturday night, this next Saturday night, the gates close.
[00:03:29] Right now we've had the king in the field for this ten days, Rosh Hashanah, elul, 40 days, really elul to Yom Kippur. But next Saturday night, that gate in the service of Nilah closes. So Shabbat shuva, it catches you in the middle of the process.
[00:03:48] You're in between Rosh Hashanah to emphasize these themes of Shuva, introspection, encouraging you to return to your best self, to strengthen all of our important relationships with God, with those around us. And you might be asking yourself, well, but wait a minute, isn't that exactly what he taught on last week about being? And then at Rosh Hashanah, for those of you who are here, Arab Rosh hashanah. Wait, isn't that exactly what he taught us about that, like, being good and God seeing good in us? And, you know, do we do the question? You might ask, do we really need another especially long message on introspection and teshuva? Well, you get to ask a question.
[00:04:40] I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions.
[00:04:44] Are you doing it?
[00:04:47] Are you actually doing anything about it? Great, here we are. Are you doing it? Are you focusing on the things that need attention? Secondly, if you are.
[00:04:58] If you are doing it, what have you uncovered? What list have you made? What points of attention have you given to your introspection and your life? What changes have you decided to make? What are you prepared to come out of the holidays doing? Acting, being different?
[00:05:21] What are you repairing? What are you bringing to God? What are you restoring? Listen, I hope all of that is happening, but I've got good news for you.
[00:05:30] I'm going to do all the things required for Shabbat shuva today, and a teaching that I really, really want you to get. I really want you to apply it. It's practical, it's hands on. It's the getter done kind of theological stuff or spiritual stuff that you need. But the good news is I'm not going to need all day to do it.
[00:05:53] I don't have to make this the longest message of the year. I'm actually going to follow the example of Ras Lakeish, who was a rabbi in the Talmud in Israel, who he makes the majorly important point for Shabbat Shuvah in one paragraph, one paragraph, as he talks about the importance of repentance. And now it builds on what I shared with you on Arav Rosh Hashanah, that is true about the way that God sees us. God sees us not as our worst, but as our potential to be the best. So here, ras Lakeish builds on that idea, he discusses sin and repentance. And as I. As I pondered his words and realized this, this year, that whole idea that I talked about on Rosh Hashanah is kind of unorthodox, no pun intended. This is another like, turning the holidays on its ear, because for most of my life in the holidays, the holidays are always about. Well, they're not really much of a holiday. They're about guilt and, you know, kind of doing some things that are not that pleasant. Okay. So as I pondered rakish and thought about Rosh Hashanah, I realized that I'm kind of turning the holidays on their ear a little bit for people. But it's all coming from a wonderfully jewish perspective, just a little bit different. What Raysh Lakesh says is actually quite shocking. It will be shocking to the traditional religious mindset. Now, here's what he's. And I like it.
[00:07:33] Here's what he says in Yoma, a tractate that is specifically focused on Yom Kippur, a lot on repentance. Ras Lakesh said, great is penitence because it actual great is penitence because it reduces one's deliberate sins to mere errors.
[00:07:55] The Talmud asks, but did ras Lakish say at another time, great is penitence because it transforms one's deliberate sins into merits?
[00:08:09] The Talmud answers, there's no difficulty here.
[00:08:14] The latter statement refers to penitence out of love, the former to penitence out of fear. So, listen, I want you to understand what he's saying here. First off, the rabbis in the Talmud and our rabbi and all of the apostles, Yeshua, all of the apostles, the prophets, they were really big fans of repentance, of shuvah, as a matter of fact. That is indeed the gospel message, repent, return, turn right.
[00:08:43] So much so that they often describe it in like miraculous terms, what repentance can do.
[00:08:52] So here, ras Lakish made two powerful and seemingly paradoxical statements about sin and the transformative power of repentance. So listen to what he's saying and think of the time that we're in here on Shabbat. He first said, repentance is so great that it can turn deliberate sins into mere mistakes, into unintentional sins.
[00:09:19] But he also taught elsewhere that repentance can do something even more astonishing. It can turn those sins into merits, good things. Now, at first glance, these ideas seem impossible. How could something we did intentionally wrong be reduced to something that we didn't intentionally do? That's what he suggests.
[00:09:49] And more challenging, how could our sins actually become good deeds.
[00:09:56] It sort of seems like something that Paul's interlocutor might have a problem with. So you're suggesting that when I sin, it's good, therefore I should sin more. And what would Paul say?
[00:10:09] Mega Neuto. He would say Rakesh offers us two different kinds of repentance to explain this. First of all, repentance by fear and repentance motivated by love. Repentance out of fear. When we repent there, our transgressions are of downgraded to mistakes because we acknowledge, hey, we were wrong. We said we're sorry. It's sort of like getting a reduced sentence for good behavior.
[00:10:36] You're doing it out of fear. Because I don't want to bear the full brunt of this. And therefore God kind of. You get a little downgrade. Okay.
[00:10:47] But when we repent out of love, a deeper transformation takes place. Repentance out of love taps into the idea that. That our past mistakes actually help us grow, that they actually lead us toward a greater righteousness. It's done out of a love for God. It's done out of a love for ourselves, which is okay, because guess what? If you don't love yourself, you will not be good at loving other people. That's a true statement. It sounds weird. It's very true. The sins themselves become part of the journey that shapes us into better people, driving us as a force toward good God, taking sin with repentance and turning it into something of value for you and for others. Rabbi Cook, in his book lights of Penitence, explains this. The wrongs we've committed once repented for propel us to a higher level of spiritual greatness than we could have achieved without them. Do you understand how radical this is to suggest it's really good?
[00:12:06] My point is that along with the rabbis I've mentioned here, it's just as I said on Rosh Hashanah. God desires so much that we see ourselves as the creation he intended us to be, so much so that he'll use the bad you've done to make you better.
[00:12:24] That's a pretty good God. It's a nice equation.
[00:12:28] Now, Teshuva, it doesn't just offer us a way to lessen the weight of our past mistakes. It's offering us a transformation of those mistakes, something that can lead us toward the people we were meant to be. So, repentance, this word, it's not about getting stuck in guilt or self recrimination. It's about learning from failings, using them as a stepping stone. For growth and then seeing them as part of a transformation. Okay. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz also put it well when he said we should view our faults like the beginning of a new and beautiful story. Who does that?
[00:13:10] Who does it in here? Who loves it when they fail miserably? Sin. And say, yes, this is the beginning of something great.
[00:13:27] So as I try to reframe the holidays from guilt and misery, and woe is me, and terrible am I to this meaningful transformation, I want you to think just for a minute, about how different your outlook on things like this could be, how meaningful it can be if we embrace a perspective that says instead of just mourning our mistakes, we recognize them as essential chapters in a journey forward and growing and elevating and becoming better. Rash Lakeisha is right. Sin can become merit.
[00:14:01] Sin can be useful. There is one major caveat, though. It's very obvious. But just so that there's no confusion in the room, I'm going to say it.
[00:14:12] Sins are not merits if they persist and you do nothing about it. This doesn't happen on its own. The transfer of sin to merit does not happen on its own. Many, many people, as I discussed with you last Shabbat, will not have anything to do with this.
[00:14:36] Not just because they're not jewish or not in a messianic synagogue. People in the messianic synagogue, and plenty of jews will not have anything to do with this. Why? Well, we have this certain perspective, and many of us get stuck in the sense that, well, as I said last week, this is difficult, if not impossible. It doesn't really even do anything. We focus on the challenges, the obstacles are in our way. We have this repetitive thing, hash. I'm new. For the sins, for the sins, for the sins. What's that gonna do for me?
[00:15:13] That's something that a lot of people say.
[00:15:20] So, okay, I'll go. But it's half hearted, not much confidence that anything's really gonna change. What we're missing is a sense of hope, a belief that this. When you get real, when you confront, when you say, when you recognize the things and then say, oh, gosh, God, change that, then he can say, all right, I'll take that, turn it upside down, and I'll raise you one.
[00:15:49] But do you know, first of all, do you know why that happens? Do you know why this works? Do you know why you can have hope in this kind of stuff that I'm talking about? You know why?
[00:16:02] Because God instituted the system.
[00:16:06] It's his program.
[00:16:08] We didn't make this up. This is God's program. This is the time when Moses was on the mountain after Israel had sinned with the golden calf, asking that God would provide forgiveness to an entire nation.
[00:16:22] This is a time we didn't make it up. God does that. But you must show up.
[00:16:29] And I don't just mean sitting in the chairs.
[00:16:39] So the Shabbat Shuva, post Shofar, pre day of atonement, closing of the gates. This is the important message that your rabbi needs to give to the people he cares about. Because I'm challenging you. I'm challenging you to take some action. It's not another day just to listen to a message about repentance. It's a moment. It's a moment. We're having a moment here.
[00:17:08] You make a change, you turn. Status quo. Not acceptable. I don't even believe it. If your life is headed in the wrong direction, you say, oh, it's fine, I'll just ride it out. Let me tell you something. You are not going to ride it out. It's going to get worse.
[00:17:23] It's going to get worse.
[00:17:26] That's just the way life goes.
[00:17:30] If it's going in the wrong direction, in action, not an option. Today I'm challenged. I want to challenge this idea of just doing dirty work inside yourself and let God transform. Those things propel you forward. Think of good old Isaac Newton's law of inertia. Remember it either way, an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Right?
[00:17:59] I think I use that probably every year because it's so true.
[00:18:06] Most of our lives, our lives, year by year, are spent at rest.
[00:18:18] Now apply that, though, to your sins, your sins, your shortcomings, your failures, your faults, bad habits, bad behaviors, behaviors.
[00:18:28] They'll never be anything else without a step to address them. Okay? They cannot ever become merit. They can't ever become positive drivers without action. And not an action, necessarily, that's motivated by fear, but out of love, a desire to please God, to honor him and others, to honor the creation that he made you to be, to be the best you can be. I'm sorry, that's so cheesy. I know. Be the best you can be.
[00:19:01] But don't you want to be, you know, that outside force, that transformative force, especially right now, is God working through your repentance. So really the force is external and it's internal. You have these two forces. They are not equal and opposite. They will not cancel each other out. They will work together for good.
[00:19:30] Internal repentance. Try this related word. If repentance just makes you think of guilt and baggage and all this other stuff. Try this realignment, course correction, renewal. The power to turn things around. The first thing you do is you take a step. Today is that day. So how do we change? How do we change? We start, we get started.
[00:19:54] We do something. The most frustrating part of my job, probably there's a catalog of items, let me review them.
[00:20:05] I'm just kidding. I love my job. I love my life. The most frustrating part of what I do and dealing with people as part of my job is when someone comes to me with a difficulty or a problem and I provide an answer. I'm not saying the answer unanswer. And they say, that won't work.
[00:20:28] Or they say, yeah, I tried that once, it didn't work.
[00:20:36] And I say, okay, well, what happened when you tried it again?
[00:20:42] Well, I didn't.
[00:20:44] Well, why not? Because it didn't work the first time.
[00:20:57] I was still dealing with the issue. I mean, I did the thing you say, I got up here on the holidays, I did all the prayers, I did the thing, I came out of it, I still was. Whatever it was, it wasn't right. I'm not going to go. No, do it again. There's a great Jim Rohn quote that says you can't change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. It's a process. I have a favorite little.
[00:21:28] There's a young entrepreneur, life coach, incredibly brilliant guy. I've mentioned him before. His name is Sahil Bloom. He wrote a recent blog post that I really loved. It was called the Beginner's paradigm paradox, something he mentioned. And here's basically what it said. You have to start poorly to end well.
[00:21:52] Every expert started out as a beginner.
[00:21:57] Everyone you admire in the world who's great at something started out not great at it.
[00:22:07] He says, the most successful people I know love the feeling of being an embarrassing beginner.
[00:22:15] Who loves that feeling?
[00:22:18] The most successful people I know love the feeling of being an embarrassing beginner. They thrive on this feeling of newness. They love diving into something with childlike curiosity. The beginners embarrassment is actually a positive signal why that they see value in pressing on anyway. They'll go through the embarrassment because there's value on the other side of it. It's worth swallowing your pride and humbling yourself and looking stupid and failing and whatever else, because there's value on the other side of it. Once again, we can relate that to Ras Lakeish, the sin merit of paradox. Something that seems bad can actually be good. Here right here. When we get started on these life projects, it may not go well. You might be the very person who sits in my office and said, I tried that once. It didn't work.
[00:23:16] Okay, try again.
[00:23:21] Try again.
[00:23:22] But the willingness to start to address issues, failures, problems, through repentance, through realignment, to be willing to say, darn, I really gave it my all. I really showed up and tried, and I still sucked it up.
[00:23:45] Okay, get up again. Do it again. Do it again.
[00:23:51] The failure is not in the falling down. It's in the what?
[00:23:56] Staying down. You can't begin again. Listen. Open to me, my sister. Song of songs. Five, two. It says it. According to Rabbi Yossi, the holy one said to Israel, my children, open to me.
[00:24:14] Open to me in penitence, an opening as small as the eye of a needle. This is God speaking to Israel. Open to me. An opening as small as the eye of a needle. And I shall make an opening in me for you so wide that wagons and coaches could enter through it. In other words, God says, just. Just try with your repentance, with your petition, with your work, with your soul, work, with your inner desire to elevate yourself, just try and just that much. And I'll open up a gate you could drive a wagon through for you to come and be restored and renewed.
[00:25:00] That's pretty awesome.
[00:25:05] Zig Ziglar said, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
[00:25:13] But I'll tell you, just because I'm always an optimist, you have to know that when you're starting on a new path, you are going to find obstacles, you are going to be beaten down, you're going to be embarrassed, you're going to have potholes, you're going to have wrong turns. You're going to have all that stuff. Okay, so what? Try again. What I love is that many of those wrong turns are the turns that with our willingness to humble ourselves, to get started with God's help, he'll turn those things into positive.
[00:25:43] That's the whole point of Ras Lakeish. That's my whole point. His transformation of our sins to merits, that's God. They make us who we are. We can make a big difference in the world. I've told you so many times. Listen, I lived a pretty full life as a younger man.
[00:26:04] My parents would use a different word to describe my experiences as a high school, junior high, high school, college. They'd use a different word. Now. Listen, I. I think they should be grateful to me.
[00:26:22] My sins became merit for them as parents because they knew how to handle my brothers.
[00:26:29] I thought it was a good thing.
[00:26:34] But I'm going to tell you something. I was wild. I was wild as hell. I had problems, all kinds of problems.
[00:26:44] But I don't look back on those days with despondency.
[00:26:51] I don't look back with this feeling of worthlessness and horrible guilt. Am I proud of reckless lifestyle? Am I proud of bad decisions? Am I proud of things that hurt people? Of course not. Mega Noito. God forbid. Am I excited to stand before the master of the universe in my life review and have to review the shortcomings and things? No.
[00:27:22] Do I regret wasted opportunities that I didn't live to my fullest potential, damage I may have caused to people? Of course I do.
[00:27:34] But I do know. I do know that all of those steps down wrong roads, I know that they contributed in some way to who I am, how I relate to people, how I understand people. Was there a better way?
[00:27:50] Probably.
[00:27:52] I can only say maybe.
[00:27:55] Probably. My failures, though, they helped me learn how to communicate with people. One of the things I feel that I'm good at as a leader is being able to relate to people. And I learned that from a very, very rough life. I did. I learned to see all kinds of people from where they come from and just relate and learn how to talk to people and communicate with people in a voice that they can understand. That came from.
[00:28:26] Came from.
[00:28:28] Can't say it came from sins. What I can say is God used those things.
[00:28:37] And so, you know, that's the idea of what I'm sharing with you today on Shabbat Shuva. Repentance leading to course correction. Could I? If I could choose to do things differently, would I?
[00:28:56] Well, I probably would, but I can't.
[00:29:00] You can't? Did is done. You ever heard that deep logic?
[00:29:07] Did is done. And guess what? Who knows what your life would have looked like if you had.
[00:29:15] What promise is there in that? There's no reason to look back with regret like that. Yeshua himself says, he who puts his hand to the plow and keeps looking back is not fit for the kingdom of God.
[00:29:28] You go that way.
[00:29:31] But at Shabbat Shuvah, if your this way is not the way you need to be going, then you do what Shuvda, you turn and you go a different way. But what you learned that way can still be good for you.
[00:29:53] So, you know, here's the thing.
[00:29:58] It's not done yet.
[00:30:01] I can put on this fantastic facade of rabbi with the courage to wear a pink shirt?
[00:30:09] No. I can act like Mister Holy Rabbi and I can be Mister Ffoz, who gets to teach for Ffoz. And I feel like generally I have a pretty put together life, but there is so incredibly much work that needs to occur in me.
[00:30:36] I know that there's so much stuff that still messes me up. People still get to me. Did you know that? Words still hurt me.
[00:30:46] Words still mess me up. Criticism still bothers me. I get stressed out. I get burned out. I can be ungrateful. I can be selfish. I can be proud. I can be stingy. I can be hurtful. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of the list that God could generate against and about me.
[00:31:08] And you know what? That's probably all of us in the room. If we're honest, we haven't arrived.
[00:31:14] We still sin.
[00:31:16] We still do it. But where there is repentance in love, there is the opportunity to correct the course and allow God to turn sin to merit. That's what Shabbat Shuva is. That's why it's one of the longest messages in the year. Because this is the time we do that.
[00:31:42] This is the time we get real. The words of Hosea, return Israel to Adonai, your God, for your guilt has made you stumble.
[00:31:53] What a goddess that will pick you up when you fall and even take those things and build you. Take your words with you. Return to Adonai, say to him, forgive all guilt and accept what is good. We will pay. Instead of bulls, the offerings of our lips, it tells us, return. Take a step that is, approach God with repentance and expectation. You know, yes, on Yom Kippur, we're going to say all those things together a bunch of times.
[00:32:29] Asham nu. We have sinned. We have sinned with our eyes. We have sinned with our mouths. We have sinned. With our wallet. We have sinned. With our thoughts. We have sinned. We have sinned. We have sinned. We have sinned. And my hope with today's message, and the whole reason that I was so moved by Ras Lakeshore is that I hope that this year, as you're saying, that when you conclude that, you can say, and this makes me want to cry, you can say, yep, I did those things.
[00:33:05] But, God, I'm counting on you.
[00:33:11] I'm bringing into the doorway open for me a wide place of repentance and take those things and make me the man or the woman that you created me to be.
[00:33:31] Shabbat Shalom. Please visit our website shalommakin.org. to learn more about us, join our live services, access other teachings, sign up for our newsletter, join our private network that will connect you with our greater community from around the world or contribute to the work of. Shalom, Macon, thank you for watching, and we look forward to connecting with.
